Signing Off for 2007

The (thankfully quite uncontroversial) Meeting of States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention has just ended, bringing to a close a typically busy year of disarmament and arms control work in Geneva. In the previous posting, John Borrie reviewed 2007 as perceived and analysed through the lens of the Disarmament Insight blog. Before signing off for the year and wishing all of our dedicated readers a pleasant holiday, I would like (at the risk of ruining your festive repose) to cast an eye forward to what awaits us next year.

Of course, we'll have all of the usual fare:

• -- The Conference on Disarmament will continue its struggle to break its now more than decade-long deadlock so that it can finally start negotiating a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

• -- States Parties to the Biological & Toxin Weapons Convention will continue their intersessional work programme (this time by holding expert meetings on biosafety and biosecurity, as well as on codes of conduct for life scientists) and will also hold their usual annual Meeting of States Parties.

• -- States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) will also hold their usual annual meetings on Amended Protocol II (on mines, booby traps and other devices), on Protocol V (on explosive remnants of war), and on the convention as a whole.

In addition, however, we will have some new and interesting elements thrown into the 2008 mix:

• -- There will be a bevy of new so-called "Groups of Governmental Experts" discussing such issues as missiles, conventional ammunition stockpiles, an Arms Trade Treaty, as well as, in the context of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, discussing Protocol V on explosive remnants of war and "negotiating a proposal" to deal with the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions.

• -- The Oslo Process on cluster munitions will hold conferences on opposite sides of the world, in Wellington (February) and Dublin (May), the latter to finish negotiating a treaty banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. A signing ceremony is foreseen for Oslo in the autumn.

• -- The second Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will take place in Geneva in April/May.

• -- The third Biennial Meeting of States on the UN Programme of Action on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons will be held in New York in July.

So, whether you work in the area of disarmament and arms control as an analyst, activist, diplomat or observer, have a nice break over the holidays. You're going to need it!

This is Disarmament Insight signing off for 2007. We will be back online early next year to bring you more alternative, out of the box (and off-the-wall) analysis of the latest developments in disarmament and arms control from a humanitarian perspective.

Until then, peace.

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo credit: "The War on Christmas" by Cuttlefish. Retrieved from Flickr.

Disarmament Insight: 2007 in review

As we head into the festive season and begin to wind down for the holiday break, the Disarmament Insight team thought it would be worth pausing to review some of the main themes we’ve covered on the blog in 2007, and a few of the highlights readers might have missed.

Since we launched the blog in March, it’s grown from a small ‘neighbourhood’ site known to 20 or 30 people in Geneva, Switzerland (where UNIDIR’s project on Disarmament as Humanitarian Action and the Geneva Forum are based) to attracting thousands of visitors, at least some of whom we hope have bookmarked the site and return on a frequent basis. Indeed, this post is the 111th. We’d like to thank in particular our Geneva Forum and DHA project donors, our guest bloggers and everyone who’s used the blog’s comment function to contribute their thoughts over the course of 2007.

Cluster munitions have been a major theme in recent months as concurrent international processes have unfolded by means of the Oslo process and a mandate in the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons process (CCW). Patrick and I have just returned from an international conference in Vienna last week on cluster munitions as part of the Oslo process. Related reporting and analysis will continue to be feature of the blog in 2008. (I’ll even be in Wellington, New Zealand, to report on that conference and civil society events in February.)

International work on cluster munitions is a practical manifestation of ‘disarmament as humanitarian action’. But there are others, including the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, work on small arms and the Arms Trade Treaty, and even reframing in the context of nuclear disarmament. In June we were present in Washington D.C. when outgoing British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett outlined the UK’s policies, including a strong call for a redoubling of effort on nuclear disarmament - in effect signaling to think-tankers there that it’s okay to use the “D” word (disarmament) again. (Some of us never stopped...)

Meanwhile, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva remains deadlocked, of course, and there are looming challenges ahead for the current review cycle of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) despite its squeaking through to a preparatory meeting result in Vienna in May.

For our part, we’ve been taking our motto seriously about “thinking differently about human security”. Not only is the DHA project about showing how humanitarian perspectives are relevant to making disarmament and arms control work more effective, we’ve also sought to introduce new perspectives to some of the multilateral practitioners in these processes - not only in the context of the Disarmament Insight blog, but in workshops we’ve run near Geneva throughout the year.

In choosing themes and contributors to these events, we and the Geneva Forum sought to mirror a view among researchers on the DHA project that insights from the natural and behavioural sciences can be of help. In May, for instance, the primatologist Frans de Waal spoke at a workshop we held entitled “human security, human nature and trust-building in negotiations”. Any sniggering about monkeys was silenced by Professor de Waal’s fascinating talk on “War and Peace and Primates” and we received numerous pieces of feedback from participants that it had prompted them to think about their negotiating interactions in fresh ways. You can still hear Frans de Waal’s talk as a podcast from our home-brewed podcast site, or by typing “Disarmament Insight” into the search box in the iTunes Store podcast directory (all of our podcasts are free).

Other talks we’ve put online include those by the economist and author Professor Paul Seabright, Quaker UN Office representative David Atwood, and physicist and science writer Philip Ball. Unfortunately a technical malfunction prevented us from also presenting great talks by economist Paul Ormerod from the same workshop in September on complexity and arms control diplomacy and by our very own Aurélia Merçay. But Philip offered a range of cogent and entertaining insights on the physics of social behaviour, and what it may mean for multilateral responses to armed violence. This linked in nicely to some of our own writing on the subject, especially Aurelia’s work on non-linear modeling of small arms proliferation in the third DHA volume.

Looking ahead, one of the threads followed by the DHA project concerns the impact of cognitive constraints on the perceptions and interactions of multilateral practitioners. This has also been a persistent theme on the blog this year. Drawing from the work of psychologists and behavioural economists, we’ve been thinking about how better understanding, for instance of psychological biases, might improve decision making, and how issues like new communications technologies affect negotiations. In the New Year, along with Aurélia Merçay and Ashley Thornton, I hope to complete a small book tying some of our thinking on the subject together. Watch the blog for more news.

Finally, 2007 has also been a year in which we’ve grown accustomed to new faces in disarmament. But along the way we’ve lost some greats such as Randy Forsberg and, in June, my great friend and former ambassador, Clive Pearson of New Zealand. They’re greatly missed.

These are just some of the things we’ve written about on the Disarmament Insight blog in 2007. Best of the festive season to all of our readers, and please keep reading our blog.


John Borrie

Photo by author.

Defection Denial

One of the themes the DHA project has explored over the past two years is how cooperation emerges in multilateral negotiating environments. One of the challenges in informal social exchange in these situations involves judging others and deciding who is trustworthy and who’s not – in game theory terms this would mean discerning the difference between a cooperator and a defector. We would expect known defectors to be punished for their infractions. But recent research suggests this is not how humans normally react in everyday situations. Instead, we tend to overlook or “forgive” the wrongs others commit.

