The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  We would never know precisely how our campaign impacted various governments’ decisions to release the women. Our efforts only supplemented ongoing advocacy by their families and lawyers. But news of a prisoner’s release was exhilarating to US officials who had labored to secure the sign-off from a reluctant embassy or who had hunted down compelling details to share with the public. Unambiguous victories in government were rare. And we were all moved to know that these women, whom we felt we knew, would be reunited with their families.

  In an atmosphere of repression and democratic backsliding around the world, I found it gratifying to focus less on the overall human rights “recession”—an abstraction that could be paralyzing—and more on specific people. Once freed, these women would again be able to raise their voices on behalf of important causes.

  “We are up to six,” Kelly told me three months after we launched the campaign.

  “Now we are at twelve,” she said in August of 2016, following Wang Yu’s release.

  By the time I left government in January of 2017, fourteen of the twenty women we profiled had been freed. Two more would be released from jail the following month.

  We had made only a microscopic dent in a colossal problem. But as I said to Kelly, “For each one of these women, and those around them, it is the universe.”

  THE #FREETHE20 CAMPAIGN AFFIRMED what I had seen during my years in journalism: people were more likely to respond when they could focus on a specific individual—like David Rohde when he disappeared in Bosnia.

  Government officials were no different. During the Ebola crisis, Jackson Niamah, the Liberian health worker, had reached typically stoic diplomats with his chilling prophecy that “if the international community does not stand up, we will all be wiped out.” Likewise, we had held a succession of meetings highlighting ISIS’s brutality before I invited Nadia Murad, a twenty-one-year-old Yazidi woman, to appear before the Council. When she described how ISIS had executed her mother and six of her nine brothers and then forced her into sexual slavery, her testimony drove home in a visceral way the savagery that the US-led coalition was working to end.*

  When ISIS began disseminating propaganda showing executions of Iraqis and Syrians they suspected of being gay, I approached Vitaly, with whom I usually found common ground on confronting ISIS. But when I raised the possibility of collaborating in the Security Council on an effort to oppose anti-gay acts of terror, he replied, “Not possible.” No matter how vocal the Russian government was about terrorism, when the victims were gay, it preferred to remain silent. And it had long used its clout to ensure the Council stayed silent as well.

  Because Chile had made such strides domestically on LGBT rights, I asked its ambassador, Cristián Barros, to join the United States in convening the Council’s first ever discussion of violence against LGBT people. Cristián sighed, knowing how upset some countries would be if we proceeded. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “We will do it, Samantha. We will be all alone, but we will be there.”

  It turned out we were not alone—around two hundred foreign diplomats participated in the informal Council meeting. Everyone sat in sober silence as we heard from two LGBT witnesses who had been terrorized by ISIS. One was a twenty-eight-year-old Syrian named Subhi Nahas, who sat next to me as he detailed the beatings he had endured, his harrowing escape to Turkey, and his eventual resettlement in San Francisco. The other was an Iraqi in his mid-twenties who was so terrified of being hunted down that he used a pseudonym (“Adnan”) and spoke to the Council by telephone from an undisclosed location in the Middle East.

  Subhi’s and Adnan’s testimonies made clear that ISIS was tapping into a deep societal hatred. Even once the terrorists were defeated, gay people would not feel secure in Iraq and Syria. Still, we had provided two young men a visible platform to tell their stories and assert their dignity. Given the heavy media coverage of the session, their words would be heard far from New York—possibly by an immigration official adjudicating an LGBT person’s asylum claim, possibly even in the deepest reaches of Iraq and Syria, where many of their friends remained in hiding.

  A few days later, I received an email from “Adnan.” Written in English, it read:

  I was honored to take part in that historic event, it was the greatest thing I do in my life so far . . . Words cannot describe how much I am thankful to you. And I believe that I am conveying the thoughts of thousands of people in the middle east.

  He signed his email with his real name, which I had not known.

  Nine months later, a gunman who pledged loyalty to ISIS murdered forty-nine people at Orlando’s Pulse dance club, a popular nightspot for the city’s LGBT community. The massacre was the worst terrorist attack on US soil since September 11th. Digesting the news, I tried to ward off the desire to throw my hands up in disgust at the hatred in the world. Instead, I called David Pressman and said I wanted to find some way to respond in the Security Council.

  We both knew that the horror of the Pulse attack might be enough to get reluctant countries in the UN to put their biases aside—even if only temporarily. After the surprising turnout for our informal Security Council session with Subhi and Adnan, we decided to test how far other countries were willing to go in opposing anti-gay violence. “I think this is the time,” I said.

  David, who had been playing in a local park with his twin toddler sons when I called, left his partner and kids and headed straight to the UN. After a day of furious diplomacy in New York and in capitals around the world, the UN Security Council, joined by Russia and Egypt (whose representatives did not want to be seen blocking a condemnation of ISIS), agreed to a statement that “condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Orlando . . . targeting persons as a result of their sexual orientation.”

