Building discourse on explosive weapons

We have a new website you should check out (and bookmark) at: www.ExplosiveWeapons.info.

But hold on, I hear you say, what about Disarmament Insight? Don’t worry, it’s not disappearing. But over the course of 2010 our efforts will be on this new website, with which we’ll be able to do things we can’t with dear old Blogger.

Originally set up in 2007 to accompany our work that year as part of the 'Disarmament as Humanitarian Action' project at UNIDIR, the Disarmament Insight blog you’re reading now continued a lot longer - and achieved a much wider readership - than we ever hoped. In particular, the blog's commentary became one reference for those seeking independent analysis on what was going on during the Oslo process on cluster munitions. However, the DI blog covered all sorts of other issues relevant to humanitarian disarmament work from anti-personnel mines to primate behaviour, evolutionary psychology to explosive violence.

Blog readers will have noticed that over the last few months our blogging has tapered off, with some conspicuous exceptions like Tim Caughley's thought-provoking analysis of the Conference on Disarmament’s Shannon Mandate. That's because toward the end of last year Maya and I completed our project at UNIDIR on a history of international efforts on cluster munitions, which resulted in a book I wrote entitled Unacceptable Harm: A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions Was Won. After that marathon we both took a break from the blinking cursor for a while.

Among the things it covers, ‘Unacceptable Harm’ looks at what lessons banning cluster munitions might hold for future efforts to protect civilians from the effects of explosive weapons. This was also a topic explored over the course of the blog (just type ‘explosive weapons’ into the search box at right to get a list of posts). In that regard, I’m pleased to report that in January of this year we commenced a new project at UNIDIR on Discourse on Explosive Weapons (DEW), with the kind financial support of the Government of Norway.

The effects of explosive weapons on civilians represent a distinct humanitarian problem—one recognized by the UN Secretary-General in his 2009 report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict (S/2009/277).

Explosive weapons range from unitary bombs, cluster munitions, rockets and missiles to grenades, shells, improvised explosive devices and mines. The blast wave created by the detonation, projection of fragments, and sometimes the collapse of structures in the surrounding area is a major cause of civilian harm. Explosive weapons also cause damage to infrastructure vital to the civilian population and leave behind unexploded explosive ordnance, which poses a post-conflict health risk and negatively affects reconstruction and long-term development.

Representatives of States seem to find it difficult to engage in substantive dialogue on how to address the concerns raised by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. Policy practitioners lack a common vocabulary and conceptual tools to enable them to productively frame these issues.

Meanwhile, the process leading to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions provides an example of how the international debate on a weapon category was re-framed to put the protection of civilians at its centre. In addition, a 2009 report by Landmine Action (now re-branded Action on Armed Violence) on Explosive Violence showed that States already tacitly recognize explosive weapons as a single category from a technological and ethical standpoint.

Greater focus on the humanitarian effects of explosive weapons could enhance civilian protection, support the effectiveness of legal norms applicable in armed conflict, contribute to reducing the global burden of armed violence and represent a further step toward creating the conditions for general and complete disarmament. Practical ways to achieve that is what the DEW project is exploring.

As part of the project’s work, alongside symposia and the generation of resource materials, we’ve set up the explosive weapons website. This is where news and resources related to our explosive weapons work will appear during the course of 2010 including background papers, podcasts and summary reports from our symposia. There’s even a Twitter feed… (We also have a project page at UNIDIR here.) We invite you to follow our work and avail yourself of the stuff we’re producing.

As always, thanks to all of our readers and please keep following our work!

John Borrie

Picture: 'Explosion, Abkhazia' (Simon Conway, Landmine Action).

Patterns of explosive violence

The shelling of a hospital in North East Sri Lanka has brought the battle that the government armed forces wage there against the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) back into international headlines. The humanitarian situation has deteriorated to the point of being called ‘nightmarish’ as hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped between the front lines, in an area now quite inadequately named ‘the safe zone’.

Like the recent events in Gaza, the situation in Sri Lanka is another sad illustration of the severe humanitarian harm that the use of explosive force in populated areas consistently causes. A recent Policy Brief by Landmine Action emphasizes the direct link between the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and the civilian harm that predictably results from it.

