Vanessa Frazier has been Malta’s ambassador to the United Nations since 2020. For six months she has also represented her country at the U.N. Security Council, where Malta was elected as a non-permanent member for the two-year period 2023-24. Already in February, the Maltese diplomat was severely tested by the rotating presidency of the Fifteen, when she had to keep the helm despite the duels between Russia and the United States, one year after the invasion of Ukraine.
A graduate of Luther College in Iowa, with a master’s degree from the University of Malta, one of the most important milestones in her career is being Malta’s representative in Italy (she was also in London, Washington and Brussels).
For our all-out interview in our office at the UN Headquarters in New York, she chose to speak in Italian. The ambassador who plays soccer is a super Juventus fan and is a black belt in judo. With her diplomatic and combative grit she tackles all the thorniest issues that are being debated at the United Nations.
Ambassador Frazier, is the U.N. Security Council still relevant or does it need immediate reform? How doable is it? What would Malta like?
“Yes, it certainly remains relevant, because it continues to work, even if it is stuck on certain dossiers. But also on peace in the Middle East it has always been blocked. But there are other crises where instead the Security Council continues to function because there is unity. In the six months that we have been part of it, the Council has produced several resolutions. There is certainly a need for reform. Not just in the number of countries that comprise it, but I’m also thinking about the use of the veto. The reform must be more comprehensive. We have seen that since we introduced the ‘veto initiative’ there were immediate positive results. I can give a clear example of when we held the presidency of the Council and the United Arab Emirates had proposed a resolution on Palestine. To avoid the veto we were able to negotiate, worked with all the capitals of the countries involved, with Washington, Abu Dhabi, Ramallah, we worked to reach a presidential statement. This was the first voted by the Council on Palestine since 2006.”
Not a resolution, but still a success?
“A big success. Not for us, but above all for the Palestinians, who won a victory in which the United States also participated. In fact, the specter of the veto hovered for a long time and played a role in these negotiations”.
That is, did you avoid going to the General Assembly to explain why it was used?
“Yes, it got expensive for some countries. Since we introduced this initiative, it is more difficult to veto, that cancels everything ”.
On the reform of the Council, there are those who think that this is the right time, because the countries that want a permanent seat, such as India, are also finding the support available in the United States. What do you think?
“I think there has been an evolution from the permanent countries. The fact that President Biden, when he came to the General Assembly last September, spoke directly about the need for reform gave a great impetus, because until then it seemed that all the members of the UN wanted it except the five permanent ones. Now there seems to be an opening, even if they haven’t said yet how they want it. Malta is with Italy in its proposal”.
That is, you are with the “Uniting for consensus” group.
“Yes, with a well-defined position. Instead, the position of the permanent members is not defined, they have only said that they are open and that they have realized that there is a need for reform. This is a big step. Obviously they don’t have a unitary proposal and I think they still don’t agree with each other. Even if no one has said it officially, what the US, China, France, England and Russia say is that they don’t want other states with veto power. We who are with “Uniting for consensus” agree on this approach. But not because we don’t want India or Brazil to have a veto. If it were up to Malta, no one should have veto power”.
What exactly does your proposal say?
“It is the most feasible, because it contains a bit of what everyone wants with the five vetoes of the permanent countries remaining because none of them intend to give up .”
But why is your group unable to satisfy India, Brazil, Japan, Germany, those who aspire to obtain the new seats of permanent members?
“They don’t like our alternative. We have elected members of “different” weight, i.e. countries that can be re-elected for a term longer than the two-year period. In this way we give an answer to the aspirations of those who ask for the permanent seat. The countries that are elected to the Security Council feel a lot of responsibility. In the Council I now represent Malta, but also the European Union. But I certainly feel that I also represent all the UN members who elected Malta. This is the thing that distinguishes us most from the 5 permanent members. We truly feel the weight of responsibility. Perhaps this was the case for everyone at the beginning of the UN, but over the years the evolution between permanent and elected members has changed. We feel more “accountability”, the permanent ones make the national interest prevail. If one studies at the beginning why the powers had the right of veto, it was not to put the national interest before it, but to unblock the decisions when the Council was blocked. It was a responsibility that the five victorious countries of the war also assumed to keep the peace. So they could guarantee peace. So the veto was not a privilege but a responsibility. But over the years it has become a privilege”.
