Lecture to mark the 80 th anniversary of the British Council Baroness Ashton of Upholland 25 November 2014, London

Transcription

1 Lecture to mark the 80 th anniversary of the British Council Baroness Ashton of Upholland 25 November 2014, London Baroness Ashton of Upholland Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland was, until the end of October this year, the EU s first ever High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission. This new position was created under the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 and the holder is charged with co-ordinating the EU s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Catherine s role followed a wide-ranging political career including her appointment as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council in Gordon Brown s first Cabinet in June Ashton s work bringing Serbia and Kosovo to an agreement in April 2013 and her approach to talks with Iran have seen her praised as a key negotiator in difficult international situations. Influence and Trust: Tales from the Frontline of International Relations I. Introduction It is a great pleasure to be here. I have spent the last few days in Vienna, locked away in a hotel talking about centrifuges, breakout capacities, inspections and transparency. It was a lovely hotel, but it is not the same when you cannot venture outside, so you will appreciate how nice it is to have flown back from Vienna this afternoon to be able to be here to talk with you, especially on such a wonderful occasion: the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the British Council. I want to thank the British Council, you Sir Vernon, my dear friend Baroness Prashar, and members of the trustees and management group of the Council, especially Sir Martin for the invitation to join you this evening. It is honestly a great treat for me to be able to be here. When I think about the British Council, and I can talk about some of the ways in which I have encountered the work of the Council over the years, it is always good to start with the statistics: 200 offices in over 100 countries spanning six continents; 700 staff, of whom I am delighted to say, over 2,000 are teachers. It represents and manifests influence and trust across the world. I know it from the collaboration I have seen from my capacity in the European Union, and from the messages that we hear across the world of what great work is being done. It is a special pleasure to be asked to be here tonight. II. Soft and Hard Power Long before Joseph Nye coined this phrase soft power, the British Council s influence has been much in evidence and I do not believe ever to be underestimated. Over these last few years, I have always watched with great interest this debate about soft and hard power. In my experience, on many occasions, I have seen how people feel somehow, if we are not talking about hard power and military might we are not really tackling the issue at hand. On many occasions, the media were only interested to know whether what we were going to do was really about hard power. I always think that it is a real underestimation to forget that all of the instruments available to us on this spectrum between soft and hard can have a dramatic impact and a real influence on what happens in the world. I think especially of economic power, something that is often taken far too lightly. It has enormous implications and, if used well, can really make a difference. Many of you will know the impact of economic power in countries like South

2 Africa. Those of you who have had the opportunity to listen to Aung San Suu Kyi will know, from what she says, the impact of sanctions in Burma. Of course, as we see now, there are the challenges that are taking place in the East when we think about the relationship between Russia and the Ukraine, but also with Iran. Using economic power well to try and make the point and send the message is, I believe, an aspect of hard power. III. The Challenges of Using Soft Power I want to focus on this other part of the spectrum tonight and talk about the challenges of using soft power this set of things: influence, trust, persuasion, example about understanding and working with people who maybe have a desire to be part of what we are, or what we have, who may want to replicate what we are, and what we have, who have an understanding that maybe there is something on offer that could be to their benefit, or to the benefit of their people. It is about understanding what matters to countries, to governments, and to people, and how knowing that can make a difference to the offer that we frame to people the opportunity that can sometimes make a huge difference, can affect the deadlock and can make things change. I always like to talk in real examples, so let me start with something with which I was deeply involved, which was, in fact, the agreement between Pristina and Belgrade, Kosovo and Serbia, in Time moves so quickly I had to look back on the internet when we actually signed the agreement, even though I was there when we signed it. Here were two groups of people locked in a very heated post-war tension, focused on a part of Kosovo declared independent by Kosovo, but not recognised by every nation, including five members of the European Union. Serbia believed that Kosovo should remain part of Serbia. There was a group of people in the north of Kosovo, who were trapped between a nation they were not sure they belonged to and a yearning to be part of a country which, in terms of how the Kosovar saw it, they had left. It took 145 hours, between two prime ministers, with just an interpreter each, and myself with one wonderful official. Six of us lived in my office for up to 14 hours a day working out, not how we could tackle these red lines that were so difficult to cross, but simply doing the practical work about how to make people s lives better. What are the things that we could do that would mean people living in this difficult area would have a better life? Those of you who know the Western Balkans will know only too well the political risk that each of them took when they decided that they would come to Brussels and meet for the very first time in my office. When they talk about it, they often talk about how nervous they were. They were having big discussions in their own heads about should the, or should they not shake hands when they came in. We took one photograph and they watched as the camera was handed to me so that they knew the photo could not escape without them agreeing to it. When both of them arrived, they were put in separate parts of the building and I was pretty convinced, as the day went on, that maybe one or other of them would not manage to actually make it to the office. But come they did and they did it because they wanted their people to have a better future. When you unpack the ingredients of what that meant, first of all, they wanted to come closer to the European Union. They saw it as an oasis of peace and security. 28 countries who solved their problems across a table; countries who know only too well what the alternatives mean. They see the European Union as the best guarantee of peace and security for their own people as they contemplate still the results of a terrible war. They saw too the prospects for the economy such an important part of the opportunities to give people. The prospect of good trade relations was high on their agenda. They wanted to be in Brussels, in what they called a place of safety. No word of what they said ever left the room unless they chose to reveal it. No record has ever been published. They both knew too that they would be treated fairly. Many, many times, we bumped up against the red lines that they had when they arrived. We respected the red lines, but we bumped quite hard against them. However fedup, cross, or sometimes amused they were by each other, they shared every moment of that 25 November