The policy brief notes that media coverage and policy analysis on the Gaza conflict tended to focus on the use of white phosphorous (including on this blog) and other ‘unusual’ weapons, a focus which risks to ‘normalise’ the use of explosive force generally. It should, however, be recognized that explosive weapons caused ‘by far the greatest number of deaths and injuries’ in the Gaza conflict, that explosive force in general is ‘particularly associated with psychological harm’, especially among children, and that in an armed conflict it is usually explosive weapons that cause most damage to infrastructure, such as houses, hospitals, schools, and the electrical power, water and sewage systems. Moreover, unexploded explosive ordnance presents ongoing health risks to the civilian population for years after a conflict has ended.

Landmine Action calls in its policy brief for more explicit recognition of the humanitarian impact of the use of explosive force in populated areas and encourages humanitarian organizations to challenge the prevailing attitude towards this ‘technological pattern of force’ as ‘normal’ or ‘conventional’. In order to further stigmatize the use of explosive force in populated areas ‘a collective and explicit recognition that explosive weapons used in populated areas tend to result in a predictable pattern of indiscriminate and severe humanitarian harm’ can help to ‘shape the public and political discourse about what is right and wrong’.


Maya Brehm

Photo Credit: 'p012877' by Conseil Régional de Basse-Normandie / National Archives USA, available at: PhotosNormandie on Flickr.

References:
Explosive violence: Israel and Gaza, Landmine Action Policy Brief, 30 January 2009.
Explosive Violence blog by Richard Moyes.

Protecting civilians from explosive violence: time for states to raise their voices

Last week the United Nations Secretary-General submitted his annual report to the Security Council on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. The language of the report represents something of a break-though of a sort that's pleasing to see from the editorial perspective of this blog. Hopefully now states will also begin to make their voices heard in supporting the Protection of Civilians report's content both in the Security Council chamber and in elsewhere.

The Secretary-General's report observed that the "choice of weapons is critical in minimizing and reducing the impacts of hostilities on civilians". While this might sound obvious, it's worth noting that heavy weapons such as artillery and rockets were nevertheless used in populated areas in conflicts in recent months such as Gaza and in Sri Lanka, something the report also commented on in its paragraph 36:

"As demonstrated by this year’s hostilities in Sri Lanka and Israel’s campaign in Gaza, the use in densely populated environments of explosive weapons that have so-called “area effect” inevitably has an indiscriminate and severe humanitarian impact. First, in terms of the risk to civilians caught in the blast radius or killed or injured by damaged and collapsed buildings. Secondly, in terms of damage to infrastructure vital to the wellbeing of the civilian population, such as water and sanitation systems."

These are certainly issues that individually some Security Council members are taking very seriously. Only today, for instance, the New York Times reported that the new American military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, would sharply restrict the use of airstrikes there in an effort to reduce the civilian deaths he had concluded were undermining the American-led mission. In today's warfare, in which the lines between military objectives and civilian concentrations are usually blurred, those on the cutting edge of military thought are increasingly aware that the use of explosive violence in such areas can be counter-productive, as well as morally and legally unacceptable.

The Secretary-General further noted in last week's report that the Security Council "has a critical role in promoting systematic compliance with the law" including condemning violations "without exceptions", threatening and if necessary applying targeted measures against the leadership of parties violating their obligations to "respect" civilians and keeping track of violations and mandating commissions of inquiry "where concerns exist regarding serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law".

The British NGO Landmine Action issued a media release responding to the Secretary General's report, which

"welcomes the clear expression of concern from the UN Secretary-General regarding the humanitarian problems caused by explosive weapons. Landmine Action urges States, international organisations and civil society to further document the civilian harm caused by explosive weapons, work to prevent the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and support all efforts to minimise the post-conflict harm that explosive weapons cause."

One of the key points underlined by multilateral processes representing 'disarmament as humanitarian action' such as the Ottawa process to prohibit anti-personnel mines and the Oslo process resulting in the Convention on Cluster Munitions is that the collection and analysis of empirical evidence is crucial in changing policy makers' minds and re-framing issues in ways that make them more tractable. Nevertheless, weapons-specific processes like these require a huge amount of effort that is difficult to sustain throughout treaty implementation, let alone repeat for other weapons.