So on giving other privileges to membership you will not give in?
“I hold many external meetings for ‘Uniting for Consensus’ to explain the proposal and I truly believe in it. I don’t agree on everything, there are some things I would change, but I must say that I find it the most honest reform proposal compared to all the others and for this reason also the most feasible”.
Even the most democratic?
“Certainly. Germany wants a permanent seat but we have a different interpretation of democracy. Does Africa want a seat for the Africa Union? Why not, if one studies the proposal of the Africans, it is very similar to ours on electoral seats. They want a permanent seat for the African Union, and they want to have an internal mechanism to choose the country that represents them. Will they choose South Africa? Fine, but after that they can change whenever they want. If South Africa on the seat makes national decisions and not those of the African Union, they can replace it, because that seat belongs not to South Africa but to the AU. What we are saying is that instead of being chosen by the AU alone, that seat should be voted on by all UN members. A country can stay there for up to seventy years but it must be reconfirmed.”
That is, will India, the world’s most populous country, also have to gain this new ‘permanent’ seat?
“Of course, but Germany could also be a country that could be re-elected several times.”
About human rights: do you think this is a topic that should be followed up only in Geneva or should the United Nations Security Council be more involved in enforcing them?
“Even if the United Nations body responsible for human rights remains in Geneva, the Security Council cannot speak of conflicts, of sending peacekeeping missions, without also including the discussion on human rights. Whoever says that only Geneva should deal with it, perhaps wants to say also that only Vienna should be the one to discuss nuclear power? Ridiculous. The Security Council will not make human rights policy, but it must have them in its discussions”.
Does Malta believe that the EU should and could have a more prominent role at the UN?
“I think we are doing a good job. The EU is a bloc that implements UN resolutions first. We can be an example for other countries”.
Let’s talk about Ukraine vs Russia. How do we stop this war? Is only Moscow responsible for the invasion? Could the war have been avoided if Europe, the United States and even the United Nations had acted differently?
“It’s hard to speculate with ifs. There was the Minsk Agreement and to complete it it should have been performed in ‘Good Faith’. Europe was in good faith but Russia? No. Therefore, it was not a question of a crisis only due to the expansion of NATO. Even if Russia had security concerns, it doesn’t justify what it did. If what the Russians have done is the response for NATO expansion, as they say, is wrong, they could have continued to discuss it instead of invading.”
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that if the UN had accepted his proposal to use Silvio Berlusconi and Angela Merkel as special envoys to convince Putin, perhaps the Kremlin would have reconsidered. Tajani accuses the UN of having remained disunited and therefore of not having done enough to avoid war. What do you think?
“I don’t agree, but I also think that the UN could have done better, the Security Council could have done better. Article 27 had to be applied at the time of the Council vote. Here is a collective responsibility of the Security Council, which let a member vote when directly involved in the conflict. On every occasion we say that we must apply the Charter, but in this case it has not been done”.
That is, would it have been enough to apply the UN Charter to prevent Russia from participating in the vote on the resolution after the invasion of Ukraine where Moscow’s veto was triggered?
“Obviously there were interests from those who did not want the same article to be applied against them in a few years. This is why I said that there was collective responsibility also on the part of the Council”.
There is a theme that greatly interests a frontline country like yours: the migrant crisis. It is difficult to contain it. But countries like Italy, Greece, Spain and Malta have not always respected international law and human rights. Why? Does Malta have a concrete proposal to bring to Brussels?