3 experience together. They showed each other that they had true courage and determination because they risked rejection at home, ejection from office, and actually, on occasion, real danger. But they did it. Something else, which I happen to believe in quite passionately, is the ownership of this agreement. There is no Ashton Agreement. It is a Brussels Agreement. They chose the name. It was their agreement. It was not mine. We helped them. We steered them off the rocks occasionally. I refereed many times, for sure. I got very cross sometimes, particularly after 11 hours, when we were not getting anywhere. But the agreement belonged to them. It was theirs to be proud of, but it was also theirs to explain at home and to sell. The results of the agreement were practical too. They were not theoretical. We opened gates so that people could travel freely. We collected customs revenue in particular ways to benefit the people in the north. We sorted out the telephone code for the area, something still not quite finished. We created new, local structures to represent people. We held elections. All these, in their own sweet way, at the time were truly revolutionary, but now quite normal. Many times, I said to them, in the course of the discussions, There will come a time you won t believe it now when all of this will seem terribly ordinary and terribly normal, when discussing what goes on a customs stamp, or what is on the form that people fill in, will not matter. Indeed, a couple of weeks ago, the Foreign Minister of Kosovo went to visit the Foreign Minister of Serbia and nobody noticed. That was unthinkable two years ago, but now possible. There is much more for them to do, but I hold them both in the highest esteem for the sort of political courage that you do not see often enough, but that truly was about soft power in action the offer that could be made and the opportunity that was given to them. IV. Defining Soft Power When I was thinking about how to talk further about these issues, I looked in the British Council reports, and I found a really nice definition. It talks about soft power being about making friends and influencing people through culture, through education, through language and through values. Just as I talked about the ingredients that brought two prime ministers into a room to be able to think about the unthinkable, I want to look at those different elements of culture, education, language and values from the point of view of some of the things I have seen, some of the areas I have worked on and some of the things I know the British Council does. 1. Education Those of you who know me here will know that I am bound to start with education because it was the opportunity to become an Education Minister that enticed me out of the health service, where I was chair of a health authority, and into government. Education is absolutely key to the future of any individual, any society or any country. It is fundamental, not just because of the economic benefit, but to the wellbeing of who we are, and everybody else on the planet is. In so many countries and in so many different circumstances, it has become even more vital, especially when we think right now about countries ripped apart by war and the children who are suffering as a consequence of that. I want to give some examples of what I think, and why I think education matter. I go back to one of the first experiences I was involved in, which was the earthquake in Haiti. In 35 seconds, 230,000 people were killed and 300,000 people were injured. If you remember it, you may recall that the earthquake struck just after on a working day. That meant so many people, and indeed all of the layers of management within the government in Haiti, and so many people working in United Nations and NGOs across Haiti were killed. I lost one of my own team. It was the first experience of loss in my role as High Representative. She was at a UN meeting discussing how we could offer even more support to the people of Haiti in the future. Like everybody else, we mobilised as much support as we could, working through days and nights, civilian and military, sending hospital ships, earth-moving equipment, helicopters, 25 November

