How Judo Philosophy Guides Malta’s Ambassador in Diplomacy

 

Currently holding the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council for April, Malta’s UN Ambassador Vanessa Frazier, known for her diplomatic skills and adherence to judo philosophy, offers valuable perspectives on the role elected members can play in shaping the 15-member Council.

 

Carrie Nooten

 

Madam Ambassador, you’ve now been chairing the Security Council twice as Malta’s Permanent Representative - what are the main things you’ve learned as an elected member (E10) for the past 16 months?  

The E10 can make a difference when there’s strength and unity. There’s this joke that the E10 could be a 6th veto - and I’ve learned that it can. We have a blocking minority - because we’re more than 9, so we can actually block a resolution if we decide to abstain as a bloc. But also, we have built on the E10 unity - we’ve negotiated two resolutions on Gaza (2712 and 2720) against the permanent five. And then, last January, the new five elected members arrived - we managed to retain that unity: we supported Algeria. When the Algerian draft was vetoed, we issued a unified E10 statement at the GA - there had never been a unified statement like that before. And in the end, the ceasefire resolution was an E10 resolution. 

Malta’s UN Envoy Brings Diplomatic Finesse and Judo Philosophy to Lead Security Council’s April Presidency and Promote Unity 

 

We kept building, and that was really important to me. We built this team spirit when we penned our text. I’m an athlete, and to me, the team is paramount. I thrive in a team. 

 

 

When we were candidates for the Security Council, we faced the inevitable questions asking us why we were doing it, as the elected members can’t seem to achieve anything. After the Russian veto on Ukraine, it seemed particularly true as the Security Council was stuck, and no one could achieve anything - let alone the E10. But we showed that the Middle East is an agenda item that can only move forward with the E10. So we didn’t only prove our unity, but we also proved that elected members can do some substantive work at the Security Council. 

 

Vanessa Frazier, Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations and President of the Security Council for the month of April, arrives to chair the Security Council meeting on maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine. UN Photo/Mark Garten

 

You’re talking about team spirit, and you, yourself, have been practicing judo for 43 years - you’ve even represented Malta in several international competitions. It’s been said that a Judoka needs technique, understanding of the rules, of respect… but also a certain degree of aggression and tenacity to win. How has this (concretely) helped you sitting at this Council?

… you need honor and morals, too. I refer to judo a lot: judo principles and the way of life are very important to me. Kano Jigoro, who was the founder of judo, created judo as a way to have better citizens. So, great moral codes and discipline are very important, and I typically follow them. Judo is played on a square mat or a tatami with a boundary, and you cannot step out. You give me a mandate; for me, it’s the mat. The mandate guides me. 

For a judoka, respect is very, very important. You have to learn how to be a very good loser in order to learn how to be a winner: if you fall eight times, you get up nine times. 

 

Vassily Nebenzia (right), Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation and President of the Security Council for the month of April, speaks with Vanessa Frazier, Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations, ahead of the Security Council meeting on the situation in Mali. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

 

In judo, there are four steps in the standing technique: Kumi Kata - the grip, Kuzushi - getting your opponent off-balance, Tsukuri - getting into position and Kake - the act of actual throwing and keeping them down on the ground for 30 seconds. Inevitably in life, we see that we would do two out of four steps, maybe three, but very rarely we do all four. But at the Council, I really do the steps: we’ve received the letter from the Palestinians. Then, we need it to be circulated.  And I would check and follow up with them until I have an answer - like when you hold someone down for 30 seconds. There’s often a missing step, but not with me; I do the full steps. That’s the way I’ve been trained and it has helped me very much. 

 

Vanessa Frazier, Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations and President of the Security Council for the month of April, briefs reporters ahead of Security Council meeting on Children and armed conflict. UN Photo/Manuel Elías

 

Also, to win in judo, you have to bring your opponent with you, and I respect the positions of others. If I think they have a stronger position, I’m willing to accept this; I’m not a bad loser. If someone does a good technique, I applaud and thank them because I have learned something. Fair play is very important: I’ve made a scene recently at a meeting, because in a resolution, some wording was given another meaning, which meant fair play and respect for the rules and it was going to be kept out. These are absolute red lines for me. 

But rules are often bent here at the UN… how does a judoka react to someone who bends the rules? 