  When David and I had arrived at the UN, we had fought simply to include the phrase “vulnerable populations” in Security Council resolutions—which Russia rejected as code for LGBT people. Now, for the first time in history, the Security Council had condemned attacks on the basis of sexual orientation, establishing a standard that could subsequently be invoked by persecuted LGBT people in any country.

  Several days later, I convened the “Core Group” of UN ambassadors who had worked together on LGBT rights. Instead of meeting at the UN, I suggested we gather at the legendary Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Tree Sequoia, Stonewall’s bartender for decades, greeted our group of sixteen ambassadors, recalling what it was like when Stonewall had been raided by the New York City police in 1969. This incident sparked protests, helping launch a national gay rights movement that few people had anticipated.

  Tree escorted us to a dark wood-paneled back room that reeked of the sour smell of hops. After the ambassadors had taken their seats, I kicked off the discussion by taking note of the fact that the same police force that had once raided Stonewall now participated in the New York City Pride March.

  “You never know,” I said. “We can only do what we can do. But one day, someone might look back on the brave testimonies of two gay men from the Middle East at the Security Council or one sentence in a UN statement condemning attacks on the LGBT community as the first step on a long road to something far more meaningful.”

  The other ambassadors seemed fired up. Some had been nervous about whether to pursue the creation of a UN position dedicated to protecting LGBT people. But at the Stonewall Inn, we pledged to forge ahead.

  Exactly two weeks later, over the fierce resistance of the same coalition that had opposed granting benefits to the UN’s LGBT staff, we secured the creation of the first UN position to monitor and publicly report on LGBT rights around the world. Human Rights Watch called it “a historic victory for the human rights of anyone at risk of discrimination and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

  I viewed it as a very small step—one that built on the small steps before it.

  THE ANNUAL UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY gathering in September of 2016 was a bittersweet occ
asion. Advising President Obama, I had attended and helped shape each of his seven previous appearances at these meetings. This would be his last.

  A few days before Obama’s arrival, New York City workers began erecting barriers to close off roads near the UN. As she had every year during this event, María struggled to navigate the five heavily policed blocks that separated the Waldorf and Rían’s preschool. And Cass again resolved to remain in Cambridge for the week, to avoid being manhandled by security as he tried to reach our apartment.

  I would not miss these disruptions after I left the UN. But when heads of state gathered for the General Assembly, I still could not shake the sense that together—as Cass’s dad had written from San Francisco in 1945—we could accomplish something. This potential had not been realized nearly as often as I had hoped, but I would miss assembling coalitions to combat the world’s hardest problems, as well as that tingling sense of possibility.

  On one of the last nights of UNGA week, I had dinner with a foreign minister who had also become a friend. I had worked closely with him over the years and was grateful for the tough votes he had instructed his UN ambassador to take. He had a marvelous sense of humor that most ministers did not display, and I had grown very fond of him.

  We spent the dinner discussing China, Syria, the upcoming US presidential election, and his country’s ethnic tensions. Then, toward the end of the meal, I offhandedly mentioned that I had gotten permission from New York City for the UN’s human rights office to paint in rainbow colors the First Avenue crosswalk that many VIPs would use to enter the UN. The Dutch ambassador had floated this idea during our Stonewall meeting. Now, foreign ministers and heads of state were traversing our rainbow “Path to Equality” as they walked into an institution that had only recently recognized LGBT rights.

  For a split second, I thought I caught a flash of interest on the minister’s face, but he quickly changed the subject. Despite our friendship, I had never asked him about his personal life.

  As we got up to say good night, I heard myself whisper in his ear, “Any chance you would like to come see the crosswalk?”

  Suddenly, he broke out in a broad, mischievous smile. In that moment, he saw that I knew and understood what he still could not advertise in his own country.

  At 12:30 a.m. on a breezy September night, the minister walked slowly across the rainbow crosswalk toward the UN, where the flags of his country, my country, and all the countries of the world flew each day.

  Thanks to the streetlamp, I was able to see his expression as he approached my side of First Avenue. He bore a look I had not seen before. It combined relief, delight, and a deep calm.

  It was the look of someone being fully himself.

  — 40 —

  The End

  Early in my tenure as UN ambassador, I visited New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg in his office at City Hall. To motivate himself not to waste time, Bloomberg had hung a large digital clock counting down the days, hours, and minutes until his final term would end. In my last year on the job, as I tried to make the most of my remaining time representing the United States, I kept a version of that clock in my head.

  I also passed out White House notecards to members of my team that were inscribed with President Obama’s words: “We are entering the fourth quarter and really important things happen in the fourth quarter.”