4 medical teams, tents and water everything that we could think of that could try and help and support these people. People who remained alive were traumatised and shocked. The place, when I visited it, looked as bad as you can imagine. But I remember very well, on the days that I spent in Haiti visiting different people in different projects, that what was astonishing was seeing makeshift schools set up all across the worst affected areas. These were places were the houses around them literally looked as if you had picked them up, turned them upside down, and put them back on the ground again. All of these children, many of whom were orphaned, all of whom were traumatised, were sitting with teachers from all over the world, who had come to try and help them, to carry on with their education. You could feel the power of the normal routine for children of going to school. It was absolutely key and I learned this from the people who were involved with dealing with the trauma that children had. It was absolutely key to any possibility of these children being able to cope with the trauma that they had experienced. I saw it again in Japan, when I visited the worst affected areas after the tsunami. I went down to Sendai, and then out to the villages or rather to see the water with the villages underneath them. I can still remember being astonished at just how difficult the situation still was eight months later in a country that was perfectly capable of tackling the most difficult of circumstances. I saw the children playing in a playground and it reminded me, again, of how much it matters that we continue to provide for children in these difficult circumstances. I remember especially, in the worst of places, there was a school hall that had been renovated and I went to visit this school hall. It looks like a school hall that will be very familiar to many of you a hall with a stage at one end of it and a big clock showing the time. It could be in any town in Britain and you would know what it was by walking in. Around the top it, there was a balcony where you could stand, presumably to watch performances on the stage. The afternoon that the earthquake struck, this was a place of refuge that people had been told, in earthquakes, to go and visit. The children came into the room and they were put on the balcony and all the adults stayed behind on the ground, so when the waves struck, the adults were lost and the children were left behind. Here I was, a few months later, in a newly renovated hall. The memory of that dreadful day a watermark that came just below the balcony and a clock frozen at 11.03, the time the earthquake struck. But the children were being educated, people from all over Japan and way beyond were coming to help them pick up the pieces and look for the future. The lessons of all that are really simple: education is important in the worst of circumstances if young people and children are to get a future. It is why I have always supported the idea of, what I call, Education in a suitcase. Wherever we are the world, we should make sure that as well as providing food, medicine, shelter and water, we should also provide educational support for people in crisis. One of the best slogans I have ever seen is from the government of Somalia, where in Mogadishu, when I was visiting there and this is a country where, after 20 years they desperately trying to move forward with really challenging circumstances they have just developed a new programme. It is called, Give up your Guns and go to School. The government want to make sure that all of these children who have been part of an effort of war, have been traumatised, have become child soldiers and so on, give up their guns and go to school. So far, it has been very successful in achieving that. There are also places where challenges have remained and look as if they will remain for some time. Gaza, which when I last visited before the war that has ended just recently, looked like the war had ended the day before. I will take you to Atfaluna, which is a school for deaf children, and a wonderful place where deaf adults also provide some of the best products I have ever seen, worthy of Fifth Avenue, or Bond Street. It is also the only place in the world that has a restaurant run entirely by people who are deaf. During the recent conflict, this training school for deaf people and restaurant served food for 1,000 meals every day throughout the conflict. 25 November

5 I could take you to the summer schools, which you fund, through your resources to the European Union, where we have children flying kites, where children are in paddling pools, where they are allowed to play and do all of the things that would be very, very familiar to any summer school anywhere or in this country as well. Children have catch-up lessons in Arabic and Maths, just like children all over the world in summer school always in maths, in my experience, but also in language. There are the children who want to be doctors, teachers, astronauts and footballers, like everyone else. I can also take you to the English Language Book Club in Gaza. Teenagers meet together regularly to discuss English contemporary authors. It is fantastic to go and listen to these young people talking about the latest books that they have read that they get from Britain. As a young girl who is 18 said to me, Even if I live in Gaza, which is a prison, I will continue to explain its beauty and its energy and hopes of all the young people around me. The British Council is deeply involved in education all over the world, providing fantastic work and also helping young people here through connecting classrooms, linking people together. It is so important that that work continues and grows, so the teaching and education provided by the British Council is supported by all of you, and by many more people and organisations, and government too. It is very, very important to understand just how incredibly life changing it can be, and it is very important too that we remember the education of girls in all of this. Ban Ki Moon put it very well at the UN General Assembly, when he said, We cannot fulfil 100% of the world s potential with 50% of its assets. It is incredibly important to continue that work. 2. Democratic Values I said there were four elements to the definition, so I want to move on to talk about something else, which fits within the framework of influence and trust, which is about the values that we hold. This country has been on a long journey towards democracy, and we care deeply about democracy and what it offers to people. What we call the Arab Spring but they call The Arab Awakening, because spring in the Arab world is the dustiest of months, when people feel less happy about the weather there a lot of the discussion, struggle, and issues that have been raised in all of the conversations I have had, and many of you will have had too is about trying to make what is dramatic change in a very short period of time. I always say to people, Remember, it took us hundreds of years to get here. Building democracy is not just about the moment of an election, the joy and sorrow of winning or losing an election. It is about what I have come to call, Deep democracy. It is about the potential to build the institutions that will make sure democracy is not here for one day, or one election; that when the wind blows, the tree will fall over. It is deeply rooted in society. It is about the institutional framework that sits underneath it. Like many of you, because it is 2014, I have been reading books on the First World War, and there is no better book than Margaret MacMillan s book. She wrote what I thought was a really good description about Britain. She said, British society has grown incrementally and slowly, taking generations to develop attitudes and institutions, from universities to chambers of commerce, clubs and associations, a free press the whole complex of civil society, which sustains a workable political system. Countries are struggling to try and achieve all of that in a short space of time. When I visited Egypt a couple of weeks ago for the 15th visit, I realised that I had met four presidents in a short space of time. Some of you who have followed what I have done will know that I visited Mohamed Morsi when he was held, but not yet transferred to prison to await trial. I remain the only person to have seen him in that time, from the outside. I have been to Tunisia and seen the struggles there. I was the first person to cross the threshold of the human rights organisations who have never been allowed to meet amongst themselves, never mind to have visitors come and see them. In Libya, when you see the challenges faced in that great country now, our hearts go out to the people who have fought so hard to try and 25 November