“Of course it is a question of introducing common solidarity into the field. We have always said that the Dublin agreement has made the problem worse. We were not yet full members of the European Union at the time of the agreement–i.e., we participated in the works but we were still waiting to become full members of the EU with the right to vote. I remember that when I was ambassador in Italy, I already told my interlocutors that we should never have had Dublin and that Italy should not have voted for that agreement because it would backfire, as indeed it did. Since then the watchword has become the one I already used to say to Italian ministers, “the problem is overcoming Dublin”.
Will you succeed?
“It seems so. There is a draft agreement designed in Paris that I worked on myself, which was then signed in Malta in September 2019. We had to get the pilot project started on the automatic distribution of migrants rescued at sea by NGOs. It was important that the countries that joined made a commitment ‘before’ the migrants were rescued. That is, the mechanism works when everyone agrees on the conditions in advance, so when the migrants arrive, the mechanism was already in place and there was no longer any need to negotiate if I get 5 and you get 10. When I was ambassador in Rome, I almost always went to Germany and France to negotiate the deal. In fact, the NGO ships were almost always French or German. Paris and Berlin agreed to each take 25% of those rescued at sea. We made the agreement, we signed it, but unfortunately then Covid arrived and the project was stopped. This new pact that they are trying to make will be very similar and effectively suspend Dublin. I have studied maritime law a lot, I consider myself an expert. The law for sea rescue was not made for mass migrations, but thinking of a yacht in distress, or a plane that fell into the sea. Sea rescue was written for emergencies, not to deal with mass migration.”
Malta is the smallest country in the European Union, both by population and by size. As a Maltese citizen, do you think that Malta has done all it could on the migrant crisis?
“I think Malta has done more than it could. I know people only look at the numbers, but when 400 people arrive in Malta, which has only 500,000 inhabitants, they are the equivalent of 20,000 for other countries. As density we are among the most populated countries in the world! The difference with Lampedusa is that we don’t have the mainland of a large state”.
When the tragedy occurred on the small submarine that imploded with five people on board while trying to reach the wreck of the Titanic, the coast guards of the United States, Canada and even France were mobilized to save them. When, on the other hand, over the same days there was the tragedy of a boat off the coast of Greece with over 700 migrants-refugees, rescue services arrived badly and late, and there were hundreds of dead. What are your thought son this?
“Everyone must be rescued at sea. I have been Malta’s immigration representative for many years, everyone needs to be rescued and brought to safety. But I say that solidarity must be shown not only for those who are at sea, but also for the countries that rescue them and deal with this phenomenon. When we have these problems in the Mediterranean we don’t see fleets coming to help. We share the same problem with Italy, we work side by side, but what about the others? Where are they?”
Some migrants would pay up to 8-9 thousand dollars to traffickers. Is that possible?
“What we see is only a third of the phenomenon, many of them die while crossing the Sahara. When I was Malta’s immigration ambassador, I went to see the countries of origin of these migrants. I spoke to officials, border police, NGOs, the UN, in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria. When you think about who pays certain amounts, you understand that it’s the value they’re giving to their lives. You know you’re leaving but you don’t know if you’ll arrive. We have to work with countries of origin and transit to stop trafficking, but the only way is to build legal migration passages. With seven thousand dollars you could get to Europe in first class!”
If you were to give a grade to UN organizations such as the UNHCR or the IOM, would they pass or fail?
“They operate in a very difficult situation, they have to deal with the whole world. When I was working on the problem, I had to take care of arrivals in Malta and Italy, and I would have done many different things, but I understand that when you need to make an emigration policy that has to take the whole planet into consideration, then it is different. For my part, I am very proud of the initiatives undertaken when I worked in the field of emigration. With some emigrants from Uganda that we had in Malta, we trained them in fish farming. And then we created a similar center in Uganda, a cooperative. So those who returned could work there as co-owners, getting a salary and also sharing the profits. We need to create decent work, autonomy, but not only that. To continue to have funding for this project, we had established that they had to send their children to school, even their daughters. Because we wanted their children to have an opportunity too. With the Italian ministers we did something similar in Ethiopia.”