Yes, it’s difficult to see the discipline being flouted. Bending the rules is disrespectful. Lying and dishonesty are two very difficult things for me as a person. There are times when we have closed consultations or when negotiating some E10 procedures; I cannot do certain things because I cannot be disrespectful. 

I’m honest, I wouldn’t have a strategy, but it has worked for me. I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m successful in my career: honest people know they’re fine with me; what you see is what you get. It confuses people until they get to know me. They say, “For sure, she means something else,” and try to find other meanings. But they get it when they get to know me: there is no reading between the lines.

Malta coordinated resolution 2712 calling for “extended humanitarian pauses” in Gaza in November 2023 after four failed attempts to reach an agreement. Is it easy for an Elected member to punch “above its weight” in diplomatic circles?

I think that was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Through the process, I felt broken in many ways. First of all, it’s a very human matter. Gaza, unlike any other conflict, is demographically so different than anywhere else. So, civilians are impacted so much more than anywhere because of the population’s density and the area’s small size. In addition to that, 50% of the population is children. Children are affected disproportionately everywhere, but it is exaggerated in Gaza. 

 

Ambassador Frazier, shared the General Assembly podium with her daughter Nicole who is a member of Model UN Team.

 

You know, everything we do is for future generations. And children are the epitome of innocence. They haven’t gone to war, they haven’t conscripted, they haven’t joined an ideological association or a terrorist group. It is because of external influences that they may evolve to be terrorists or adept at certain ideologies. So, it is a particularly difficult issue to deal with. It was really affecting many of us. 

But here’s where the judoka method helped me: we were going to work on a press statement about it at the “Children in Armed Conflicts’’ meeting. And we brainstormed further. So I said I was happy to provide them with a resolution,  but I told them: “These are the parameters. If I’m going to provide you with a short, operational resolution which is only about kids, whether the hostages or the Gaza kids who are under the rubble, don’t come and tell me I want Hamas condemnation, or I want this or that.” The ‘Five’ (permanent members) were there. And we decided that I would try. 

So, I’ve kept it to the tatami. Each time someone came up with a new request, I reminded them what we agreed on. “You asked me to deliver this. And this is what I delivered. If you don’t want it, we won’t put it in blue. We won’t vote; it doesn’t matter.” And because I stuck really strongly to it, with the judoka mentality, that’s how we got it through. The secret was that everybody was equally unhappy with the resolution - let’s be very honest. 

That was your first big achievement, but you’re also one of the few ambassadors of the Security Council who have been part of both delegations to Rafah in December 2023 and Israel last February. How important have these visits been to you, and how relevant is it for Permanent Representatives to go into the field? 

It’s much more important than one can imagine. I’ve been in the diplomatic corps for more than 30 years. It’s true that we have great tools available to us, such as information from our teams in the field, the internet, and virtual meetings. All that helps bridge communication gaps and helps us understand the situations. But going into the field is completely different: you learn the nuances, the background, the feelings that are very different than what you get if you’re speaking to someone over video, and the chemistry that goes on.  

In Rafah, we were basically the entire Council. Apart from what we learned, we saw, touched, and felt. We went to a hospital where we spoke to a patient, but then we also got reactions from families, doctors, nurses… So we got much more than if it was only a video with a patient; we got the whole context. The trauma will continue for generations.

And then, as a group, you also see how the others are reacting. You learn a lot about each other and what you can bond over - that is also very important in these trips; we build bridges amongst ourselves. The ambassadors of the Council feel more united and like a team when traveling together. I saw it during our trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and I heard it was similar during the Columbia trip, even if I couldn’t attend it. When you’re traveling together, you’re moving together, you discuss things between meetings, you’re hearing the same briefings - and you’re together 24/7. You build inevitable bonds. So it is excellent for team building, and I think the Council should do at least two trips a year. 

In Israel, we didn’t learn any new facts. But we learned a lot about the context. I was on the earliest of the three flights, so I walked straight away to get a feel for the people. The immediate feeling is that the Israelis have a gaping hole in the fabric of their society from October 7th. They absolutely cannot be whole until the hostages are returned - in one way or another, dead or alive, unfortunately, at this point, but it is needed.

We know that what happened on October 7th was absolutely atrocious. It was atrocious. But you start understanding all the different ramifications of it: there are the people who’ve been killed, but also their relatives, children who watched their parents being killed, parents seeing their children being killed, families torn apart, the survivors, the families of hostages and survivors, and their kids: the victims are exponential. It’s not just those hostages and victims numbers. The trauma is exponential. This will be for generations and generations as well. And you feel it - you’ve barely landed at Ben Gurion Airport, and you feel the heaviness. 

