WATCH | UN sec-gen candidate Virginia Gamba: ‘Malta could play role of the great interpreter’

Virginia Gamba from Argentina is vying to be the next UN secretary-general when Antonio Guterres’s current term expires next year. While in Malta as a guest of the foreign ministry, she sits down with Kurt Sansone to discuss her bid, genocide and child soldiers.

Virginia Gamba does not quiver when I ask her whether she will be the next United Nations secretary-general: “I know I will because I have the right experience.”

The 71-year-old diplomat, who recently stepped down from her role as special representative of the secretary general for children and armed conflict at the UN, is an expert on strategic issues relative to peace, security and human security.

Aptly, the interview is held in the conference room at Fort St Elmo, where Gamba waxes lyrical about Malta’s foreign policy that has championed “principled multilateralism”.

She says small countries like Malta are best placed to become “safe spaces” where conflicting parties can meet. “There is a big role for Malta to play to become what I call, the great interpreter between the north, south, west and east,” she tells me, adding that “Maltese people are excellent at finding a compromise that is principled.”

Gamba believes multilateralism cannot be undone despite a concerted international push to the contrary led by the United States under Donald Trump. “We are in a time where multilateralism is being questioned by the powerful countries that are trying their best to reach bilateral arrangements. But they themselves cannot yet prove that these alternatives lead to better results.”

With Gamba I also raise the issue of genocide in Gaza but she insists the word is politically loaded and is defined by international law. We also discuss the war in Ukraine and the plight of child soldiers.

The following is an excerpt of the interview.

Your previous experience at the UN in various dockets put you in touch with a lot of situations where you had to negotiate with countries where there is conflict. How has your experience shaped your world view?

You have to deal with crisis and crisis management to understand that you’re no longer living off a book or university course… By dealing with mediation, conflict prevention, trying to de-escalate conflict and improve the livelihood and security of people, you learn far more about persuasion and about finding common ground between really difficult positions... So, it has shaped me.

Last year marked the 35th anniversary of the UN commitment to protect children from being recruited as soldiers. The statement said “armed groups have increased the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict” despite the protocol prohibiting the use of children as soldiers having been ratified by 173 countries. Why is it that we continue to see children being used in wars?

During the Cold War and immediate post-Cold War period, there was a world order that was state-centric. A commitment from a state actually worked; the commitment to the rights of the child was made by states not by armed groups or illegal groups…

A lot of the armed groups such as Daesh, Boko Haram and Al Shebab, are opposed to the international system… These groups don’t have governments supporting them. What happens to them is that they need to be able to do war with the logistics they manage to appropriate—territories they commandeer and within which there are villages and people that are abused…

In the same statement you were quoted saying: “…the use of military force by governments and regimes has wreaked havoc on children, in situations such as Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Gaza; Sudan; Lebanon; Myanmar and Ukraine. The cries of these children echo across conflict zones, but far too often, the world remains silent.” Isn’t this a failure of the UN?

No, I think this is a failure of all of us. Children are our collective responsibility. We cannot just give up our children and say it’s a problem of the government, of the war. Everybody must commit to protect children… Member states that have signed the Convention for the Rights of the Child have an obligation to implement it in their national borders…

[…]

I am very upset when the world press is looking at some conflicts and not others. For years I cried for what was happening in Sudan and Darfur where girls were systematically raped, killed and burnt to death and no one wanted to do anything about it…

When you say no one seems to care, what do you expect member states to do?

For example, peace support operations in places like the DRC, Somalia, Darfur were terminated by the Security Council with the compliance of the General Assembly. No one made a push to try and keep, at least, child capacity services funded and in place to be able to protect children. Lock stock and barrel, peace keeping operations stopped being funded, stopped having the political support when the violations against children were at their highest…

Thousands of Palestinian children have died, left orphaned, maimed for life, denied an education for the past two years and possibly the foreseeable future. They live in communities that have been displaced multiple times; neighbourhoods that have been raised to the ground. And yet using the word genocide to describe what Israel did in Gaza remains problematic.

It is problematic. Unfortunately, the international order of today is based on special jurisprudence and the secretary general has been clear about this; legally he cannot talk of genocide because it does not conform with the basis for which something can be called genocide. In any case, the UN is a political body; the Security Council is the only one with a legally binding function… there are specific bodies like the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that have the power to call a situation genocide. These have not yet expressed themselves. The closest to expressing itself on genocide has been the ICJ at the request of South Africa but it hasn’t yet expedited that decision; they said elements exist that might point in that direction… unless all the boxes are ticked [Israel’s military actions in Gaza] cannot be called genocide. The problem is that there are some words that have become highly politicised. Everybody knows that if one can prove genocide exists, automatically there are certain rules that have to be applied, which is why people are hesitant to call it out as genocide…

You are vying for the role of secretary-general once Antonio Guterres’s term comes to an end next year. What are the chances that I am speaking to the next UN secretary-general?

I think I will be the next secretary-general.

That’s very confident of you.

I have the right experience. I have 50 years of work experience on peace and security… I am an expert on disarmament. There has never been an arms race as big as this one since the end of the Cold War…

On what is needed now—someone with broad experience of war, conflict, preventing escalation, de-escalation, and containing emergent technologies that could be militarised very easily like AI—I don’t see anybody who is in contest who has my profile. On expertise alone I fit the bill. The other thing is that among the candidates… I am the only one with more than 13 years’ experience working with the Security Council and ultimately the secretary-general is chosen by the Security Council…

How do you describe your relationship with the United States, and I ask this because since Donald Trump came to power, he has pushed back against multilateralism, which has even put the UN in a difficult situation in terms of its finances?

When you are old enough like I am you realise there are some things that cannot be undone. Once you militarise a scientific discovery it can never be undone; it can be contained but not undone. Once the international community has started to work on multilateralism and globalisation, it’s very hard to undo it… We are in a time where multilateralism is being questioned by the powerful countries that are trying their best to reach bilateral arrangements. But they themselves cannot yet prove that these alternatives lead to better results. I don’t think multilateralism is dead; I don’t think globalisation is dead; I think it is being complemented with bilateral regional systems trying to achieve the same results… We are in an international system that depends on more alternatives but they have to be complementary and build on each other… multilateralism is a multiplying force.

Multilateralism also means that smaller countries like Malta could have a role to play. It’s not just the size of your country, or military but how good an idea is. Yet we consistently see important decisions being blocked at the Security Council because of the veto wielded by the powerhouses of this world. How can the UN reform itself to go beyond certain deadlocks?

The UN cannot reform itself because it is not a supranational entity. The UN represents the will of its member states. The member states must come up with what they like to see in the UN and then must give it the means and guidance to be able to implement what they wish… Member states must now come up with a new definition of the world order.

We need to provide a bridge between extremes and I cannot think of a better country than Malta… You are best placed to become the space that is safe from politics to discuss a common future… a small state or a large state has got a responsibility to humanity…

It is that responsibility that protects a small island like Malta. It is the rule of law that protects us because we have no military to protect us. When that rule book starts getting torn away, it’s vulnerable countries that become exposed.

It won’t be torn away. People must not panic. What has been built will not be unbuilt. The world has been able to stop a third world war because it has worked together… Of course, a small country like Malta has its national interest but it identified some time ago some very good priorities such as defending multilateralism because it is conducive to wellbeing of societies… there is a big role for Malta to play to become what I call, the great interpreter between the north, south, west and east… Maltese people are excellent at finding compromise that is principled.