Dennis Francis, General Assembly President, Wants to Help Small States. Here’s How.

Dennis Francis, president of the United Nations General Assembly for the 78th sesssion, photographed in his office, overlooking the East River, on Dec. 21, 2023. A quarter of the way into his yearlong tenure, the Caribbean diplomat has shifted his priorities because of the Israel-Hamas war, but he remains focused on sustainable development and enabling small states to use the multilateral system to their advantage. Some of them, he said, already punch above their weight. JOHN PENNEY/PASSBLUE

By Maria Luisa Gambale via PassBlue

In September 2023, as global warming and the concerns of small states increasingly populate debates at the United Nations, Dennis Francis became the third president of the General Assembly from the Caribbean. We talked to Francis in December, a quarter of the way through his tenure.

As a diplomat who has served within and representing an island nation for several decades, we were particularly interested in his perspective on issues confronting small states — those with small populations generally and often carrying limited clout at the UN. Francis was born in Trinidad and Tobago, the last of six siblings. He came, in his words, from a “strong, nurturing and supportive household.” His father owned a small construction company and his mother was a homemaker. “Wide-ranging conversation” was the norm at mealtimes, and his parents also created a “house of refuge” for anyone with less privilege or resources.

Before his official retirement from Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Francis’s career included postings in Port of Spain, other stations in the Caribbean, Geneva (where he was permanent representative to various UN bodies) and Vienna. He’s been involved with culture through Unesco; trade through the World Trade Organization; and Sustainable Development Goals and climate change through his role as senior adviser to Trinidad and Tobago’s foreign affairs ministry on multilateral-level matters. During retirement, notably, he worked with a small group of other retired diplomats on a 2018 publication “Heads of Mission: A Handbook.” He describes it as “deliberately written from the perspective of small countries with limited diplomatic resources.”

Francis, 67, holds a bachelor of arts in geography from the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica; an M.A. in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University; and a postgraduate diploma in international relations from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Jamaica.

In press briefings at the UN, he’s quick to assert that gender equality is high on his agenda. As expressed in this interview, he remains deeply attached to one of his alma maters, the University of the West Indies, and he co-led a training course for the Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean, in his own country.

As Francis elaborated in the interview, held in a conference room of the president’s suite at the UN, much has changed since September when he took the presidency. Most notably, the devastating attacks in Israel and subsequent retaliation against the largely civilian population of Gaza has shifted priorities beyond Dennis’s control. The job is to chair special, emergency and regular GA sessions, and the pace is largely guided by world events. Francis walked into the job with a broadly articulated vision statement, indicating a commitment to “peace, prosperity, progress, and sustainability.”

The first has found yet another foil among a list of conflicts, the second remains elusive to most of the world’s population and the third and fourth priorities mostly find their time on stage curtailed by more pressing concerns.

Francis expounded on where his role stood at the three-month mark in his one-year tenure. Francis is, as every GA president must be, a pragmatic optimist on multilateralism, and he believes that the countries of the world keep returning to it despite tremendous diversions like war and disease. As to the unique brand of UN multilateralism — where countries agree to cooperate based on the UN Charter — he asserts that “this is the type of multilateralism we urgently need now,” sunnily entreating members “to think and act beyond the narrow and potentially paralyzing strictures of national interest, but rather as global citizens protecting our global commons.” — MARIA LUISA GAMBALE

This is the first story in a new series this year on small states and multilateralism at the UN, basing “small states” on a country’s population (using the World Bank list or Forum of Small States members or other factors like climate and economic vulnerabilities). The project is financed by Open Society Foundations.

The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

PassBlue: You’ve worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Trinidad and Tobago and in other foreign-service roles. What motivates you about taking this position in this moment?

Francis: The moment has evolved since my candidature was announced. But I’ve been in this business for about 45 years. I come from a small developing country in the Caribbean. We have had a longstanding and valuable relationship with the United Nations, and we have made contributions to the United Nations in several important areas. Perhaps not well known, for example, a former president of Trinidad and Tobago, A.N.R. Robinson, more or less grandfathered, with the support of his colleagues, the establishment of the International Criminal Court. And in a way that is not a surprise because we have a deep psychological commitment in Trinidad and Tobago to the law. Our contribution to the UN has been varied and historic, and I think we felt that it was time that we upped the level of that contribution by widening it and assisting and supporting the international community to make the decisions that need to be made to improve the lives and conditions of people all around the world.