When you’re in charge of International Peace and Security, it must add to the stress of the job to feel all these traumas…

It is stressful because we’re not dealing with historical issues, and we’re not even dealing with prevention; we’re dealing with what is happening right now. So, even in the hours that we are deliberating, people are dying. You are always fighting against the clock: the sooner you get a resolution, the sooner you can have an impact. But then there’s the issue of it being implemented. There’s that frustration because you know you’ve achieved the impossible, but it might not be implemented. 

 

Secretary-General António Guterres (right) meets with Vanessa Frazier, Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations and President of the Security Council for the month of April. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

 

So when we had our resolution 2712, I was body and soul in this because I’m a very empathetic person - which is a terrible thing to be in this position. Hence the sleepless nights, the thinking behind the words you’re writing as you know that people are in tunnels, children are under the rubble, there are women giving birth without anesthesia, children being amputated… You know then your words on paper really are meaningful. At least, that’s how it was for me. People ask me what I do to keep my mental sanity: Judo. I have a routine. I go there twice a week at 7.30 in the morning, walking 20 blocks to reach the class building. It’s only an hour on the mat, but it calms me. I really try not to look at my phone - on many days, it is difficult, but then I come off the mat an hour later, and yes, the world has continued to turn without me. 

Some of your elected member ambassadors are parents of children who are still in school. How do you reconcile this with family life?

It’s not easy at all. I have a lot of young parents in my team as well, with young children. Family is something we are absolutely responsible for, and it is where we can have an impact. 

I remember once early in the Council, we had a debate on one of these hot issues. We were in closed consultations as one country was violating a Security Council resolution, and one of the Council members refused to issue a statement to condemn that country, while the others were trying to defend the voice of the Council… so we were going around in circles. Until I said: “Look, it’s nine o’clock, I’m a mother, and I’m going home because at home, my decisions are implemented. What’s the point of staying over here? We are not achieving anything. At home, if I make a decision and give out punishment, I know they will be implemented.” They thought, ‘This woman’s crazy!’ But if you’re a working parent with children, mothers, and fathers sitting at the Council, you don’t go through any of this nonsense. At home, I would not allow these tantrums. That being said, there are some difficult situations that I don’t want to belittle, and I don’t want to sound like I’m chiding some countries because we are dealing with very high-level politics and important national issues. It’s much easier for a country like Malta that doesn’t have a dog in the race on any of the agenda items. But here, the stakes are high, and every decision of the Council is binding. Therefore, anything in writing is very difficult to achieve, whether it’s press elements, a resolution or anything in between.

There are lots of politics at stake, but as often E10 members do while chairing the Security Council, you’ve organized “horizontal meetings” about Children and Armed Conflicts or peace and security challenges in the Mediterranean. Is it an E10 method to shed light on problems which are not often considered in the international agenda, and how efficient is it? 

I think it makes a difference: we organized a horizontal meeting on Children and Armed Conflicts (CAAC), and we chair the working group. When we are in working group sessions only, we are looking at the conclusions country by country, so it quickly becomes very political. For instance, we’re discussing conclusions on Somalia, but the country should not be the focus; the situation of children should be. There’s also a lot of misunderstanding by the countries which are affected. To counter that, the UN and the working group should highlight to the specific countries how they work on the situations reported on the CAAC mandate, as the government forces aren’t the ones listed, but the groups which are harming the children are. For example, Somalia doesn’t attend the meetings, while it should be working hand in hand with the committee against Al-Shabaab, which is listed, to make sure that this group doesn’t recruit children.

When we deal horizontally, we show that an issue is not specific to one geographic situation. The horizontal meeting on the CAAC was about the denial of humanitarian access. One situation comes to everybody›s mind only: Gaza. But there are, unfortunately, multiple situations where millions of children are affected by the denial of access. So, we highlighted those which are forgotten in Afghanistan, Yemen, Haiti, Myanmar, Sudan, and Mali. And yes, we see a concrete effect after these types of meetings. 

 

 

Malta is also the coordinator for Women and Peace & Security. It’s an important topic, yet things are not changing fast enough. Why is this the case?