In fact, as University of Miami psychologist Michael McCullough told the New York Times recently:

“The closer you look, the more clearly you see that denial is part of the uneasy bargain we strike to be social creatures… We really do want to be moral people, but the fact is that we cut corners to get individual advantage, and we rely on the room that denial gives us to get by, to wiggle out of speeding tickets, and to forgive others for doing the same.”

One recent study used a simple investment game, where two people decide whether or not (and how much) to contribute to a shared investment pool, to explore this phenomenon. In this version of the game, one player could “cut off” their opponent if they believed his/her contributions were too low. The study revealed that once players were in a pattern of mutual trust based on repeated adequate donations to the investment pool, it became harder to punish future infractions. Some players would tolerate four to five selfish moves by a “trusted” opponent before cutting them off whereas they would tolerate only one infraction from a stranger. The researchers interpreted this result to be rooted in denial – players believed “trusted” opponents had to be making errors, not simply trying to maximize their personal gains.

Simulating this result through many generations on a computer revealed that this denial strategy was critical to the stability and evolutionary fitness of the overall group. In other words, overlooking or forgiving defection was an important survival strategy. This corresponds with Karl Sigmund and Martin Nowak’s findings of their evolutionary computer tournament, run in 1991. The most successful strategy was generous tit-for-tat (GTFT). GTFT is a “nice” strategy meaning it was never the first to defect, even if defection was its opponent’s first move. GTFT also randomly cooperated once for approximately every three defections against it. In this simulation, as it seems in real-life, it pays to let bygones be bygones.

Psychologists suggest that denial could be important in protecting us against unbearable news and that this ability is critical to forming (and maintaining) close relationships. Moral violations are glossed over as “stumbles or lapses in competence,” making the original violation more bearable. Since people oftentimes aren’t as trustworthy as we assume them to be, this attitude allows us to overlook potentially devastating defections in everyday life and carry on as normal, nurturing close relationships despite a few wrongs here and there.


Ashley Thornton

References
Photo retrieved from flickr.com.
“Denial Makes the World go Round,” New York Times, 20 November 2007.

Cluster Munitions: Passing the baton from Vienna to Wellington

The Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions ended a few hours ago. With participation by 138 States, NGOs from more than 50 countries (under the umbrella of the Cluster Munitions Coalition), eloquent testimony from victims, and participation by parliamentarians and United Nations agencies, the Vienna Conference brought the Oslo Process on Cluster Munitions to a new level of participation and momentum.

As pointed out by the CMC, only 4 users of cluster munitions did not participate in the Vienna conference (Eritrea, Israel, Russia and the United States). Twenty-three of the 34 producers of cluster munitions were here; as were 55 of the 79 stockpilers.

The conference sketched the lines of the negotiations that will take place at the diplomatic conference in Dublin on May 19-30 next year that is scheduled to negotiate a new treaty banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The next meeting in the Oslo Process, however, will be in Wellington on 18-22 February. Registrations for governments and civil society are already open.

Highlights of the Vienna Conference for me were:

-- The appeal during the NGO Forum on Tuesday by young Soraj Ghulam Habib who lost both of his legs and a cousin to a cluster bomblet while on a family picnic in Afghanistan. There was a technical problem with translating the last part of his talk but it didn’t matter. His passion was eloquent enough.

-- The clip from the documentary film “Unacceptable Harm” that showed 11 year-old Zahra Hussein Soufan try to deal with confusion, pain and rejection by her schoolmates after losing her hand to a cluster bomblet that she confused for a toy in southern Lebanon.

-- The united voice being found by African States in calling for a comprehensive ban on cluster munitions. About 40 African States participated in the Vienna meeting, thanks in large degree to an effective sponsorship programme funded by Austria and Norway and administered by the United Nations Development Programme. Today, Uganda and Zambia announced that they would co-host an African regional forum on cluster munitions in March with the aim of developing a common African position on the need to prohibit cluster munitions.

-- The presentation of a new report analysing the reliability of the M85 cluster sub-munition. The M85 (pictured above) is equipped with a self-destruct timer that is designed to detonate the bomblet if it does not explode on impact. According to its manufacturers, it has a failure rate of only around 1 percent. Based on this, some States claim that the M85 does not cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The new report undermines those arguments by explaining the litany of things that can (and do) go wrong with the M85's mechanical arming and self-destruct mechanism and, based on rigorous studies of bomb sites, shows that its failure rate in southern Lebanon in 2006 was an order of magnitude higher at around 10 percent (even after discounting parent munitions that failed to open properly).

-- The frank and open debate that took place on the issue of defining a cluster munition (see John Borrie's previous post).

-- The already quite detailed discussions on clearance, victim assistance, storage and stockpile destruction, international cooperation and assistance, and transparency and compliance that seek to build on similar provisions in the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.

The Vienna conference leaves plenty of work to do in Wellington and Dublin. Its great contribution, however, has been shedding light on the most important (and most contentious) issues and, in so doing, beginning to define the outlines of the debates and negotiations to come. For civil society, the conference provided the invaluable service of clarifying where national campaigning is most needed in the coming period.

The Wellington meeting will need to continue and intensify the discussions that took place in Vienna and, in particular, to deal properly with issues that were not given sufficient attention due to lack of time; issues such as interoperability with States using cluster munitions, definition criteria based on the weight and volume of sub-munitions, sensor-fused weapons, and risk education.

If I take one thing away from the Vienna meeting, it is that the Oslo process is not, as some might claim, on the crest of a wave; surging now but destined to crash and break later. It seems more like a snowball gathering speed downhill (and the forecast is for more wintry weather).

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo: Presentation of the report, "M85: An analysis of reliability" to the Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions (photo courtesy of the author).

Cluster Munitions: Vienna – tough talk on definitions

As foreshadowed in our preceding post about the first day of the Vienna international conference on cluster munitions, definitions were the focus of today's discussions.

Why are definitions important? February's Oslo Declaration contains a commitment for states to “prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians”. Article 2 of the Vienna discussion text arguably goes further – it doesn’t mention the phrase “that cause unacceptable harm to civilians”.

In setting out scope Article 1 says as follows:

“Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to:
a) Use cluster munitions.
b) Develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to
anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions.
c) Assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited
to a State Party under this Convention.”

And the Vienna discussion text defines cluster munitions broadly. There is also an explanatory annex in it to reflect the divergence of views expressed over a definition expressed at an earlier conference of the Oslo process in Lima, Peru in May.

Today’s discussions were a chance to test views on the new language, and to hear proposals, including for exceptions to a general prohibition.