PassBlue: You’re about a quarter of the way into your yearlong tenure. What adjustments are you making in terms of what you feel can be done in a year? What have been the greatest frustrations in realizing what can be done?

Francis: I haven’t uncovered yet what can’t be done. There are some things that have been scheduled to be done later in the presidency, but I have determined to at least make the effort to complete the program that we’ve set for ourselves. But of course, as I said, the moment has changed since the candidature was announced and even since I came to the presidency, because when I came to the presidency, the situation in Gaza, for example, did not exist. That clearly has, and rightfully so, taken space in the agenda and in the world program. War, peace and security is an integral part of the program, but I had not anticipated coming in that it would become the centerpiece of the work that we were going to be doing this year. Because of this fact, the sustainable development agenda has been off track. My focus coming in was to try to do everything possible to get that back on track so that we could deliver to people the promises and pledges we made in 2015 about poverty and hunger and health and education and the rights of women and girls, etc. But we must deal with the realities such as they are at the United Nations.

Unhappily, unfortunately, we have witnessed a lot of deaths, particularly of women and children. That’s difficult. It’s very difficult. It’s frustrating, to be honest. But hope springs eternal. The sun rises every morning, so hope springs eternal.

PassBlue: You’ve said that you want to work on increasing the power of small states in the UN. How are you able to use your office to do so?

Francis: This is a discussion that is as old as international relations itself, particularly in the work of decolonization, which I studied 40 years ago. So, it’s not irrelevant. But the truth is that as it exists now, small states are playing a big role in the UN. Some of them are punching above their weight.

For example, you’ve had St. Vincent and the Grenadines sitting up to a year ago as a member of the Security Council. They are a very small state. Come January, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana will become a member of the Council. They are a small state from the Caribbean. The co-facilitators appointed for the Summit of the Future [in September 2024] are the permanent representative (PR) of Namibia and the PR of Germany, and Namibia is a small state. With respect to the negotiations for the Global Digital Compact, we had the former PR of Rwanda, with the PR of Zambia currently taking on the responsibility vacated by Rwanda.

So we’ve already been playing an important role in the UN. And of course, we have a sitting president of the General Assembly, and I should say it’s not the first time for the Caribbean. There have been, at least I think, three former permanent representatives from the Caribbean.

PassBlue: How does being from a small state affect your perspective working in the UN?

Francis: The fact that I come from a small island developing state does impact my view of the world and helps me to identify problems and issues in the system that would have an especially direct and maybe deleterious impact on small states. For example, climate change and sea-level rise. This is a huge issue confronting small island developing states [SIDS] across the globe. Those in the Caribbean, but particularly those in the Pacific. For that reason, at the invitation of the chairman of the Pacific Islands Forum, who is the prime minister of the Cook Islands, I attended the forum because I wanted to listen closely to what their concerns were and the challenges they were having in coping with sea-level rise.

There are some really important issues that in my view the international community needs to address because these are small states whose contribution to global warming has been minuscule. But they are now on the front lines of the impacts of climate change. So there is the likelihood that some of these atoll islands in the Pacific will be inundated, which may result in the population having to be relocated. So, they are going to become forced migrants through climate change, climate migrants with all that that implies for the sustainability of their culture, their lifestyle, their homeland.

But the issue is even bigger than that because questions arise. Political and economic questions arise from the fact that should they become inundated, what happens to their rights as states? Do they continue to exist as states? Do they lose their sovereignty because the land has disappeared beneath the oceans? These are issues that I believe the international community needs to take account of and provide some clarity on. So, those are one of the main issues that I will champion from the perspective of a small state. There has been some positive movement. There seems to be much more talk about multilateralism, about shifting that power balance.

PassBlue: What more can be done for small island developing states and how do you use your office to keep that momentum going?

Francis: Multilateralism has shifted, but that’s not where the major shift is. The major shift is in the power relations between states. We are transitioning from what used to be a bipolar world. The Iron Curtain represented something more than just a wall. It was two systems of governance, two ways of living. So, there’s been a shift eastward to Asia, China, India to a lesser degree, Japan of course, to a lesser degree, places like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore — rising countries. The dynamics of international relations has changed. Multilateralism, too, has come under pressure because we’ve suffered a terrible pandemic in which too many lives were lost, perhaps avoidable lives because of global food insecurity, rising inflation, wars.

