An information Armageddon

Powerful voices: Ressa with Maryam Bukar, Global Advocate for Peace, recording the moment together after they each addressed the UN. — AP

IT’S been UN Week this past week, when world leaders converge in New York to give speeches at the United Nations General Assembly – in an august hall where you feel that important decisions about the fate of humankind are made.

As someone who has had the opportunity to sit in that hall and be part of negotiations for a UN declaration, I can tell you that the decisions made there are often nothing more than symbolic gestures. The negotiations are long and difficult mainly because those of us who have sincere intentions of crafting a good document that would improve people’s lives have to battle opponents who treat it like a nasty game of bargaining. If you want me to take out that truly odious paragraph, they say, then you give up one of your namby-pamby human rights passages.