  Sure enough, early in 2016, North Korea carried out its fourth nuclear test. Relying on our government’s sanctions experts, I threw myself into mastering the technical aspects of Pyongyang’s revenue streams. After nine weeks of painstaking negotiations with my Chinese counterpart—and backed by Washington’s relentless high-level lobbying of Beijing—we secured a resolution that went further than any in two decades. It required all cargo to and from North Korea to be inspected. And it banned jet and rocket fuel supplies to North Korea, imposed an arms embargo, and prohibited North Korean banks from doing business in, or with, UN member states.59

  I managed these negotiations while simultaneously initiating the Security Council’s first discussion of North Korea’s brutal treatment of its own people. For years, China had blocked the Council from holding sessions to condemn North Korea’s vast gulag system. This time, I joined with the South Korean and Australian ambassadors to mobilize the necessary votes, allowing us to override China’s opposition and finally bring North Korean human rights onto the agenda.*

  I invited North Korean defectors into the chamber and included their testimonies in my remarks. I also condemned Beijing for its deplorable practice of forcing back to North Korea people who had managed to escape across the border into China. Although these forced repatriations would lead to near-certain torture or death, most governments were hesitant to call China to account.

  I was moved to see the defectors’ gratitude, after years of near starvation and horrendous mistreatment, at being able to tell their stories to the world. Although they knew that exposing the abuses they had endured would not make the Kim regime stop brutalizing people, they stressed that maintaining silence left both the regime and its victims with the impression that the outside world did not care. Reactions like this affirmed my view that it was generally a mistake to censor ourselves on human rights—even during the tightrope walk of high-stakes nuclear negotiations.

  We faced a similar dilemma with regard to Iran, another long-time US adversary that combined dangerous nuclear ambitions with domestic repression. After Secretary Kerry concluded negotiations to secure the Iran nuclear deal, my team shepherded a resolution through the Security Council that etched its provisions into international law. Iran would be forced to eliminate 98 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile, decommission two-thirds of its centrifuges, dismantle a heavy water nuclear reactor that could have produced weapons-grade plutonium, and submit to the most extensive inspections regime ever undertaken by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

  The Iran deal illustrated the importance of UN Security Council sanctions and unrelenting diplomacy—which in this case played a decisive role in bringing Iran to the negotiating table. The subsequent politicization of the deal was disheartening and extremely counterproductive given that the agreement achieved what both Democrats and Republicans generally agreed should be the top US priority toward Iran: stopping it from building nuclear weapons. In so doing, the deal greatly reduced the likelihood that American service members would have to put their lives on the line in another American-led military conflict in the Middle East, which had seemed an imminent possibility at various points during Obama’s first term.

  Unfortunately, some countries were so pleased by the nuclear agreement that they felt it was unnecessary to run an annual UN General Assembly resolution condemning Iran’s human rights abuses. I insisted we proceed, lobbying frenetically to ensure that the Iranian government’s deplorable treatment of its people got attention in its own right.

  As all of this was happening, I also joined the rest of the Obama administration in attempting to ensure that the Paris climate accords became a reality before the clock ran out on the President’s second term. While the Paris agreement had been signed to great fanfare in December of 2015, it would not become law until it was ratified by at least fifty-five countries that accounted for at least 55 percent of total global emissions. With Trump and other Republican candidates threatening to withdraw from the agreement if elected, we spent most of 2016 engaged in a relentless, full-court press to reach this 55/55 threshold before we left office.

  We faced steep odds in attempting to quickly bring the agreement into force. A previous climate change agreement—the 1997 Kyoto Protocol—took eight years, while the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea had needed twelve years. We had one year.

  Each week throughout 2016, the White House identified a new set of target countries and asked me, Secretary Kerry, and US diplomats everywhere to press for expedited domestic ratification processes. One month before the 2016 election, the seventy-third country ratified the agreement, and it
crossed the 55 percent emissions threshold. As a result of bringing the Paris agreement into force, we had ensured that any future US withdrawal would not unravel the overall agreement.*

  Amid these fourth-quarter initiatives, I started joking that I loved my job so much that, at the appointed hour for my departure, my security detail would have to transform themselves into an extraction team, donning riot gear to pull me out of my office by the ankles as I clutched the legs of the couch, determined to stay put. Knowing that US officials at the Mission would be tempted to focus on their professional futures as our time wound down, I appealed to the staff to keep going strong through the Obama administration’s finish line. “When we look back on this period, let’s have no regrets,” I said. And when the administration’s political appointees looked weary, I would remind them, “Remember, for as long as we work here, we get to be the United States—let’s not waste that!”

  In my years at the White House, I had usually managed to sleep six hours a night (when I wasn’t nursing). But during the fourth quarter of my government service, I was lucky to steal four or five hours. Eddie was usually the first person to notice my exhaustion. When he saw me on TV, he would call to tell me I was overdoing it. I agreed, but would cheerfully point out, “I can sleep all I want after January 2017.”

  My special assistant Becca tried to encourage a bit of self-care, often passing me a hairbrush in the elevator (“Forget again?” she would ask, staring at my tangles). On several occasions, she had to chase me to finish zipping up the back of my dress as I rushed out to meet the day.

  A second, parallel clock was also running in my head as the remaining months ticked away. Declan was already seven and Rían was four. María had cared for them with exceptional tenderness, and without her dedication, I could never have done my job. But I felt their constant pull.