And did the Italians listen?
“Yes and with enthusiasm. But do you know what the problem was? That every hundred days in Italy the minister changed. It was difficult to make decisions then.”
The government of Giorgia Meloni, the first woman premier in Rome, says it will last 5 years.
“She could have this chance. I remember that when I was ambassador to Italy and Matteo Salvini became minister, there was some apprehension. Then after our first meeting, they called me ‘Salvini’s girlfriend’. Indeed, by arguing, he understood that we were fighting for the same thing. When I told him about the projects on migrants, he was sincerely interested.”
UNSDGs: Do you think they are still achievable? Aside from climate change, what is the most challenging but absolutely essential goal to achieve?
“They are all indispensable because they are all related. I’m not trying to give an easy answer, I truly believe in the Sustainable Development Goals. Perhaps the most important is the one on poverty, also the one on education. But after what we’ve been through with Covid, the smallest countries, such as the islands, have remained the most isolated. All the countries of the world are facing the same problem but the ways are different. We must help the most vulnerable countries first so that we can all achieve the goals together”.
China, India, or the United States again? In 20 years, who will be the world’s leading superpower?
“I think everything will change, that blocks will dominate. Like the EU for example. We have already seen a big turning point with the crisis in Ukraine, when the EU made joint decisions to provide weapons. There’s no going back, you can only go forward”.
An article appeared a few days ago in The New York Times which describes Malta as the most advanced country in Europe in terms of the rights of the LGBTQI community. Do you defend the rights of this group at the United Nations?
“Here we are a very strong voice on LGBTQI. In the Security Council you will have heard me speak a lot, we are truly the champions on this issue. We have used one method. Before introducing new laws, we tried to work on the laws we already have to work for the protection of the community. So if we noticed something discriminating about the laws we had, we removed it. For example for adoptions, we cleaned up the law we already had. In our law now you just have to prove that you can be a parent, you don’t specify which gender you belong to.”
Maybe even Italy has a lot to learn from Malta?
“When I was in Rome we talked a lot with the ministers about our laws, like when we introduced civil unions. With us anyone can have one, there is no gender discrimination. There too, instead of introducing laws, we removed the discrimination that existed”.
Can Malta also be a mirror for the UN on this matter?
“We already are. I repeat, we are very active in all LGBTQI issues”.
At the Security Council in June, under the presidency of the Emirates, there was a resolution on respect for human rights, but in the language used towards LGBTQI people, it seems that there have been strong compromises in order to be able to pass the resolution.
. @VisitMalta & @pridemalta received a live shout out from @ABC7NY covering the #NYCPrideParade & the #EuroPridevalletta2023 participation organized by @MaltaUNMission. @visitmaltany @_VanessaFrazier #EuroPride2023 #EqualityfromTheHeart pic.twitter.com/B9XECT1jP2
— The Bradford Group (@TheBradfordGP) June 26, 2023
“We have worked a lot on this, but we are ultimately satisfied with the revisions made. For us it was essential that the violence of the extremists was eliminated”.
Who should be the next Secretary General of the United Nations: a woman for Malta too? Do you already see the perfect candidate?
“I think that gender shouldn’t be a condition, but we must ensure that the process of choice becomes increasingly transparent and thus there will no longer be a gender problem either. However, I think that if you wanted a female candidate, it would be very difficult to choose, there are so many possible choices.”
Can you tell us who would be your favorites?
“My opinion does not count, but there are many women leaders; at the last General Assembly those who spoke were all good. And then there are many leaders even within the UN”.
Let’s see, between Bachelet and Merkel who would you choose?
“I would like Mia Mottley. I say this personally, not as a representative of Malta, I am speaking as Vanessa Frazier. I would really like to see someone like her at the head of the UN. Also, because coming from an island is an advantage for me, I really like island women”.