And, a risk of weapon-specific multilateral processes in general is that governments opposed to stigmatising the use of explosive violence in populated areas will succeed in breaking up and subdividing issues around use of explosive weapons (as Richard Moyes at Landmine Action has pointed out) that muddy the waters, or denude relevant multilateral processes of real value.

There is a need for the international community to begin looking beyond just the weapon specific to highlight explosive weapons as a broad category of concern at time of use and post-conflict. This is something a few of us have already begun trying to do (Landmine Action's media release mentioned, for instance, Disarmament Insight's work at facilitating such discussion).

In light of the Protection of Civilians report, the Security Council could be one place for states and international organisations to take the new discourse forward. But it also needs to be a broader debate. The international community should do more to ensure civilians are protected, and that will necessarily entail some fresh thinking.

John Borrie

Image downloaded from Wikipedia: "A Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) weapon is prepared for testing at the Eglin Air Force Armament Center on March 11, 2003. The MOAB is a precision-guided munition weighing 21,500 pounds and will be dropped from a C-130 Hercules aircraft for the test. It will be the largest non-nuclear conventional weapon in existence."

IEDs a threat to peace and security

The Times ran an interesting article earlier this week entitled 'The success of the home-made bomb: increased use of improvised electronic devices poses threat to peace and security'. The article is the latest in a steady trickle of media reporting about what are frequently described as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), which are a frequent weapon of insurgents in Iraq, the Taleban in Afghanistan and by various other violent actors in many conflicts around the world.

IEDs certainly aren't a new phenomenon, but they've become of increasing concern and profile for Western militaries this decade as they've found themselves in zones in which their troops are exposed to the weapons to a greater extent. The Times article mentioned above contends that up to 300 IEDs are detonated somewhere in the world every month. The countries affected include Algeria, Chechnya, Pakistan, Colombia and Sri Lanka as well as Afghanistan and Iraq mentioned already. Moreover, the Washington Post reported in July that suspected Shiite militiamen in Iraq have even begun using powerful rocket-propelled bombs described as Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs:

"They are propane tanks packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and powered by 107mm rockets. They are often fired by remote control from the backs of trucks, sometimes in close succession. Rocket-propelled bombs have killed at least 21 people, including at least three U.S. soldiers, this year."

(You can see some pictures of IRAMs on the Long War Journal.)

Increasing amounts of money and other resources are being spent by some governments on detection and countermeasures in order to protect their troops. But, of course, beyond the military threats there are also the deadly hazards to civilians of IEDs - who usually have no protection whatsoever, and are, indeed, often the intended victims of IED attacks. Nor is this just a headache in places like Iraq: at least one media report indicates that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI agree that "the homemade explosive devices that have wreaked havoc in Iraq pose a rising threat to the United States." Intelligence and law enforcement agencies in many other countries are also concerned.

More focused and systematic data collection about IEDs is needed, as well as some policy dialogue at the international level in the arms control field about whether and how work in this area might be of benefit. Unfortunately, we're headed into arms control silly season from here until the end of the year, with UN First Committee in New York, the biological weapons, anti-personnel mines and Certain Convention Weapons Conventions' meetings in Geneva, and the Convention on Cluster Munitions signing ceremony in Oslo where most multilateral arms control attention will be - not to mention an upcoming U.S. presidential election and an unfolding world financial crisis.

However, someone thinking and blogging on these things on a frequent basis is Landmine Action UK's Policy & Research Manager Richard Moyes, whose Explosive Violence blog Disarmament Insight also has a link to at right. Richard is also, it seems, keeping a useful ad hoc log of explosive violence incidents, many of which pertain to IED use: you can check that out here.

We certainly can't claim ignorance that IEDs are a problem, even if a lot more investigation and attention is needed.

John Borrie

Image credit: borrowed from Richard's Explosive Violence blog.

Analyzing armed violence: the Taback - Coupland model

Promoting human security will benefit from meaningful data. I recently attended a meeting organized by the Small Arms Survey (SAS) in Geneva, Switzerland, on the potential of using the Taback-Coupland model for human security mapping.


Nathan Taback, a Canadian statistician, and Robin Coupland, an advisor on armed violence at the International Committee of the Red Cross and former field surgeon, have developed a model that converts media reports into data in order to document and analyze the effects of armed violence.