It is not going forward fast. But I think there have been strides: the women on the Council are making a difference just by being on the Council. To have a successful WPS strategy, you need to have 1/3 of women in any process, and thankfully, that is how the Council is. The fact that there were five women on the Council is what helped me get our resolution through because the human element is important. 

We are seeing progress in some countries, but unfortunately, at the same time, regression in other countries. The obvious is Afghanistan, a real issue that we need to address. Malta has been vocal about the discussion on the crimes against humanity to codify gender apartheid. We think that it is not specific to Afghanistan, but again, horizontally, where we can address the issue of women in peace processes and transitional processes and conflict, their role and the disproportionate effect that conflicts have on them, but also the fact that, women need to be respected as 50% of the population of this world and in an equal manner as others. 

And we have a horizontal cross-cutting language which we put for every situation or even mandate renewals, where we insist that in a UN mandate, there’s a WPS element. If a Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) is coordinating a peace process on the ground, they need to ensure that there is an effective WPS element, that there is women’s participation. So you will hear us say this in Libya, for example, it is for us disappointing that there aren’t enough women now. We can understand that they cannot be maybe 1/3, but we feel it is important that the SRSG encourages it. They should not be token women either, but there has to be meaningful participation. In every process, there must be meaningful participation of women because there is a difference: Men want to end the war, and women want peace. There is a difference, and you need to have both in a peace process.

You were saying that whatever you do here is for the future generations. Your 16-year-old daughter is a member of the Model UN team in her high school, as are a couple of other diplomats’ children. If she becomes a diplomat herself, what type of United Nations do you wish her to work at? 

I have a very positive attitude towards the UN, and I know that, unfortunately, the outside world really sees it as going nowhere, very slowly. I don’t think it is a fair assessment. I think that if we talk about the UN as an organization, there has been a lot that has been achieved in human rights, climate, oceans, energy… 

 

 

When I was in Italy, I was also accredited to the Rome-based UN bodies - FAO, WFP, and IFAD. Their work is extremely important and under-appreciated until there’s a humanitarian crisis like we’re seeing, and they’re trying to feed the starving masses. The work that they do that goes unnoticed is incredible, on food, agriculture and ensuring that there’s no famine. UNESCO has done great work on culture, heritage and education. So, the UN has done incredible things and continues to achieve incredible things. It is very unfortunate that the one organ, which is the face of the UN, the Security Council, is blocked. So, I am willing to accept that the Council itself could do better, and I would like to see my daughter be a diplomat in a UN version where there is a better functioning Council. But as an institution, the UN is on the right track, frankly. 

Has this experience of being a member of the Security Council influenced and changed you?

Yes, it has, because having served on the Council, you have an inside view rather than an outside view. Last Halloween, at a UN PR Halloween  party, I dressed up as the scary « Veto .» The other ambassadors were wearing the typical costumes, Frankenstein and others, but given my sense of humor, I dressed up as my monster, the veto. Halloween is at the beginning of November. We were seeing a lot of vetoes on the Middle East resolutions, and the resolution we were working on was the apple of my eye - I certainly didn’t want anyone to veto it. So I wore all white, with a headband and a V, for veto on it.  Everybody got it. 

 

Delegates greet after the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. In the centre group are, from right to left: José Javier De la Gasca LopezDomínguez, Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations and President of the Security Council for the month of December; Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations; Barbara Woodward, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations; Vanessa Frazier, Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations; Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, Permanent Representative of the United Arab Emirates to the United Nations; Vassily Nebenzia, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, speaks with Riyad Mansour. UN Photo/Loey Felipe

 

But now, I love to explain more about the veto to the people asking me. To all the Model UN students I meet in the corridors here, I ask them “How often do you think the veto is cast?” The outside world really thinks that it’s five times a day, that it’s the first thing that you do: you block a resolution, and that’s it. But it’s not the case, not on everything, and not with every country. 

We have seen a bit of a proliferation of vetoes in the last couple of months which may give a wrong impression, but in reality, France and the UK have not exercised a veto since 1989. For the three other Permanent members, every single vote becomes a more difficult decision to take. They have the privilege of a more difficult decision. And there is now the veto initiative. So, casting a veto has become a bit more expensive; you do think about it as more. But the reality is that the veto does encourage a lot of negotiations; Council members are really trying to gather a consensus, and going to the veto really is a last resort. It’s not the first tool.