Talks on this agenda took most of the day, co-chaired by New Zealand and Austria. It began, however, with a presentation from an expert, Colin King, and a presentation of a ground-breaking report he and colleagues at the NGO Norwegian People’s Aid produced entitled M85: an analysis of reliability pictured above.

M85 bomblets are considered ‘state-of-the-art’ cluster submunitions, with so-called self-destruct mechanisms. M85s, or their derivatives, were used in Iraq this decade by British forces and by Israel in Southern Lebanon in 2006.

The M85 analysis showed, among its findings, that claims of 1 percent failure rates are way off: instead, it was around 10 percent – a big concern in view of the large number of submunitions dispersed in any cluster munition attack. King’s presentation (drawing on the report) showed definitively that “there’s a lot to go wrong” in the M85 arming sequence, which results in the submunition malfunctioning and prevents the self-destruct mechanism from activating.

In many cases, the arming sequence can be completed by an accidental encounter. (Norwegian defence scientists spinning M85 bomblets in concrete mixers – with often fatal results for the mixer, around 40 "killed" so far.) It helps to underline that there is no such thing a “non-hazardous dud” submunition, a term sometimes heard.

It also shows that testing doesn’t offer a realistic indication of what will happen during actual cluster munition use because they’re always carried out under favourable conditions.

King’s powerful presentation set the scene for what was a constructive but occasionally fractious debate that continued from mid-morning until late this afternoon.

Many countries spoke. Some, such as France, Switzerland, Netherlands and the UK reiterated that they do not think all cluster munitions have unacceptable consequences for civilians, arguing that concepts of accuracy and reliability should be benchmarks for what is deemed acceptable or not – drawing on an ICRC formulation. The ICRC responded that its terminology was to describe the characteristics of cluster munitions unacceptable in terms of their harm to civilians (in its view, virtually all used to date) and not threshold criteria for a definition.

Germany again put forward proposals for exceptions to a total ban. It has crafted what it called a 3-step approach that while immediately banning some cluster munitions (step 1), would allow others to continue to be used for an as-yet unspecified period (step 2) before – optional – replacement with “alternative munitions” (step 3), as yet undetermined and possibly not invented. This met with considerable criticism from a range of states and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). For its part, Norway acidly commented that it could not follow the German proposal’s logic.

The discussions underlined that there’s still a long way to go on definitions. Today’s talks were never intended by the co-chairs to be more than a ventilation of views, but they did make some progress on discussing less problematic exceptions to a comprehensive prohibition including mines (covered by other treaties), flare, smoke and chaff munitions and sub-munitions that are inert post impact. And, they paved the way for further talks this afternoon on Article 1 of the Vienna discussion text on general obligations and scope, in which military inter-operability concerns dominated. But that’s for another post.

John Borrie

Cluster munitions: Vienna Conference day one

Yesterday, the Vienna international conference on cluster munitions formally commenced. On Tuesday it had been preceded by a civil society forum (see our previous post for Patrick Mc Carthy's impressions of that gathering). The Vienna Conference is the latest step in the so-called Oslo process to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions on civilians.

Readers may recall from earlier posts on this blog that, less than a month ago, members of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) agreed a mandate to work on addressing cluster munitions in 2008 - a mandate that most involved seemed prepared to concede had come about largely because of the existence of the Oslo process. Nevertheless, there was uncertainty in some quarters about what the impact of the CCW mandate might be for participation in Vienna. Would it undercut support for the Oslo process? Hopes among campaigners on cluster munitions were that the goal of 100 states would nevertheless be achieved.

In fact, 133 states have registered, according to the Austrian Foreign Minister, Ursula Plassnik, who launched Wednesday's proceedings. This is astounding progress for an international humanitarian initiative launched only in February of this year: it means that more than two-thirds of the international community want to see a treaty to address the impacts of cluster munitions on civilians by the end of 2008.

And that number doesn't count a large civil society contingent (mainly within the umbrella of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC)) along with international and regional organizations including United Nations agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the European Commission and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Later, in welcoming the broad turn-out, the CMC noted that a majority of past users and producers of cluster munitions are now participating in the Oslo process, as well as almost all affected states.

Certain user and producer states were not at the meeting though, such as China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the U.S. The need to try to engage with all users and producers clearly concerns some states, and was a theme throughout the agenda item on "a treaty on cluster munitions" co-chaired by Austria and New Zealand. This agenda item ran grossly beyond time, however, as the co-chairs' request for delegations to keep general statements to a bare minimum went largely ignored. After a brief introduction of the Vienna text by New Zealand, Australia, Portugal (on behalf of the EU), Egypt, Hungary, Montenegro, the CMC, Thailand, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Morocco, Mali, Japan, Argentina, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Guatemala, Chile, Canada, Croatia, Sudan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Algeria, Lithuania, Sweden, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Netherlands, Senegal, Bangladesh, Turkey, Mozambique, Uganda, Honduras, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Albania spoke.

I'm not going to try to summarize what they said. And yesterday there was also some productive discussion of cluster munition clearance issues and victim assistance (the latter talks continue this morning) under subsequent agenda items. But a recurrent theme - beside wide support for the Vienna text as a basis for discussions and the need for a legally binding international instrument (a treaty, in other words) - was of the need to define unacceptable cluster munitions.

Definitions are pivotal because, following the terms of February's Oslo Declaration, unacceptable cluster munitions will be banned. For their part, the members of the CMC would like to ban all cluster munitions, and this seems to be the avowed view of at least several states too.

But a total ban on cluster munitions is not what all states signed up for - and some, such as the United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands - said as much yesterday. So the definitions agenda item today will be a key testing ground for various proposals for how cluster munitions, submunitions and associated concepts should be defined, and deriving from that, a better idea of what is likely to be outlawed in the agreement to be negotiated next year. At present, the core group's suggested Article 2 in the Vienna text is drafted as a pretty comprehensive prohibition on cluster munitions. But it makes provision for possible exceptions - the burden of proof being on states to justify why such exceptions are necessary.

It's going to be an interesting discussion. Watch this space.


John Borrie

If this blog was a cluster bomb, you'd be dead

The Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions, the latest step in the Oslo Process, kicked off today with a parliamentary forum in the morning and an NGO forum in the afternoon; both of which sought to set the bar high for the intergovernmental discussions that will take place over the remainder of the week.

Over 130 States have registered for the conference, almost double the number that participated in the last global meeting of the Oslo Process in Lima in May. The momentum that this process has gained in quite a short period of time is truly remarkable and lends credence to the claim made earlier today that the Oslo Process is now "unstoppable;" that it is no longer a question of whether it will succeed in negotiating a new treaty on cluster munitions, but rather how strong that treaty will be.