The model is constructed around four parameters, which the researchers assume to be the “risk factors” for the effects of armed violence. It includes the nature of the weapon, the number of weapons used, the way the weapon is used, and the victim’s vulnerability. Coupland and Taback describe their model in a chapter of our third volume of research (“Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations”).

The idea is that, by extracting significant information from media reports – like the number of people killed, the number of people wounded, the type of weapon used, the number of weapons and the vulnerability of the victim (for instance, was there a wall to take shelter behind?) – then it’s possible to draw conclusions about the intent of the perpetrator.

This is pertinent to international criminal law. By providing a context, the Taback-Coupland model permits an “evidence-based” dialogue about the perpetrators and their intents and about the victims and their vulnerabilities.

A second way to use the model is to conduct probabilistic risk assessment of a country or a region and draw conclusions on which scenario is particularly risky for a specific vulnerable group.

Taback and Coupland tested their model using news reports on attacks on journalists, as these events tend to be well reported. Further applications – some already putting the model into practice, others at a preliminary stage – include a registry of explosive violence (Landmine Action UK), a registry of sexual violence in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and test-cases for country assessments carried out by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey (in Uganda, Nigeria, Mauritania and Nepal).

Many participants at the meeting pointed out the poor quality of media reports and their lack of reliability. However, although not comprehensive, media reports are the only day-to-day public source of information about human insecurity. While one should be be careful when using media reports, it’s sometimes the only information available and it’s nevertheless possible to glean useful information from it.

Moreover, a long-term perspective could be to develop the model as a tool for journalists, who could directly enter the relevant data of the events linked to armed violence they observe.

While there are international surveillance systems for monitoring infectious disease outbreaks, no such system exists (yet) to evaluate on a regular basis the effects of armed violence on peoples’ lives. With that in mind, the method developed by Taback and Coupland is a useful contribution to international efforts to enhance human security, including in disarmament.


Aurélia Merçay


References

Cost Working group meeting on Using the Taback-Coupland Method for Human Security Mapping in SAS Country Assessments, Small Arms Survey, Geneva, Switzerland, 3 September 2007.

Picture inspired by a scheme presented by Robin Coupland at the meeting.

For more information, see N. Taback & R. Coupland, “Security of journalists: making the case for modelling armed violence as a means to promote human security”, published in Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations.

For a further introduction to the thinking behind the Taback-Coupland model see Robin’s chapter in our first volume of research, entitled “Modelling armed violence: a tool for humanitarian dialogue in disarmament and arms control”.

Science, humanity and humanitarian action

This blog analyses what the word “humanity” means and proposes that a new definition and a modern way of speaking of humanity could improve “humanitarian dialogue” with respect to weapons, their use and public health. It suggests that those who use the term “humanity”, especially the International Red Cross Movement, should replace relatively vague references with a dialogue based on scientific insights and current knowledge of what this notion means.

“Humanity” is used in different ways. It can mean human beings collectively (“humanity as all humans”), but at the same time it carries notions of philanthropy and altruism (“humanity as moral sentiment.”). Within the latter meaning the “laws of humanity” and “crimes against humanity” are referred to in international treaties and humanity is cited as a source of international law. Humanity implies a moral force. But how this constrains inhumanity - that invariably involves use of force or acts of armed violence - is unclear.

People who use the words “humanity” and “humanitarian” are often perceived as - or really are – trying to place themselves on a moral high ground. It is unclear whether “humanity as moral sentiment” has been replaced by or integrated into contemporary concepts such as human rights, development, humanitarian intervention and human security. If we look for what is meant by “humanity” which is presented as the first, overarching principle of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, we find an explanation of what is done in the spirit of humanity but not what it is. This impoverishes our interventions and often makes our pleadings appear sentimental, ill-informed and “unrealistic”. We therefore need to take a new look at humanity, what we mean by it, how we talk about it and how it can be used more effectively in dialogue about restraining or prohibiting certain weapons and acts of armed violence and in promoting human well being.

