Foreign policy: a Green perspective: Golriz Ghahraman outlines the Green Party's approach to international relations.

• Author: Ghahraman, Golriz

I am a member of the foreign affairs, defence and trade select committee. It always seems interesting to me that those three topics are seen and treated as being so intrinsically linked, though they might not be in the minds of lay persons outside of Parliament. My experience of two terms on that committee is that trade does rule. We have foreign affairs, which is diplomacy; it is about human rights, war and peace. Then we have defence and our defence forces do not necessarily always go to war, but rather do environmental monitoring and disaster relief mostly. All of those vast and differing topics sit together with trade in our committee. But my experience is that it is mostly about trade.

There is also the perspective of the two major parties. It is openly, proudly, articulated that there is consensus across the House or an expectation of consensus on foreign affairs, defence and trade issues among the main parties. I am often the sole voice of dissent. There have been no other small or medium-sized parties represented on that committee during my time as a member of Parliament. While the two major parties kind of fight over how good a trade deal is and who had more to do with how great it is, I am often the one who might be saying it is not that good, that it might actually be harmful. While they fight over how much more we need to put into war planes, I am often the one saying we might not need them. And then there is foreign affairs, that sort of amorphous topic.

The Green Party perspective on all things, but I think this is quite pertinent to foreign affairs, is informed by our charter. We have four principles. They are about:

* sustainability,

* social responsibility, which is also about recognising that resources are limited and need to be shared equally,

* appropriate decision-making, which is democracy, about those most affected by a decision being at the decision-making table, and

* lastly, but by no means least, certainly not for someone who has lived through a war as a child, non-violence.

I come to foreign affairs as New Zealand's first ever refugee MP. What that means is that I have experienced displacement, which is one of the core crises facing not only those of us who are foreign affairs nerds but also the planet. I come to foreign affairs as someone who has heard bombs dropped from basements and bunkers, as someone who has experienced what a lot of the world feels--that our lives are not necessarily as valued as others'. And I come to foreign affairs as an international criminal and human rights lawyer, but that means I have a more zealous commitment to the international rules-based order than most domestic lawmakers, which is sometimes a surprise to me. It is important though. It does uphold an idea that there is equality in the globe, that there needs to be certainty about the rules and that we need to apply them consistently. Otherwise we none of us are going to be all right.

Which brings me to all of the crises that foreign affairs needs to face. We have the COVID crisis in New Zealand. Our solid response should have taught us that unless all of us are all right we will not be all right as a species, as a community. So we bring that lesson to the other crises that the planet is facing.

Central to our green ethos is climate action to alleviate the climate crisis. That links us to one another. That means that policy cannot be isolationist. It cannot be just about us as a small island nation, although that is quite a good perspective when we look at the climate crisis as a small Pacific nation.

We have a crisis of displacement, a refugee crisis. It was not put on hold while COVID rages. While we were isolated and hunkered down, displacement camps with millions of...