So, it’s not the best time for multilateralism. Really part of what needs to be done is to rebuild the trust, rebuild the confidence, rebuild the formula by which we worked in the past, which is to really sit down around the table and make a deal in which you’re not going to get everything that you want, but you will get enough to satisfy you. And therefore, everyone can fit under the umbrella.

PassBlue: What are some of your plans for the next eight months?

Francis: We already spoke about sea-level rise. In April, we will be hosting Sustainability Week. That will focus primarily on four sectors: transport, infrastructure, tourism and energy. The thrust is to spotlight these four areas and how, as an international community, we can address these areas in a way that’s sustainable. This hopefully will contribute to the Summit of the Future, which is the big event for September that we are working on. A process has already been launched, a consultation has begun among delegations, and it’s looking good.

At the Sustainability Week, we will also be organizing a youth event. The details are not yet available, but we are working hard because, as I’ve, and when I go out on official visits, I always make the effort to meet with the youth. If we are planning the future of the world, we have to include the voices of youth. They have very distinct ideas about what they would like to see as part of their world in the future.

We’re going to be doing a lot of work to assist and support LLDCs [land-locked developing countries], in particular. I really believe that something needs to be done to support these most vulnerable countries, because they’ve had a really bad time. So, I’ve reconstituted the advisory group committee on LLDCs, which was dismantled in the 77th session [of the GA]. We’ve already had one meeting in the fall.

My hope is, although we’ve not yet developed a clear concept, that we would also do something with respect to aging because this is an important area. In many countries, people are living longer, they’re living better-quality lives. Many of them are intellectually vibrant and are willing to contribute. They have extraordinary experience working for years. It’s illogical to just ignore that resource. But apart from that, there are other issues around aging — discrimination, abuse. We will be looking to see what we can do to assist and support that group of persons as well.

One more thing that I’ve set my sights on in the office of the PGA is to ensure the incorporation of representation in the Office of Persons With Disabilities, differently abled systems. I’m working on it. It’s not as easy to achieve as one might think. I’ve not given up on it, but that is an area that I would not describe as frustration. That is an area in which I feel a sense of, perhaps “impatience” is the word. When we speak about inclusion — as we do in the whole philosophy of the SDGs — the UN is about bringing everyone in. We must speak with moral authority.

Of course, women and girls continue to be a rulingl part of our platform, for which I’ve appointed a special adviser, a former PR of Grenada. Ambassador [Keisha] McGuire. I’ve also appointed a gender advisory committee on the mainstreaming of gender issues into the workstream of the General Assembly. We need to have much more female engagement in the work of the UN. When I sat on the podium and looked out, for instance, during the high-level week, it hits you the extent to which women are underrepresented in the system. But countries themselves need to work on that.

PassBlue: In your first press conference, in September, you were asked how the UN can get more women into the PGA position or the secretary-general position. There was a specific question about having an all-female pool for the SG role, which you rejected. And there was also an unanswered question about perhaps supporting women from your region the next time the rotation comes to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Francis: I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. You know, in the Caribbean region, I speak about gender issues wherever and whenever I can. But I’m planning when I do get back to Trinidad on a vacation to visit with my alma mater, which was coed. Part of the message I will deliver to those kids, boys and girls, teenagers preparing for exams, is that you can be anything that you choose to be once you are disciplined and focused and work hard because no one owes you anything, you can achieve it. Boys and girls, though, there will be differences. You will encounter different paths, some resistance, but it’s achievable with discipline and dedication. In the case of girls, you should not allow anyone to tell you can’t do this or you can’t do that, because the world is changing. Women in leadership is as important now as men in leadership. We need both sexes in leadership to build balanced societies and make better decisions for the world and for children.

PassBlue: Do you see space for restructuring since that message has been out to women and girls for a long time, yet we still don’t have a woman SG and very few women PGAs?

Francis: You have a female prime minister of Barbados. You have a female prime minister of Slovenia. You have a female prime minister of Bangladesh. You had a female prime minister of New Zealand. There are others who escape me now. So, it’s not impossible.

PassBlue: But within the UN structure?

Francis: It should not be impossible there, either. I think we have some great women leaders already in the UN, people with great leadership, skill and acumen. So why not?

To read the original article click here.