A knowledge-based approach to humanity

The last few hundred years have seen a massive increase in the population of the planet and the organization of “humanity-as-all-humans” into a system of nation-States. In parallel, we have seen remarkable advances in things that shape our existence such as manufacturing technology, commerce, communications, politics, health-care and weapons, to name but a few. In broad terms, the populations of States where there is access to these advances enjoy longer and better lives; the major reason for this is that they enjoy collective security. This security relies on having a legitimate capacity for armed violence either to defend the State (armed forces) or maintain law and order within the State (police) whilst, at the same time, placing great restraints on this capacity. Furthermore situations in which the capacity for armed violence is unrestrained (whether this be use of explosive weapons, displacement of whole populations or torture) is universally considered to be abhorrent (“humanity as moral sentiment”).

In brief it is increasingly recognized, and can be demonstrated by an important body of research, that people’s security is a prerequisite for their health and this applies to all of humanity “humanity as all humans”. This is not an original observation. In 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote, in effect, that without security, “… there is no place for industry... no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

“Humanity as moral sentiment” really does exist! It has been made objective in the work of multiple academic disciplines. An innate resistance to killing other humans is well documented (as are different means to overcome this resistance.) Studies of "primitive warfare" reveal that cruelty is not the norm, that fatalities may be few and that the violence is accompanied by much ritual and, importantly, restraint. It has been shown that altruism is a biological phenomenon observable throughout the animal world. Children who are educated to think about the plight of others who suffer some misfortune or cruelty are, in later life, less likely to resolve disputes by resorting to violence. On the negative side, studies have shown how ordinary people can be brought to inflict great pain and suffering on inoffensive strangers. The emotional distance brought by the use of explosive weapons that separate their user and victim in time and space has been explained. In the same vein, there is ample evidence that "dehumanization" of an enemy is an important element in the committing of war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity; some even argue it's a prerequisite. In brief, “humanity as moral sentiment” and acts of inhumanity by humans are largely explicable in scientific terms and even in terms of our modern insights into evolved biology. An innate morality equips us for living in large groups. (It is shown that chimpanzees express moral sentiments too! Chimpanity!).

A new approach to “humanity” also has implications at the operational level. For example, in the world of global health, a new wind is blowing. This takes the form of rapidly advancing knowledge of the social determinants of health. Understanding the impact on health of education, housing, poverty, lifestyles and, above all, security moves the concern (and responsibility for) people’s health out of a traditional public health domain. This opens the door to tangible evidence-based interventions to improve people’s health without the need for formal health programmes. For example, in many parts of the world, the single most important factor determining whether a child dies in its first few months of life is the level of education of the mother. In a country torn by conflict, the education of girls may be severely repressed. A new approach to “humanity” –with weighty implications for people’s security and health - would bring authority to a claim that a programme targeting female illiteracy is both urgent and pertinent. Such a programme would find its correct place among the competing priorities for “humanitarian action.” Incorporating the social determinants of health into the activities of all components of the Movement is now an imperative.  Without doing so, it is difficult to claim we are well informed or driven by a serious notion of humanity.

 Implications

The dual notions of humanity constantly interact.  The fulcrum of this interaction is the capacity of human beings and human society for armed violence and their capacity to restrain it. “Humanity as moral sentiment” limits, to the greatest extent possible, the effects of armed violence or threat of it on people’s security and health. It restrains the capacity for armed violence so that “humanity as all humans” can live in peaceful, constructive societies in which, for instance, family life, education, commerce and, most importantly, people’s health can flourish.

A definition of humanity combining both notions could read as follows: “With the goal of ensuring peaceful, collective and constructive human existence, humanity requires  the restraint of any capacity for armed violence and limits the effects of armed violence on people’s security and health.”

In light of the above, a new approach to speaking of “humanity” is needed that is in keeping with multiple insights drawn from contemporary knowledge. It should be objective, comprehensible, universal and communicable. It should reveal the common denominator of concern of all “humanitarian actors.” It should reinforce the six other fundamental principles of the Red Cross / Red Crescent Movement. Such an approach would help demonstrate that the Movement (and any other actor invoking a notion of “humanity”) is open and listening to the world (including the world of science and inquiry) and not lofty, sentimental or simply “do-gooders”. This in turn could help engage those from other sectors and help motivate these circles and our own volunteer base, particularly among youth.