It is clear from today's discussions that NGOs want a very strong treaty indeed. The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) is no longer talking about banning cluster munitions "that cause unacceptable harm to civilians," the formulation that lies at the centre of the Oslo Declaration. The talk now among NGOs is just about banning cluster munitions, pure and simple, since, the CMC argues, all cluster munitions cause unacceptable harm. Any government wishing to argue otherwise will by asked (perhaps too polite a word) by NGOs to back up their arguments with credible evidence.

The cause of a comprehensive ban was boosted this afternoon by an announcement by the Austrian Federal Minister for European and International Affairs, Ursula Plassnik, that the Austrian parliament will promulgate a new law on Thursday this week banning all cluster munitions.

NGOs fear that most governments will not wish to follow Austria's example and will instead insist on excluding certain types of cluster munitions from the scope of the treaty being negotiated. The Vienna discussion text certainly leaves open this possibility. Article 2, which defines what a cluster munition is, contains three as yet blank place-holders that seem designed to contain descriptions of cluster munitions that would not be banned by the treaty.

It is likely that some States will push to exclude from the scope of the treaty cluster munitions that (manufacturers claim to) have low failure-rates, that are equipped with self-destruct mechanisms, that engage targets through the use of sensors, or that contain small numbers of sub-munitions. Today, NGOs made it quite clear that they find such exceptions to be unacceptable and, for good measure, added that they would also not accept a transition period to allow cluster munitions to be phased out nor allowances for joint operations with States that continued to use cluster munitions.

Fighting words aside, this afternoon's meeting did a fine job of bringing the voices of victims of cluster munitions to the forefront of the debate. Whether it was the impassioned plea of young Soraj Ghulam Habib from Afghanistan, who lost a cousin and both of his legs to a cluster bomb, or Branislav Kapetanovic's barely disguised rage not so much at his own injuries but at the indescribable carnage he saw cluster munitions wreak in Serbia, everyone who participated in today's meeting was reminded again and again that the goal of the Oslo Process is to protect civilians and assist victims.

It was not all harmony and meetings of minds however. A panel on "cluster munitions and the military" made up of serving and former military officers posed some pointed questions on the military utility of cluster munitions and on military alternatives to them. In the process, it highlighted some contentious issues that will no doubt continue to be discussed over the coming days.

The discussions that will take place over the next three days among the more than 130 registered governments will undoubtedly attempt to lower the bar set today by NGOs in the Cluster Munition Coalition. The biggest immediate challenge, however, would seem to be finding a room large enough to fit all participants in the Oslo Process. As of tomorrow morning, about 500 representatives of governments, NGOs and international organisations will begin to engage with one another in earnest.

Things are just getting interesting so stay tuned and feel free to add your voice to the debate by using the comment function below.

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo: Wanda Munoz, Head of Victim Assistance, Handicap International (photo by the author)

Clusters: Dah-dump... Dah-Dah-Dah-dump (bsssh!)

Ah Vienna. Eat your heart out Midge Ure and Ultravox (check the outfits)...

This is a quick post to note that Patrick Mc Carthy and I are in Vienna this week to attend an international conference here on addressing the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions, which is being hosted by the Government of Austria, as part of the Oslo process.

We're aware that there's a lot of interest out there in the progress of the meeting, and we'll try to give you updates over the next few days about what's going on, (hopefully) starting with tomorrow's civil society forum on cluster munitions.

Additionally, if there are any questions you want us to try to answer, just drop us a line using the comment function on this blog (see below).

John Borrie

Cluster munitions: Arguments for and against

Last week's meeting of states party to the Mine Ban Treaty (8MSP) in Jordan provided an opportunity for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) to offer a lunchtime briefing to states on the Oslo Process to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions. Austrian Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch shared information about next week's Vienna Conference, and CMC Coordinator Thomas Nash talked about campaigning against cluster munitions in general.

The briefing was timely: with 8MSP about to wrap up successfully, diplomats were beginning to turn their minds to the recently released "Vienna text" and reflect upon the tactical implications of the CCW's mandate to work on cluster munitions in 2008 agreed on 13 November in Geneva. 8MSP offered a good opportunity for Oslo process outreach with a number of countries party to the Mine Ban Treaty (which has 156 members) who either aren't members of the CCW (which has 103 members) or who are but don't often attend its meetings.

One question that came up in question-and-answer time was the following:

States hostile to banning or restricting cluster munitions are likely to be briefing their delegations around the world with bullet-point style arguments as to why their cluster munitions are necessary. What are likely to be the 3 main planks of their position, and what are responses to these?

To me, actually there seem to be 4 characteristic generic arguments heard about cluster munitions. (There may be more, or maybe they could classified differently, but these rolled off the top of my head.) By request, I’ve set them out below. Sorry for the long blog post…

1. Cluster munitions are legitimate under international humanitarian law (IHL): unlike anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions aren’t inherently indiscriminate and were, besides, designed for a specific purpose - to destroy massed formations of infantry, armour and soft-skinned vehicles. If used “responsibly”, these weapons are consistent with IHL, it’s argued.

Human Rights Watch and others, however, have documented evidence that cluster munitions have almost never been used in a manner consistent with existing IHL (i.e. in Cold War-era battles in zones devoid of civilians). Instead, their use has usually been in proximity to civilian populations.

Moreover, cluster munitions do appear highly prone to indiscriminate use. This underlines the point that the effects of a weapon are context-dependent, not solely contingent on technical characteristics: self-destruct mechanisms in many explosive submunitions, for example, were shown in Southern Lebanon to have been ineffective, despite previous manufacturer and user claims about them rendering unexploded submunitions safe.

It should also be noted that – unless it’s banned – a weapon could be considered legitimate while still subject to specific legal restriction.

2. If we didn’t use cluster munitions, we’d have to use something worse: But IHL rules apply to the use of weapons generally - including any weapons of attack used as alternatives to cluster munitions. Principally, those rules are of (1) distinction between civilians and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives, (2) the rule against indiscriminate attacks, (3) the proportionality rule and (4) the obligation on belligerents to take feasible precautions to minimize incidental loss of civilian lives, injuries to them or damage to civilian objects.

An ICRC expert has observed that cluster munitions raise important and persistent legal concerns under all of these rules (this is ultimately why there are international efforts underway to deal with them explicitly!). Nevertheless, the non-use of cluster munitions isn’t a “free pass” for the use of other weapons without the application of these general IHL rules.

3. Cluster munitions are what we have in stock: while often dressed up in different forms, this point is implicit in many arguments for continued use of cluster munitions based on “military utility”. Many states possess large stocks of explosive submunitions: the US for instance, appears to have 700-800 million in inventory, predominantly of older, more problematic types. For fiscal and logistical reasons, many militaries also deploy munitions from their arsenals on a “first-in, first to deploy” basis - using older lots first, a problem that compounds the humanitarian consequences of the use of the weapon because older submunitions tend to be less reliable.