6 make real change a possibility. In Jordan, the King of Jordan is moving his country forward in its democracy, despite the great challenges of half a million refugees and a country with an acute water shortage. We have to offer support to help countries move towards democracy, crucial parts of helping them to achieve opportunity and real stability. Democracy needs to be built and it needs to be built deep. That includes, by the way, something that I think is really important, and often forgotten, which is, in any democratic system, to train people for what opposition is meant to be. In too many countries, it is winner takes all. It means that they are unlikely to put themselves up for election too often. They are certainly unlikely to want to lose. You see countries where you do not have retired prime ministers or presidents; they simply go on. People are nervous about becoming opposition parties because they think that they will simply suffer as a consequence. Training people that opposition is government in waiting and about holding people to account is something I developed in the European Union, but still, we need to do much, much more of. The importance of what that brings people, and helping them to build the institutions, build them strong, build them deep, help them develop political parties, the education that goes along side that, helping to understand that there is a way in which the police force can work for them, that the institutions are theirs, the administration is not corrupt, and so on these are crucial elements, but not enough. When you look at some of the transitional countries, where people are going through great change, you see huge numbers of especially young people who do not have the opportunity, who do not have a future. That is about education, but it is also about employment. 3. Economics and Politics Bringing together what I have called economics and politics is really, really important. I did it by just designing something I called a task force, because I could not think of a better word for it. In some countries, I have done this in Egypt, in Jordan, but also in Burma, or Myanmar idea was to try and put economics and politics together, bringing together business leadership, parliamentarians, human rights specialists and so on. In Burma, I brought 100 chief executives from industry across the European Union, together with parliamentarians from different parliaments and from the European Parliament, especially those from Eastern European countries who knew themselves about the transition to democracy, and the challenge of dramatic and speedy change. It was bringing human rights specialists from NGOs across Europe, recognising that people needed to hear the spectrum of things that could be achieved, and needed to be achieved if they were going to move forward, and recognising that as well as democratic accountability, people want their governments to deliver jobs. They want futures for their children and themselves everywhere in the world, just as we want it here. It is also understanding something else, which is when you look at how economics and politics come together it is about the intertwining of those two things. Business does not invest where it does not see stability. Business invests where it sees the rule of law; where it sees the potential for growth, where it sees opportunities to have local labour forces, new markets and so on. In order to ensure that you can have the growth of business, in order you can develop your small business sector and so on, you need stability, accountability and democracy; and in order for democracy to be built deep too, you need to provide people with opportunities. They need to know that there will be a better life in the future. In Burma, we worked with President Thein Sein and with Aung San Suu Kyi. We brought these people together from all over Europe to Naypyidaw, the capital, and to Yangon, for two days of meetings. We launched new chambers of commerce; we introduced business leaders to politicians; we ensured that small business leaders met with each other; we organised seminars led by me and Aung San Suu Kyi on human rights. We got parliamentarians who had been through transition to talk to parliamentarians who were going through transitions, people who knew how difficult and challenging it can be to try and build democracy. The 25 November