How does this new approach to talking about “humanity” help us in real terms? Promoting a well informed dialogue about weapons, violence, health and human well-being based on an objective understanding of humanity could force greater consideration of the vulnerabilities to armed violence of and its impact on people, groups, and communities. It would serve to raise the moral stakes in the humanitarian dialogue and increase the burden of responsibility on the users or potential users of weapons. This would occur because their actions would be discussed and analyzed in terms of what these actions mean for people’s lives and not only whether or not they are illegal. It would underscore the true universality of humanitarian law and human rights law and maintain a focus on the object and purpose of these bodies of law. Most importantly it would help generate a “facts-based” agenda for humanitarian action and assist the Movement in setting priorities.

Time taken for a new look at how we understand and communicate about “humanity” would be time well spent. It could change the international dialogue on the means to constrain armed violence and build healthy, sustainable societies. It permits an action-orientated view of the security and health of people who lack both and for whom life is still … “poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

This is a guest blog contributed by Robin Coupland and Peter Herby.

Previous published thoughts on humanity, health and security by Dr Coupland are:

- “Humanity: what is it and how does it influence international law” International Review of the Red Cross 2001, Vol. 83, No. 844, p.969

- “The Humanity of Humans: Philosophy, Science, Health, or Rights?”

Health and Human Rights 2003, Vol. 7, p.159.

- “Exploring the humanity of humans” The Red Cross / Red Crescent Magazine 2004, Vol. 1, p.26.

- “Security, insecurity and health” Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 2007, Vol. 85, p.181.

Archimedes, one of the leading scientists and inventors in classical antiquity, is said to have remarked of the lever: “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth”. (The image above is an engraving from Mechanics Magazine published in London in 1824.)

Explosive issues

In between following the political and diplomatic progress of disarmament processes like those related to cluster munitions, small arms, the arms trade and nuclear weapons, Disarmament Insight posts have also looked at some broader issues. Last week in 'The Use of Weapons' I discussed aspects of David Edgerton's book, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 - focusing on Edgerton's analysis of Second World War technologies like strategic bombing, atomic weapons and the V2 rocket and implications for today.

One nice thing about blogging is that you sometimes receive feedback about your posts. For instance, our site offers a comment function (see the link at the foot of each post) on which readers can post their remarks or questions.

Last week a chap named Ward Wilson contacted Disarmament Insight. Ward wrote an article in International Security journal last year on "The Winning Weapon? Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima" - an interesting analysis that re-examines the widely-held presumption (which I also touched on my blog post) that nuclear weapons played a decisive role in winning the war in the Pacific. I'd been unaware of Ward's article, and it appears he was unaware of Edgerton's book until reading our blog, so it seems we're all better off.

Ward, it seems, is quite a busy guy, as he too has a blog, entitled 'Rethinking Nuclear Weapons', which is worth checking out. Ward says it's part of a project "to explore the practical realities of nuclear weapons".

In addition, Ward's also just been awarded the Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Challenge Essay Contest's Grand Prize for a piece he wrote entitled "The Myth of Deterrence". This is a big deal. Hopefully Ward's article will be available somewhere online soon. In the meantime, congratulations and well done to him.

Someone else out there on the World Wide Web doing some hard thinking about questions related to aspects of armed violence is Richard Moyes, Policy & Research Manager at the British NGO Landmine Action. Richard has just started a new blog entitled 'Explosive Violence' that examines news reports and issues related to the use of explosive weapons in crime and conflict.

Throughout the twentieth and early twentieth centuries we've seen the boundaries between the use of force in the battlefield and in civilian areas increasingly blurred, whether you think of strategic bombing in the Second World War or South East Asia, or suicide bombing. And what was nuclear deterrence during the Cold War if not the threat to unleash massive quantities of explosive force in populated areas, no matter how strategic planners tried to dignify it?

Recent efforts, like the new Convention on Cluster Munitions, are doing something about this as regards certain specific weapon types, and the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons has tried and is trying - with varying success - to tackle this in its own manner. The use of explosive force in populated areas is an elephant in the room in both multilateral disarmament and arms control and in international humanitarian law efforts and its logical that greater efforts are made to consider what the implications of that are.

So good luck to both Ward and Richard, and we look forward to reading their future thoughts on aspects of these issues and more.

John Borrie


Reference

Wilson, Ward. "The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima." International Security 31 4 (Spring 2007): 162-179.