To my way of thinking, using cluster munitions is in fact a political and moral question, not a strictly military issue. It’s about how societies choose to allocate resources.

Anecdotal evidence is that soldiers are not wedded to cluster munitions, and would prefer to use alternatives with lesser humanitarian risk and which pose less hazard to their own troops advancing through areas in which unexploded submunitions are scattered, for example. But they continue to use what they’ve have been provided for in military budgets, sometimes as legacies of purchasing decisions made decades ago to suit the exigencies of Cold War fighting in Europe. Ultimately, along with commitment to addressing the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions, there needs to be recognition from governments that they must match it with financial commitment to providing alternative means for militaries to carry out their missions in ways consistent with IHL.

4. We don’t like being told what to do: this fourth argument actually has little to do with cluster munitions per se, but is really to do with concerns about “another Ottawa” emerging.

It’s self-evident that, by exploiting procedural tactics, an obstructive few are able - and sometimes do - prevent the emergence of multilateral cooperation through formal channels that could yield security benefit to all. The treatment of “mines other than anti-personnel mines” in the CCW process in recent years, in which a handful of states have obstructed general agreement on a new agreement, is a case in point.

The problem is this: if there’s evident need to negotiate a new norm (like on cluster munitions on humanitarian grounds), it’s probably emerged from the consequences of self-interested behaviour of users of the weapon. Logically, these users, who perceive that they derive benefit from that behaviour (i.e. use of cluster munitions), will then object to agreement of a robust norm restricting or banning that weapon by blocking consensus.

This underlines the conundrum for the CCW in agreeing on a new norm in the future. Its mandate for 2008 is about commencing work – not agreeing on any outcome – and both roadblocks and dilution of ambition are tactics will be encountered…

…which also highlights the importance of the Oslo process, both in its own right in addressing cluster munitions and in adjusting the perceptions of those who might otherwise resist consensus in the CCW on a final agreement there. Already, concerns about the Oslo process seem to have led states such as the US, China and Russia to change their policies in order to allow 2008 work in the CCW to proceed on cluster munitions - a new development without prospect before the Oslo Conference in February 2007. They are sure to have recognized that (unlike in the CCW) the consensus practice isn’t explicit in the Oslo process, nor is it customary in other IHL processes.

In the big picture, disagreement about the merits of "which process" just isn’t as important as achieving the goal of protecting civilians from weapons. Unfortunately, traditional multilateral structures and practices can obscure this at times. So multilateral decision-makers need to be creative and goal focused. It should be noted in this respect that the Mine Ban Treaty a decade ago actually reinvigorated the CCW for a time, and the Oslo process appears to be doing the same. So the issue here isn’t about CCW (the establishment) versus Oslo (the upstart) as some might have us believe. Meanwhile, the UN Secretary-General has been on record since February 2007 as supporting both processes, because what’s important is addressing the impact of cluster munitions on civilians.

Hear, hear.


John Borrie

References

John Borrie & Rosy Cave, “The humanitarian effects of cluster munitions: Why should we worry?”, Disarmament Forum, (Issue 4) 2006, pp. 5-13.

Human Rights Watch, Myths and Realities about Cluster Munitions.

Louis Maresca, “Cluster munitions: Moving toward specific regulation”, Disarmament Forum, (Issue 4) 2006, pp. 27-34.

Landmines: Dead Sea Goals

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Power of the President

What makes for a successful multilateral arms control negotiation? Sufficient political will? Maturity of the issue being negotiated? Pressure from civil society? A critical mass of seasoned diplomats? The list is long and there is no single silver bullet that will ensure success every time.

But what about the role played by the President of such negotiations; the Ambassador chosen by the negotiating parties (usually on the basis of regional rotation) and entrusted with the delicate task of guiding negotiations to a successful conclusion? All other things being equal, does the President have the power to tip the balance and conjure success where none seemed possible?

Observing Pakistan's Ambassador Masood Khan (picture) in action at the 6th Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) at the end of 2006 would lead one to answer this question in the affirmative. The 6th Review Conference was up against formidable challenges. Years-long efforts to negotiate a verification protocol to the Convention had collapsed in 2001 after the United States withdrew its support. As a result, the 5th Review Conference had to be suspended for a whole year to allow tempers to cool. States were heading into the 6th Review Conference having completed some constructive intersessional work but resentments were still raw. Hopes were not high that the meeting could put the BTWC process back on track.

Against the odds, Ambassador Khan guided the conference to a successful conclusion; i.e. a strong final document and a demanding intersessional work programme in the run-up to the 7th Review Conference in 2011. He has gone a long way towards explaining how he did so in an article he published in Disarmament Diplomacy earlier this year, although I have the impression that we may have to wait for his memoirs to get the full story. The article offers a fascinating and rare insight into the internal workings of a multilateral disarmament machine; worn cogs, snapped springs and all. My favourite characterisation, however, of how Ambassador Khan pulled it off was provided by my Disarmament Insight colleague, John Borrie, who described as "diplomatic jujitsu" the way Ambassador Khan kept delegations off balance by shuffling the agenda and tabling proposals.

Masood Khan is not one to rest on his laurels and is already looking for new challenges. He plans to introduce an innovative new way of interacting with NGOs and the biotech industry at next month's BTWC Meeting of States Parties. After that, he will turn his attention to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) - also known as the 'Inhumane Weapons Convention' - where he will preside over the Meeting of States Parties in November 2008.*

That meeting is due to hear a progress report on negotiations by a CCW Group of Governmental Experts on a proposal to address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions. Given the inability of the CCW over last number of years to address adequately the harm caused to civilians by cluster munitions, and the emergence outside of the CCW of the ambitious Oslo Process on cluster munitions, the challenge facing the CCW on this issue is significant.

Ambassador Khan is undoubtedly a skillful diplomat who domonstrates that diplomacy is an art; abstract and sometimes even martial. The 6th Review Conference of the BTWC was his masterpiece. Helping to get the CCW to agree on an adequate response to the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions would be no less of an achievement.


Patrick Mc Carthy


* An earlier version of this entry stated in error that that Ambassador Khan had been nominated to preside over seven weeks of CCW negotiations in 2008 on the issue of cluster munitions.

References

Masood Khan, "The 2006 BWC Review Conference: The President's Reflections." Disarmament Diplomacy, issue no. 84, spring 2007.

John Borrie, "The Limits of Modest Progress: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Efforts to Strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention." Arms Control Today, October 2006.

Photo Credit: Photo of H.E. Mr. Masood Khan - Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations and other Specialised Agencies in Geneva - retrieved from the website of the Pakistan Mission to the United Nations Geneva.

