Food looms large on Kiwis’ UN soft-power menu

If the way to world peace is through the stomach, New Zealand’s team on the United Nations Security Council has got it cracked. New Zealand’s time on that august body will end in four months.

Much has been made of New Zealand’s need to rely on soft power to get its way given its lack of military, economic and political heft. So its legacies to the Security Council include breakfasts and lunches.

It was the Kiwis who started a tradition of monthly breakfast of the ambassadors of the 15 Security Council members.

New Zealand hosted the first in July last year, about six months into its term on the council and its first turn as president under the council’s practice of rotating the chair each month.

Since then, every other council member has followed suit with a breakfast to kick off its month as president. It was a bid to meet without the set-piece statements, the acronyms and officials.

UN observers now point to the Breakfast Club as an important addition to the council practice, which had become dominated by set-piece statements rather than actual discussion between members.

Food features in another move New Zealand has driven, with Venezuela — lunch meetings of the 10 elected members on the council to maximise their power as a bloc, given the permanent five need at least nine votes to pass a measure

It is also an attempt to try to stop the permanent members coming to the rest of the council with a measure as a fait accompli and expecting them to rubber stamp it.

Sport is a further example of New Zealand’s soft power at work. Rugby helped break the ice with one of the big five — Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin.

It turns out Churkin is quite a rugby fan. During the campaign for the Security Council seat, New Zealand took Churkin to watch the Maori All Blacks play the USA in Philadelphia.

There Churkin sat on a bus full of New Zealand and Pacific Island diplomats, complete with the experience of a guitar sing-along in the back seat on the way home.

Churkin now sits next to New Zealand’s ambassador, Gerard van Bohemen, around the council table. New Zealand is hoping the relationships last beyond its term on the Security Council.

The elected members are divided into two camps — those who do something with their time and those for whom a stint on the Security Council is a vanity project because of the kudos that attaches to it.

By the accounts of most observers, New Zealand falls into the first camp.

But there have been frustrations for New Zealand diplomats at times.

A modern Kiwi saying seems relevant: “All hui, no do-ey.”

That was on show this week when the council spent four hours talking about the problem of getting humanitarian help into Aleppo without doing a thing about it.

UN experts say a country’s size does not necessarily consign a country to irrelevancy on the council, provided it has a strong ambassador, is prepared to be pragmatic, chooses its battles well and has a very focused agenda.

New Zealand and van Bohemen are well regarded by observers of the UN who say New Zealand brings a refreshing perspective. However, some wonder if the nation made the most of its tenure on the Security Council.

Some believe New Zealand would have done better to target something more achievable than a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process between Israel and Palestine.

The draft resolution New Zealand proposed on that last year has remained just that and is now effectively on hold because of the United States elections.

Undaunted, New Zealand has decided to solve the Syrian humanitarian crisis in September when it will again hold the presidency. It has some ground to build on here. With four other countries, New Zealand spearheaded a resolution to try to halt attacks on hospitals in conflict zones. It is also one of three countries with oversight of measures concerning Syria’s humanitarian crisis.

But such ambition has prompted some mockery domestically and possibly internationally. In the face of New Zealand’s confidence it could bring world peace, one diplomat reportedly told a New Zealand diplomat “the answer to every world problem is not always New Zealand”.

New Zealand has four months to prove them wrong. Brunch and a round of Ten Guitars, anyone?