7 British Council in Burma has benefitted thousands of civil society activists, parliamentarians and legal professionals. It has delivered training programmes in democracy and human rights when nobody else was doing it. The British Council stood with us in Burma for all of this work, and I was very proud to put 20 million into a project with the British Council that helps provide legal advice and support for the poorest and most vulnerable people in Burma so that they get access to justice. In a country where, if you go beyond Yangon and Naypyidaw and up, as I did, to the north, near Bagan, which is a beautiful 11th century capital, you can see people in villages queue up to wait for the water truck to come each day. You can see the lack of roads and infrastructure, and that basic needs are still not being met. Providing and supporting these people is crucial. The British Council was there when nobody else was there providing that work. I asked our ambassador from the European Union, who is based in Yangon and Naypyidaw about it and he said it it fantastic. He said, This project that we are now doing together shows the relationship you can have between Europe and the British Council because it provides services to the most marginalised people in these communities. 4. Culture When you had your summit in Edinburgh, the Director General of UNESCO, when she was writing the foreword for the summit, she said, Culture is a driver and enabler of inclusive growth and a channel to forge new forms of global solidarity and citizenship underpinned by human rights and freedoms. We know that culture matters. It defines who people are. It is how we have that sense of identity and belonging, even, and perhaps especially, for people who are refugees who have to spend many years of their lives away from home. Not losing that sense of self and culture is crucial. But it is also about building on culture to help support it. There is a wonderful woman called Azza Fahmy, whose jewellery is on the catwalks across Milan, London and New York. She is Egyptian. She is a wonderful designed and I was with her a few weeks ago in Egypt, where she has been working with the British Council. What she has been doing is training Egyptian and European students in design. The Egyptian women mainly come from Nubia that particular part of Egypt and she has developed a fantastic programme. Her jewellery is fabulous. I can tell you that I have bought some of it. She has been working on a programme because she wants to help support the growth of businesses, where they are taking the best, highest quality products, where the women are designing, having this wonderful jewellery, and other things, and actually showing the best of Egyptian modern culture through the expression of that jewellery. But she is an international woman who is also training women across Europe a great example of culture in action. Her programme is funded, in part, by the British Council. It is a wonderful, wonderful example. But the British Council in Egypt too has just funded a great film about the role of women in Egypt. After the initial stages of Tahrir Square and I spent a lot of time there I talked to so many women. We met with women every time I went back who participated in this dramatic change, and who then worried that they would not be part of the Egypt of the future. They worried that they would be sent back home at the end of the transitional change, at the end of the excitement. They wanted to continue to participate. This sort of work, showing and demonstrating that women are engaged and have been part of this great transition that is taking place is so important. That is as well as something very simple and straightforward: showing films to people from Britain, actually exchanging and showing the culture that exists between different countries by having films, understanding culture, understanding the similarities and the differences, and celebrating culture. The women refugees in Syria and Libya are making the most beautiful jewellery as a way of earning a living so that they can show that they can be independent, and who come together to celebrate who they are, to celebrate their faith, to celebrate the chance that they want to have for their children in the future. 25 November

8 One of the things about speaking English is that everywhere in the world you go, you find that people will speak English to you. People value the language; they value the training they get; they very much value what the British Council does, but I think it is the intertwining of so much of the work that makes such a great difference. It is a broader message than just the language. It is a broader message than just talking about values. It is a broader message than any individual part of that definition. It is bringing it all together and making the offer that says, There is a lot we have to offer you in partnership. The history of this country is intertwined with so many countries and the twine sometimes leaves scars. It sometimes leaves mistrust, so the offer that we give to people about who Britain is and what we offer to the world needs to be refreshed constantly, but please do not ever underestimate how strong it is. Do not think that by dividing up these different elements, you can do things differently. It is about keeping the faith, of pulling together all of the different things in this definition of soft power and projecting them together. V. Conclusion For the people of this country, of course, what they get from this is living in peace and security if things go well. If the projection of soft power works; of conflicts are resolved; if people get opportunity; if they get to have transition with as little pain as possible, then we live in greater security. We get good relations. We get the opportunities to travel, to expand our knowledge and experience, and we get trade and investment, which means we also do well economically. We get to see the wonders of the world and places we can only dream of. We get richness. What does the offer mean to everybody else? I am going to end by quoting a young man I met in Benghazi. I went to Benghazi at the height of the beginning of the war. It was a battle zone. There were people with guns. In fact, it was so dangerous that you were in greater danger of being shot by somebody who was letting off a gun because they were celebrating. He had spent eight years in Gaddafi s prison. When I said to him, Tell me. What do you want for the future? he said, in perfect English, We want what you have: democracy and freedom as part of every day life. Thank you very much. / infouk@ubiqus.com November