Randy Forsberg: A tribute to an inspiration

Dr Randall Forsberg
1943-2007

I first met Randy Forsberg in Brookline Massachusetts in 1987. Famous for having been the leading light behind the Nuclear Freeze initiative in the 1980s, she was a major name with a major reputation to my impressionable 30 year-old self. Visiting the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies with my colleagues from the newly-formed VERTIC, I was more than a little in awe of this Grand Dame of Disarmament. There was no need of course. Randy was not only down to earth and practical, she was respectful of all and, most importantly, she cared about what you had to bring to the debate. So if you were engaged, she was engaged with you. That did not mean agreement however. In fact, the greatest compliment Randy could pay you was to disagree with you. That meant that you had got her attention; that meant that she thought you were worth listening to and disagreeing with.

Randy was one of our Greats. She married academia with activism. She saw the connections between nuclear disarmament and conventional weapons and did more than write about the issues; she acted upon what she knew. One of the many inspired things she did was to set up the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) that produces the Arms Control Reporter – a regular updating of everything that happens pertaining to arms control. Most of us have relied on it and could not have achieved what we have without that fantastic resource.

Her recent work has been to focus on the prevention of war by co-founding Global Action to Prevent War. She had just been honoured as the newly designated Ann and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York. Randy’s knowledge and experience would have been invaluable in the move towards an Arms Trade Treaty. IDDS published professional manuals on global armed forces, and produced the annual IDDS Database of World Arms Holdings, Production and Trade. Only a few weeks ago, I was recommending UNIDIR’s Arms Trade Treaty research team to contact her and get a reading list – it would have been different to everybody else’s.

Randy died of endometrial cancer in New York, at the young age of 64. She was a mother, a writer, a leader, an inspiration to all of us. Ad victoriam, Randy, ad perpetuam memoriam.

There has been a fund established in her name. To support the Randall Forsberg Scholarship for Peace Research please go to: http://www.idds.org/.

There will be a gathering in memory of Dr. Randall Forsberg on Saturday December 1st, at 1:00 p.m., location: Great Hall in Shepard Hall, The City College of New York, 138th Street & Convent Avenue, New York.

A memorial service for Dr. Randall Forsberg will be held in Boston on December 15th, at 2:00 p.m, Location: MIT's Wong Auditorium at the Tang Center Corner of Wadsworth & Amherst Streets, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For more information on the life of Randy Forsberg, see the articles in The LA Times, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and on the website of Global Action to Prevent War.


This is a guest posting by Dr. Patricia Lewis, Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

The Hub, a “YouTube for human rights”

The international human rights organization Witness, founded in 1992 by musician and activist Peter Gabriel and the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, recently launched a project called The Hub.

Witness is a non-profit organization that provides video cameras, technical and strategic training to people in the field so that they can capture evidence of human rights violations.

The collected footage is used in different ways: as education and mobilization tools, as evidence in justice courts or to catalyze policy change. For example:

1. The arrest for war crimes in March 2006 in Democratic Republic of Congo of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo by the International Criminal Court resulted from an advocacy campaign by Witness’ partner AJEDI-Ka/PES, which included video distribution and screenings to key officials of the International Criminal Court.
   
   
2. Following the preview of a video by a Witness’ partner organization on the atrocities caused by landmines, the Senegalese Minister of Women’s and Family Affairs “pledged unprecedented funding for women landmine victims, and a regional hospital is providing prostheses free-of-charge.”

Witness said its goal is to provide resources to people so that they can “transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.” In that context, the Hub initiative is a further step towards the promotion of human rights.

As Peter Gabriel described it at the launch of the new website in early November, the Hub is “the first online global platform that offers you the tools you need to use media for advocacy — enabling you and millions of others worldwide to use camcorders, cell phones and cameras to upload, share, and discuss your human rights-related footage, as well as organize campaigns to create change.”

The Hub is currently in a “beta” stage as kinks are ironed out. But you can participate in various ways, in particular by uploading human rights related videos, images and audio files.

These kinds of innovations are worth spreading and might inspire those in the disarmament and arms control community, especially those working in the field who have been witness to the practical consequences of human rights violations and related problems of human insecurity. Share what you see! As a Witness slogan puts it:

“See it. Film it. Change it.”

Aurélia Merçay


References

The Hub website: http://hub.witness.org/.

Witness website: http://www.witness.org/.

Prism Webcast News, “Peter Gabriel launches the Hub—a ‘YouTube for human rights’”, http://prismwebcastnews.com/pwn/?p=1584.

Video of Peter Gabriel at 2006 TED Conference, “Fighting injustice with a videocamera”, available online at http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/23.

Reflecting on First Committee: What was achieved?

Since Tuesday, the commotion surrounding the CCW and cluster munitions has died down, leaving in its wake a deep sense of puzzlement over what actually was agreed (see our last three postings for more details). But more on that later. The December Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions, which forms part of the Oslo Process, will give us a chance to reflect on the outcome with a bit more distance, both geographical and temporal.

In the meantime, I would like to return to a theme I took up in a previous posting on the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, the one that deals with disarmament and international security. This annual month-long maelstrom of debate, lobbying, arm twisting and resolution drafting ended on November 2. What, then, does the First Committee have to show for its considerable exertion?

On the face of it, it was very productive indeed. Three hundred and fifteen official statements were delivered and 52 draft resolutions adopted on issues ranging from the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons to preventing an arms race in outer space. Add to this the numerous lunchtime seminars, informal consultations, power breakfasts and receptions that took place, and there can be little doubt that this year's First Committee kept representatives of governments, NGOs and international organisations very busy indeed.

Scratch the surface, however, and the picture changes. As Ray Acheson, editor of the excellent First Committee Monitor, puts it:

"If productivity can be measured by volume of paper circulated, then First Committee was extremely successful. If, however, we turn to [the] question of whether or not First Committee 'advanced the cause of disarmament and international security,' the 2007 session could best be characterized as underwhelming."

Why is this? Well, first of all, many of the draft resolutions that were adopted are repeats that re-appear every year or two, sometimes without any textual updating at all. These keep issues on the UN's agenda but do not contribute any new ideas to the debate.

Also, this year's First Committee underlined the continued isolation of the United States on many important issues. The US cast the sole 'no' vote on no less than 11 draft resolutions, pitting itself, unsupported, against an average of 161 other States who votes 'yes' on these resolutions. More than half of the time, the United States' sole negative vote went against 'yes' votes from all other permanent members of the Security Council - China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom. The issues on which the US took a defiant stance include preventing an arms race in outer space; nuclear weapons-related matters (including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), negative security assurances, and a nuclear weapon-free zone in Southeast Asia); the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons; and the relationship between disarmament and development, among others.

It was not all re-runs of old resolutions and defiant stances by the US however. This year's First Committee did break some new ground. New Zealand led the charge on a new draft resolution on "Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems," which was opposed only by France, the UK and the US. The Non-Aligned Movement succeed in passing a draft resolution on the "Effects of the use of armaments and ammunitions containing depleted uranium" that split the vote of the NATO bloc. Some new UN studies were also initiated, including a Group of Governmental Experts to review the operation and further development of the Standardized Instrument for Reporting Military Expenditures, which China recently rejoined.