Picture: 'Explosive!' by Lili Vieira de Carvalho downloaded from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Disarmament Insight: Just popped out ...

In March 2007, along with Patrick Mc Carthy from the Geneva Forum, I started the Disarmament Insight blog to help communicate the findings of UNIDIR's project on Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: Making Multilateral Negotiations work (DHA). At that time, I think none of us involved envisaged that more than two-and-a-half years later the blog would still be running, or that it would have covered the myriad of subjects it has - from the Conference on Disarmament to the cognitive constraints on negotiators, from export controls to explosive violence, nuclear disarmament to negotiation theory - in hundreds of posts from dozens of contributors. During that time we've witnessed an almost-complete turn-over of core contributors, with Patrick having shifted to UNDP and Maya Brehm on board at UNIDIR.

Along the way, the blog became one respected source of news and analysis on international efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions, in particular. This emphasis on cluster munitions was only fitting: the UN's Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons talks and the eventual Oslo process that emerged in parallel underlined many of the points we were trying to make in the DHA project's work. The achievement of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in May 2008 was hugely gratifying, and obviously we believe lends weight to some DHA findings.

Another reason was that as a follow-on from the DHA project's work we undertook a new project to tell the story of these efforts on cluster munitions. This project officially commenced in March 2008. A detailed analytical history, entitled Unacceptable Harm: A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions Was Won, which I wrote, was intended to be the main product. This book is now completed, and earlier this week it went to the UN print shop for production. We hope that the book will be available for launch and distribution in December. (During the pretty intense editing and production period in September and October, regular readers may have noticed we weren't posting on the blog, for which I offer our apologies.)

Apart from launch events associated with Unacceptable Harm in December and January, the cluster munition project is now finished. Both Maya and I are taking a break while we wait for word on future funding for an exciting new project. It means that this will be the last Disarmament Insight post for a while.

But keep checking the blog come December, and retain it on your list of RSS feeds as we anticipate news to come of various kinds including more information about Unacceptable Harm when it's out in print.

John Borrie

The Best Club in Town?

Multilateral diplomacy is a cautious business in its working methods. Governments and their diplomats are usually reluctant to break with established precedent. This conservatism is now deeply ingrained. The UN’s committee-style negotiating structures operate pretty much now as they did 60 years ago when it had one-quarter of its current membership and international diplomacy was largely a gentleman’s club.

But the world has changed. These changes are more than rhetorical – they present new risks and opportunities for states people and diplomats, and most of all to the security of people and communities they are often psychologically distant from. The issues stemming from intuitions like Tit for Tat are still poorly understood, especially in very large group dynamics like UN negotiations. The brute reality is that if diplomats don’t consider the pros and cons of these types of intuitive strategy, they’ll be handicapped in dealing with problems of cooperation central to multilateral decision-making.

These are some of the things our project, entitled Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: Making Multilateral Negotiations Work, has been thinking about. The project examines how disarmament and arms control can be infused by humanitarian approaches, which (in contrast to orthodox arms control processes over the last decade) have encountered greater success. While one could quibble about the extent of these negotiating successes, they've nevertheless been real. Achievements include an international treaty to ban anti-personnel mines in 1997 and more recent efforts to reduce the post-conflict effects of abandoned or failed explosive munitions, as well as greater international efforts to curb the illicit trade of small arms and light weapons.

Just last month I was present in Oslo when 46 countries agreed to commit themselves to an international process to negotiate a treaty addressing the hazards of cluster munitions to civilians. Early days and still a long way from new global rules ... but it shows how the reshaping of perceptions through the infusion of humanitarian perspectives can help create traction on a hitherto intractable problem at the multilateral level.

That's because humanitarian approaches put greater stress, in practice, on the individual and local community as referent points for security than orthodox international security diplomacy. Another hallmark is that they harness the insights of many different disciplines to meet practical challenges and recognize that widespread phenomena often have local origins. For instance, situations of armed violence differ, as will potential solutions, because individual perceptions of insecurity (and resulting actions) vary between different locales.

It also pays, then, to ask what being human – being of humanity – actually means for multilateral negotiators. Many relevant insights from the natural sciences already exist and could be turned to use. By focusing on understanding and alleviating individual perceptions of insecurity that can lead to armed violence, responses to problems of insecurity of more practical use to multilateral negotiators can be framed.

