2020: A Talk with Mr. Selvakumaran Ramachandran
By Radmila Yarovaya
Hands shaking and voice recorder turned on, I punched in the last few digits of a familiar number and waited for someone to pick up the phone. Without a doubt the Head of United Nations Development for South Sudan is a hard person to get a hold of, even if his daughter is your roommate. Having never come in contact with, let alone have the opportunity to interview a person in such a notorious line of work I’m expecting a pessimistic prognosis, an oversimplification of statecraft and polity for the sake of my underdeveloped undergraduate mind, a magisterial parable on the current state of international affairs - not that we need to be reminded of how fragile our system of international cooperation is already. Instead, what I encounter is a vision of hope from a man deeply passionate about his work and committed to building a future for a world that most of us have already given up on; what I encounter is an individual who, despite committing his life to diplomacy and foreign service, is open to an honest and equal conversation and not afraid to give idealism a shot at changing the world.
My first realization of the gravity of the work that my best friend’s father did was during the spring of 2019 when tensions in South Sudan reached their breaking point. While we were all busy discussing the political and human rights implications of what was going on as well as trying to spread awareness through instagram posts in order to feel like we were contributing to some semblance of order in our unravelling world, my friend was worried about her father who had to fly out to South Sudan to deal with the crisis on the ground. Thus, when I had an opportunity to write a piece for the Emissary, I simply couldn’t pass up doing an interview with such an enigmatic figure who does work that we often hear about but understand little of.
To start, I jumped to the basics, namely Mr.Selvakumaran’s daily duties and the implication of his work. I was instantly corrected by the reminder that every country is different in its stages of development and thus has different needs and goals that must be achieved. With regards to South Sudan, a war-torn country in a post revolution period, it is on the lower end of the spectrum of developing countries, thus “its needs are different when compared to Malaysia, Thailand, or the Philippines”. The UNDP looks at the context of a region and develops programs to help the government establish a civil society. In the case of South Sudan, the main goal is to aid the transition government in institution-building after 30 years of a dictatorship, in order to set up a functioning democratic government and the development of a reliable constitution and system of justice. Another goal is hosting peace talks and most importantly sustaining peace after the negotiations, which requires setting up programs for various groups such as women and youth and creating employment at the local level. Naturally, the issue of climate change spreads its tentacles to this part of the world and has manifested as the conflict between farmers and herders, which the UNDP has to mitigate.
As the head of the organization, Mr. Selvakumaran spends most of his time in meetings with the government, from the prime minister to cabinet ministers to various donor agencies. The biggest challenge in this dynamic environment is the unpredictability of what the next hurdle might be on any given day. For example, as Mr. Selvakumaran postulates, if experts are invited and don’t have visas to get into the country, the focus must now be on how to get them into the country. As he points out, “challenges are always unexpected, if it’s expected then it’s not a challenge”.
What pushed Mr. Selvakumaran to pursue his line of work is the need to escape the marginalized community in Malaysia that he grew up in. Not only did he want to escape himself, but he also felt an obligation and duty to help others escape poverty as well. During the course of his university studies, he realized that his mission was to help others and looked at avenues to make that possible. The options he had were to work for an NGO, stay in the academic field to focus on research, or join the UN and be hands-on. Getting more satisfaction from the latter option, his path was set for him.
When asked about the danger of being in a conflict area, Mr. Selvakumaran pointed out that first and foremost it is paramount to do a conflict sensitivity assessment so as to ensure that your intervention doesn’t cause more conflict, thus doing more harm than good. It’s all about weighing the risks and mitigation measures needed to be taken, and once again Mr. Selvakumaran points out the importance of, working with local NGOs and communities in order to implement programs on the local level so they can be most effective and suit the community directly involved in the conflict.
When asked about the biggest problems that we are currently facing in the world, Mr. Selvakumaran said that the biggest, unsurprisingly, is climate change, which not only threatens our environment but also acts as a cause of various conflicts. Second on the list was rampant inequality which leads to mass migration, something that can only be described as another global crisis. If young people have aspirations and no opportunities to realize them in their home country, they will naturally seek them out in other places. Thus, reducing inequality is “the way to move forward in the world in a peaceful manner.”
After getting a feel of the realities Mr Selvakumaran Ramachandran has to contend with in his job, I couldn’t help but wonder how a single person dealing with so much responsibility and who is sometimes forced to see the world at its worst, doesn’t lose faith in humanity. My interlocutor answered in the same careful and wise fashion I’ve come to expect but with words that struck me to the core: “Hope is the key. If you do not have hope and aren’t optimistic and positive then you cannot do this kind of work”. As a sceptic of the goodness of human nature, I was surprised to hear such candid and unashamedly idealistic words applied to the paramount and real work that is being done. Mr.Selvakumaran went on to say, “you need to have a bigger vision of tomorrow and believe that the work you are doing will end up bettering the world.” If you are result driven, you will never be satisfied in this line of work as it requires, first and foremost, persistence, adaptability, and perseverance in the face of great obstacles. As for the future generations of foreign service workers and diplomats, Mr.Selvakumaran emphasizes the need to face the current environmental crisis by each acting as an agent of change in our own way. no matter the line of work we are in. Whether you decide to do this by pursuing work in the foreign service, the UN or within your own community, it doesn’t matter. What is important is that we all contribute, even if it’s in a small way, to making the world better: “A single individual can be a change agent”.
What we need to remember is the fact that all human beings want the same things in life and there is much more that unites us than divides us. According to Mr.Selvakumaran, in order to embrace this, one needs to be open and expose oneself to various cultures and societies in order to understand our common goals.
Without a doubt, our world is a scary place - from NRO MMB NIN oNmoMs Nene RoetKmiert is becoming criminal to ignore to the juvenile flexing of heads of state that threaten to speed up our already ultimate demise to the lack of choice and meaning in a late stage capitalist society. Talking to a person so closely involved with the political and bureaucratic functioning of the global community, I was expecting to hear a eulogy to cooperation, good governance, and the idea of a functioning global community in general. Instead what I found in Selvakumaran Ramachandran is an unrelenting optimist in spite, or maybe even because of the realities that he witnesses on a daily basis, a person who believes in the triumph of humanity and human goodness, who offered the most surprising gift to a nihilistic gen zero: hope and the possibility to maybe make the world just a little bit better, which frankly is not a popular point of view for our enlightened and disillusioned youth.
So while we sit in our committees and try to come up with the most eloquent arguments, let’s remember what we are in this world for. Let’s remember what unites us, and maybe then we can be just a step closer to being the type of singular person the Head of United Nations Development for South Sudan - Selvakumaran Ramachandran - is.