These seem like isolated innovations, however; more like flashes in the pan than indications that First Committee might be trying to reach beyond its traditional approach of 'more of the same.' This brings into question the function that First Committee serves in the overall disarmament machinery, as well as the continued relevance of the machinery itself.

One of the issues that the United States opposed on its own was the convening of a fourth special session on disarmament (SSOD IV) of the UN General Assembly that would re-think, and possibly re-make, a disarmament machinery suitable for the 21st century. As Patricia Lewis, Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), asked delegates during one panel discussion, if SSOD IV is not the appropriate venue to review the disarmament machinery with a view to overhauling it, then what is? It's a good question.


Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: C.M. on flickr

Cluster munitions: a CCW mandate

The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) agreed a mandate on cluster munitions today after a difficult week of talks in Geneva, as foreshadowed in our preceding posts.

The text agreed by consensus is as follows:

"The Meeting of the High Contracting Parties to the CCW decided that the GGE [Group of Governmental Experts] will negotiate a proposal to address urgently the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions, while striking a balance between military and humanitarian considerations.

"The GGE should make every effort to negotiate this proposal as rapidly as possible and report on the progress made to the next meeting of the High Contracting Parties in November 2008.

"The work of the GGE will be supported by military and technical experts. The GGE will meet in 2008 not less than three times for a total of up to seven weeks, as follows:

- 14-18 January
- 7-31 July
- 1-5 September
- 3-7 November. "

When set alongside the Oslo Declaration, this text is weaker. It lacks a firm commitment to complete its work by the end of 2008, which the Oslo Declaration contains. While the Oslo Declaration focuses on addressing the humanitarian effects of cluster munitions, the CCW text balances this against military considerations. And while it is explicit in saying the GGE's work will be supported by military and technical experts, it doesn't mention humanitarian perspectives like those from the field.

Moreover, while there is a call for urgency, it doesn't seem to be borne out in the caveated language of the rest of the decision (the CCW will only meet to work for a single week in the first half of the year). Nor is it explicit that the CCW is working to achieve a legally-binding international treaty, saying instead that it "will negotiate a proposal".

Overall, the CCW mandate poses as many questions as it answers. Several countries with preferences for more - such as Canada - much more (Norway) as well as less (Russia) pointed this out in their own ways. Canada warned that the CCW could end up "wasting a great deal of time" reaching agreement on how to interpret the mandate, which would belie addressing cluster munitions "urgently". Norway, in a measured statement, said it would continue to work in the CCW even as it helps to lead the Oslo Process. Ireland, another Oslo core group country, expressed its disappointment that more couldn't have been achieved in the mandate.

Russia said it still harbours doubts, noting "considerable" (read: yawning) differences of approach expressed in the CCW over ways and means of addressing the impacts of cluster munitions on civilians, as well as uncertainties (read: major disagreements) about basic provisions like definitions. In a carefully scripted statement, it set out specific parameters of what it wanted to talk about in 2008.

Not an air of celebration then. The International Committee of the Red Cross noted its regret the mandate doesn't contain a strong commitment to a legally-binding instrument. The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) was the most outspoken, regarding "this as a wholly inadequate outcome. We cannot view this as a credible mandate". Later, in a press conference, HRW Arms Unit Director Steve Goose paraphrased the mandate outcome as "go slow and aim low".

Ouch. NGO views came as no surprise, however. A question on the minds of many diplomats and others here is: what does the CCW mandate mean for the Oslo Process?

In the short term, the likely answer is: probably not much. Next week, states parties to the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention meet in Jordan (I too will be there): that Conference's margins will be buzzing with competing prognostications. A yet-to-emerge "Vienna text" will be another topic of interest. Regardless of events this week in Geneva, the Vienna Conference on cluster munitions in early December - the next major event in the Oslo Process calendar - will meet and may attract a hundred participating states. It's chair will be working to focus minds there on the substance of a possible treaty.

The CCW mandate calls for almost seven weeks of work in Geneva in 2008. Quite what delegations will do throughout the CCW's 2008 work schedule is unclear in view of substantial differences of scope and ambition there, but almost seven weeks is a quite a burden on even large governments. In contrast, all of the entire projected Oslo Process from Oslo in February 2007 until the end of May 2008 (in Dublin) adds up to around 23 days, not including regional meetings.

But will those states inside the Oslo Process who've maintained in public statements their preference for CCW work (particularly some of the Europeans) bail out now that it has a mandate?

Probably not. The CCW's agreed mandate falls well short of the European Union's own mandate proposal, as its current President (Portugal) noted this morning, which contains an end-of-2008 deadline and is much more robust - drawing in part on Oslo Declaration language. Given domestic pressures in many countries such as the UK and Germany, it would be difficult for them to walk away from Oslo without severe criticism. And if they do leave the Oslo Process, it will be much harder for them to influence the negotiation's direction and the end-result's content.

The reality is that the continuation of the Oslo Process is useful to efforts in the CCW. After all, there would be no mandate without the Oslo Process's emergence.

The big question in all of this nobody should forget - especially not diplomats and national decision-makers - is one of human security: what will be the positive impact on people living with the hazards posed by cluster munitions? There it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the Oslo Process seems to win hands down.

The CCW might yet amaze us all. But to my mind, when seen alongside the Oslo Declaration, the mandate agreed today simply underlines the difficulties ahead for the CCW in achieving a credible result.


John Borrie


Photo of the cluster munition exhibition by Handicap International Switzerland and the Broken Chair sculpture outside the Geneva Palais des Nations by John Borrie.

CCW: More scenes from a play

On Friday, Patrick Mc Carthy reported on the state of efforts of the member countries of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to achieve a mandate to negotiate on cluster munitions. Ambassador Janis Karklins of Latvia presented the Meeting of States Parties with his shot at a draft mandate, then waved adieu.

As Patrick suggested, the draft mandate Ambassador Karklins offered may have been too strong. Today, the Meeting of States Parties only gathered briefly - most of it spent instead by the Chair (Greece) in informal side consultations with 'key' players (that is, the stickiest). The rest (exhorted by the Chair not to leave the building) sat around and waited, drinking vast amounts of coffee in the process and looking wistfully out the window at a beautiful autumn day they could not experience.

Word is that a least one large cluster munition user state (Russia) doesn't want to see "negotiate" in the mandate, and would prefer a weaker formulation "to elaborate proposals", among other changes proposed.

It is obviously of concern to the European Union, which has met in hermetically sealed emergency group convocation at least twice today. The great majority of the EU's members are also ostensible supporters of the Oslo Process, and it has had a long-standing mandate proposal in the CCW to:

"establish a Group of Governmental Experts with a schedule of no less than three meetings to negotiate a legally-binding instrument that addresses the humanitarian concerns of cluster munitions in all their aspects by the end of 2008."

