I have 4 (secret) steps for you.
On how to become 200% more effective at UNPFII.
Happy Saturday,
I know what you did last spring.
I know why your advocacy at the Permanent Forum didn’t work.
It’s because you keep showing up to NYC without a target.
This is a hard lesson I learned throughout the years, where I’ve negotiated Indigenous rights language into the ocean treaty, the Paris Agreement, and the Human Rights Council. I’ve watched dozens of Indigenous leaders walk into the UN prepared on paper but completely unprepared in practice.
If you’re going to PFII on Monday, let’s talk to you about three things:
How to stop delivering interventions that get filed and forgotten.
How to figure out who actually decides what you care about.
How to walk into a room with so much clarity that you know what you’re doing.
Why?
Because, I watch a lot of other Indigenous delegates just shoot from the hip. And how you behave in one UN meeting, is how you behave in all (that’s what I believe).
Not unprepared in the obvious way. They’ve done the reading. They know the agenda. They’ve written their intervention. They’ve coordinated with their caucus.
But when I ask them a simple question: What specifically are you trying to get out of this session? They can’t answer it.
They’ll talk about issues.
They’ll talk about concerns.
They’ll talk about what matters to their community.
But a specific outcome?
Something they can point to at the end and say, we got this or we didn’t?
Most people don’t have that.
And without it, everything else falls apart.
The problem with your advocacy.
Here’s what happens when you show up with issues instead of outcomes.
You deliver your intervention. It’s good. It’s passionate. It’s true.
Then it gets filed with the other 200 interventions. Someone summarizes it in a report. Maybe a sentence makes it into a recommendation. Maybe not.
Next year you come back. Same issues. Same intervention. Same hope that this time it lands differently.
I did this for years before I realized I was just running in place.
My secret (but you can do it too).
Before I engage with any process, I force myself to get specific. I ask four questions. I don’t let myself move forward until I can answer all of them.
1/ What exactly am I trying to get?
Not a theme. Not an issue. A thing. A sentence in a document. A seat on a body. A procedural change. Something concrete.
If I can’t name it in one sentence, I’m not ready.
2/ How does that thing actually get decided?
Every outcome has a pathway. Documents get drafted by someone. Decisions get made somewhere. There’s a process.
If I don’t understand the process, I’m just hoping my words find their way to the right place. Hope is not a strategy.
3/ Who makes the call?
Not who speaks. Not who has the title. Who actually decides.
Sometimes it’s the person at the table. Sometimes it’s someone in a capital sending instructions. Sometimes it’s a staffer nobody pays attention to.
If I don’t know who decides, I don’t know who to convince.
4/ Why would they say yes?
This is where most people stop thinking.
We spend all our time on why we’re right. We don’t spend enough time on why the decision-maker would move.
Those are different questions.
Being right doesn’t automatically get you a yes. The decision-maker has their own pressures. Their own constraints. Their own reasons for acting or not acting.
If I understand what moves them, I can work with it. If I don’t, I’m just making a moral argument and hoping it’s enough.
Why this matters.
When you can answer all four questions, you know what to do.
You know which meetings matter and which ones are theater. You know who to brief before the session starts. You know what language to draft and who to share it with. You know what follow-up to do when things shift mid-negotiation.
When you can’t answer all four questions, you know you have a gap. Trust me, you’d rather discover that gap at your desk than in the middle of a corridor conversation where someone asks what you actually want and you don’t have an answer.
What this doesn’t fix.
This doesn’t mean a guaranteed win.
Heck, it doesn’t mean I always win. I don’t.
Sometimes the politics shift.
Sometimes a state changes position overnight.
Sometimes someone else’s priority takes up all the oxygen and mine gets dropped.
That happens. It will keep happening.
But at least you know why. You can look back and see where it broke down. You can adjust for next time.
That’s different from showing up year after year, giving the same speech, and having no idea whether any of it matters.
The real point.
Preparation isn’t reading the agenda. That’s the baseline. Everyone does that.
Preparation is knowing what you want, how it gets decided, who decides it, and what would make them move.
If you can answer those four things, you’re ready.
If you can’t, you’re not. And no amount of passion will fix that.
Before you go.
One trap I see constantly: Confusing presence with progress.
They’re not the same thing.
You can show up to every session.
You can deliver interventions at every opportunity.
You can be visible, active, engaged.
And still move nothing.
Because movement requires a target. Without one, you’re just there.
Before you enter the UN on Monday, write down your answers to the four questions.
One sentence each.
If you can’t do it, that’s the problem you need to solve first.
Hope this helps you.
See you next week!
P.S.: If this helped you see things more clearly, share it with someone who needs the same clarity.
P.P.S.: I upload daily vlogs/briefs on my Substack. Here is what four days before the UNPFII covered:
I received new instructions from my traditional council. The briefs in the coming weeks will sound different.
Someone in the Indigenous movement is distributing a playbook on how to circumvent FPIC. I got confirmation.
States face zero consequences for ignoring Indigenous rights. I explained why and what could change that.
Most people think the Declaration is enough. I showed where it stops working.
I flipped the burden of proof on conflation. You should not be explaining why you are different. They should.
You think FPIC protects you. I showed where it breaks.
I gave four questions that fix any training module on Indigenous Peoples. You can use them in any process.
The people of African descent are moving on collective rights and ancestral lands. If you are not watching, you should be.
I am going to the forum for one thing. A recommendation in the final report that anchors the ICJ advisory opinion.
The meetings without the word “Indigenous” in the title are the ones that matter most. I showed which ones.
I used a rigatoni carbonara to explain timing in diplomacy.
My traditional council said stop working on what is nice to have. Start on what we need.
Consider becoming a team member here and receive all briefs in your email:
Question of the week:
What is one thing your community needs that no international process is delivering?
I may not be able to respond immediately, but I read all the answers.