And, by helping negotiators understand the role of intuitive constraints in their interactions (like Tit for Tat) and how these are affected by structure, negotiations might be improved in practical ways. The clock is ticking….


John Borrie

Learning to adapt and succeed in disarmament as humanitarian action

This week hasn't seen much Disarmament Insight blogging action, as we've been at the other end of Switzerland's Lac Leman in beautiful Glion (above Montreux), hosting DI's fifth event since the initiative's inception in March 2007 - a two-day residential seminar entitled Learn, Adapt Succeed: Potential Lessons from the Ottawa and Oslo Processes for other disarmament and arms control challenges.

Our seminar drew together more than thirty individuals from invited governments, UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, researchers and representatives of transnational civil society. Consistent with our aims as an initiative, the idea was to create some breathing space from what has been a frenetic year for everyone, in order to foster some initial collective dialogue about whether lessons-learned from recent humanitarian disarmament achievements such as the Oslo and Ottawa Processes have any relevance to other international initiatives in the field of reducing or preventing armed violence. Those other initiatives include (but are by no means limited to) curbing the illicit trade in small arms, the Geneva Declaration on armed violence and development, the Arms Trade Treaty and the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. And, just as importantly, how can experiences from each of these respective initiatives be transferred and capitalized upon? Some of our participants also introduced some new tools for humanitarian dialogue in disarmament and arms control, including in analysing responses to the delivery of explosive force in populated areas.

The seminar was conducted according to the Chatham House Rule. And there isn't space in this post to go into detail about its discussions - especially as participants (like me) are still in the process of digesting the many important and interesting observations raised during the meeting. But if there is one thing I came away with it's that opportunities like this for cross-community dialogue are all too rare, not least because in a wired-up age, day-to-day matters press ever more on multilateral practitioners, and can get in the way of ensuring time for reflection and to listen to other perspectives.

Hopefully the Glion meeting has recharged peoples' batteries a bit, and stimulated some further creative thinking in achieving disarmament as humanitarian action. 2009 is going to be another busy year.

John Borrie

Image credit: 11820013 (cmmorel): Lake Leman by sunset, view from Victoria Hotel, Glion, Montreux, Switzerland downloaded from Flickr. John wishes his photos had turned out this nicely...

Worldmapper

Professor Danny Dorling of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom reckons, “you can say it, you can prove it, you can tabulate it, but it is only when you show it that it hits home.”

Dorling and his colleagues are backing up this claim. Their research group on Social and Spatial Inequalities (SASI) has established the Worldmapper project in collaboration with Mark Newman at the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan in the United States.

Worldmapper is a collection of some 366 world maps, in which territories are re-sized according to a chosen variable of interest. Indicators they’ve mapped range from wealth, education and health to population movements, goods production and natural disaster casualties.

The Worldmapper database also includes cartograms depicting military spending as well as violence and war statistics. I was particularly interested in a map representing territory size as the proportion of worldwide landmine casualties from 2003 to 2005.

The first image below is a classic world map. The second is the Worldmapper version, which visually depicts where casualties are occurring by appearing to swell or shrink areas according to their proportion of landmine casualties (click on the pictures to enlarge).



“Landmine casualty” here is drawn from the Landmine Monitor definition to refer to any “individual killed or injured as a result of an incident involving antipersonnel mines, anti-vehicle mines, improvised explosive devices, dud cluster munitions, and other unexploded ordnance”.

During the time period from 2003 to 2005, Landmine Monitor reported around 7,000 casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) worldwide per year. However, this figure “represents only the reported casualties and does not take into account the many casualties that are believed to go unreported.” The real number of new casualties from landmines/ERW each year is estimated by Landmine Monitor to be between 15,000 and 20,000.

As we can see on the map, the most affected countries in the time period 2003-2005 included Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Colombia. Together, these countries accounted for almost 4000—or 57%—of the reported number of casualties.


Aurélia Merçay


References

Worldmapper’s website: http://www.worldmapper.org .

Social and Spatial Inequalities (SASI) research group’s homepage.

D. Dorling, Worldmapper: The Human Anatomy of a Small Planet, PLOS Medicine, January 2007, volume 4, issue 1, edition 1, freely available online.