They (like others) realise it would be difficult to argue that a CCW mandate for up to seven weeks of diplomatic work in 2008 is credible if it failed even to mention a negotiation, not least in view of the Oslo Process.

Tempers are fraying, but consultations grind on (perhaps inhumanely).

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Palais this morning, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, with help from UNIDIR, launched the ninth Landmine Monitor report, attended by a good turn-out of media. As a means of civil society verification of the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, Landmine Monitor plays a special role in disarmament and arms control. Far from being treated with skepticism by governments , Landmine Monitor is more or less seen as the bible for information about the state of Mine Ban Convention implementation.

On the whole, the news is fairly positive. Funding for mine action in 2006 was the highest recorded, led by contributions from the U.S., the European Commission, Norway and Canada. And the treaty now has 155 States Parties. The number of new mine casualties is down. And only two countries seem to have used anti-personnel mines in 2006.

That's the good news. Less great is that while mine action funding is high, a lot of it was emergency funding - for instance, for Lebanon - rather than for stabilising longer-term mine action efforts. Very few of these funds are assigned to victim assistance, which is very much the Cinderella of mine action. A number of non-state armed groups appear to have used anti-personnel mines, and a number of states party to the Convention look likely to miss important deadlines for mine clearance.

That said, without underestimating these challenges, they're practical problems that can be dealt with if the energy and pragmatism that's become a hallmark of the Mine Ban Convention is sustained.

Meanwhile, down the hall, negotiations between diplomats in the CCW are likely to continue into the night.


John Borrie


Photo of CCW conference chamber by John Borrie.

Cluster Munitions Proving Hard Nut to Crack for CCW

States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) - also known as the 'Inhumane Weapons Convention' - have just ended day three of their five-day annual meeting in Geneva with an anticlimax on cluster munitions.

Following days of intensive consultations - and rumours this morning that an agreed CCW negotiating mandate on cluster munitions was imminent - the Coordinator of the Group of Governmental Experts, Ambassador Janis Karklins of Latvia, was only able to transmit to States Parties a note containing his sense of what the meeting might be able to agree before it adjourns next Tuesday. The Coordinator's note, which has no official status, reads as follows:

The High Contracting Parties to the CCW decided that the GGE, without preconditions and prejudice to the outcome, will negotiate an instrument of the Convention to address urgently the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions, while striking a balance between military and humanitarian considerations.

The GGE should make every effort to prepare this instrument as rapidly as possible and report on the progress made to the next meeting of the High Contracting Parties in November 2008.

The GGE will meet in 2008 not less than three times for a total of up to seven weeks. Its work will be supported by military experts.

Ambassador Karklins admitted that his note was "too little for most States" but "a little too much for some States" and hoped that it might lead the way to an acceptable compromise. The note will have to lead on its own since, due to other commitments, Ambassador Karklins will not be in Geneva next week to see it through. He essentially handed his note over to States Parties and wished them the "best of luck" with it, sparking chuckles, particularly from many of the NGOs in the room.

The Coordinator's note is actually stronger than early indications suggested. It actually uses the word "negotiate" and employs terms such as "urgently" and "as rapidly as possible." However, the note does not make specific that negotiations would lead to a legally-binding instrument, even though it must be said that all other instruments of the CCW - its five Protocols - are legally binding on States that have adhered to them. Nor does the Coordinator's note set a deadline for finalising a new instrument on cluster munitions, leaving open the possibility that negotiations could drag on.

To my mind, the wording of the note, weak as it is in comparison with the Oslo Declaration on cluster munitions, will nevertheless prove too strong for some key States and we will see some watering down of text happening on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

Our posting on Wednesday will provide a final analysis of the outcome. Stay tuned...


Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo courtesy of the author

A registry for predictions

As part of our research, UNIDIR’s Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project has been exploring why it’s difficult to accurately predict future events in the political field (see John Borrie’s recent post “Putting Predictions to the Test”). On the same topic, I recently saw David Brin, a physics professor, NASA consultant and science fiction novelist, talk about the idea of a “prediction registry”.

Although making predictions about the future is an extremely difficult task—especially in the political field—this is something that humans have always done. (Brin noted that our prefrontal lobes, which appeared perhaps a few hundred thousand years ago and which are specific to the human brain, play a significant role in exploring potential outcomes and making predictions.)

Today, we’ve developed tools and techniques to help us make forecasts. Computer simulations, and agent-based modelling in particular, are used to analyze complex phenomena. Although very sophisticated, these new techniques can only provide a limited amount of information about the future behaviour of a complex system. This is because, as complexity theory shows, complex systems are “inherently” unpredictable.

However, as Brin noticed, this doesn’t prevent us from making predictions, nor does it prevent us from spending a lot of money and time in trying to make accurate guesses. Starting from this insight, and realizing that there is no record of who was right, how often and when, Brin proposed a prediction registry be set up: “anyone who claims any form of special foresight might be judged by the same standards that applies to any other field of endeavour—success or failure.”

In addition, each forecast would receive a “specificity multiplier”, taking a high value if the prediction is very precise (providing dates, names, places, etc.) and a low value it if the forecast is obscure.

This could be valuable. First, predictors and forecast specialists would “be held accountable for all of their predictions, not just those they later choose to remember.” This is important as it would significantly improve transparency. The introduction of an “accuracy score”, in particular, could reveal the most accurate predictors, giving them credibility and recognition, and increasing their role in policy making.

There might be some surprises. As Philip Tetlock showed in his book “Expert Political Judgment: How Good is It? How Can We Know?”, experts aren’t necessarily more competent than the rest of us.
Finding out who is right a lot in prediction and problem solving, while denying legitimacy to those who are consistently wrong, would probably be in society’s best interest.

But most importantly, the analysis of scores, Brin suggested, could also help us understand our own patterns of success, failure and predictions. Tetlock’s work has already underlined the influence of various psychological biases on so-called experts. Yet policy analysts and decision makers aren’t soothsayers. If we’re at all realistic, we need to recognise that predictors can never be always right. But if a prediction registry made more of them rigorous in their thinking and less instinctively cocksure in their predictions, that would be a big step forward for 21st century society.


Aurélia Merçay


References

David Brin, Accountability for Everyday Prophets: A Call for a Predictions Registry, 2005, available online at http://www.davidbrin.com/predictionsregistry.html.

A list of David Brin’s predictions is available online at http://earthbydavidbrin.pbwiki.com/Predictions.

Video of David Brin, interviewed at the 6th International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS) in Boston in June 2006: http://complexity.vub.ac.be/~comdig/06iccs/Brin.MOV.

Photo by 'SeraphimC retrieved from Flickr.