CD – one step forward…

A feature – for better or worse – of the Conference on Disarmament is the sanctity attributed to the CD’s rules of procedure (CD/8/Rev.9). Incoming Presidents, when assuming the chair of the CD in the alphabetical rollover of the presidency every four weeks, solemnly insist that they will abide by the rules of procedure throughout their (derisorily short) term. This has become code for saying that they will not countenance presiding over any action of the CD unless there is unanimous support for such action – the literal, and misplaced, embodiment of rule 18 that the Conference shall conduct its work and adopt its decisions by consensus.

Sometimes it seems that strict observance of the rules of procedure is an objective in itself, whereas the purpose of the rules is to facilitate orderly work rather than frustrate it. Perhaps, however, a new sense of enlightenment is afoot. Recently the CD took the unusual step of acting in direct contradiction to its rules. Rule 9 ordains that the rotation of the presidency, based on the English alphabetical list of Member States, “shall be followed”. Yet the Conference has acquiesced in a reversal of that order, placing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea before Cuba for the remaining presidencies of this year. (This outcome does not fall within the circumstances envisaged in rule 10 which afford a temporary relaxation of rule 9 within a presidency.)

The purpose of this switch between Cuba and the DPRK was seen as a pragmatic one to accommodate exigencies of the respective delegations. It is in any event harmless enough, although on a future occasion such a swap might be engineered for less innocent reasons. The point, however, is that the Conference has shown itself ready to overlook its rules when it suits it to do so.

Nonetheless, these particular circumstances have led indirectly to an unfortunate outcome. The Foreign Minister of Canada announced on 11 July that Canada will boycott the CD through the remaining three weeks of the DPRK’s rotation as President. Whether this stance was triggered by the switch of presidencies is not clear. But one of the values of the CD is that it brings under the one roof all the States that possess nuclear weapons irrespective of their international standing, and affords an opportunity for principled advocates for nuclear disarmament like Canada to make their views very clear.

Canada has taken full advantage of that opportunity, and its leadership – including as one of this year’s collegium of presidents for 2011 – Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba and the DPRK – has been exemplary. It is for no want of skill and energy of the Canadian presidency, whose efforts bridged the 2010 and 2011 annual sessions of the CD, that the Conference remains in its decade-long deadlocked state.

To go back to the beginning of these comments, the rotation of presidents of the Conference takes place strictly by rule rather than by election. And more importantly, the President, in the time-honoured manner of the office, acts first and foremost in a neutral capacity. If the chair needs at any point to project a national viewpoint, he or she makes it clear that they are speaking on that occasion as a Member State rather than as President. Given the current state of the CD, what is needed is a constructive, concerted effort of trust-building rather than individual acts of self-acknowledged symbolism.

This is a guest post by Tim Caughley. Tim is a Resident Senior Fellow at UNIDIR – see here for other comments on the CD.

Graphic courtesy of Google images.

From Welly to Dublin: cluster munition conference a success

This week, 122 states met as part of the Oslo Process in Wellington, New Zealand, for a conference on addressing the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions. The meeting, which concluded today, was widely hailed as a success. 72 countries present spoke up to explicitly endorse the Wellington Conference Declaration, with other states certain to follow in the weeks and months before Dublin.

Wellington represents a crucial stage in the Oslo Process. Over the last year a 'core group' of countries (Austria, the Holy See, Mexico, Ireland New Zealand, Norway and Peru) has managed the process of developing a discussion text, which has become a "Draft Cluster Munitions Convention". That document was the focus of this week's talks. The hope was that, at the end of the meeting, states would associate themselves with the "Wellington Declaration", which a government must do if it wants to be admitted to formal negotiations in Ireland in the second half of May. Attached to the Declaration would be the draft Convention - perhaps revised to reflect Wellington discussions. And the Dublin Conference's draft rules of procedure would also be presented.

Yesterday, I suggested that the Wellington text would not be revised, contrary to initial expectations among many here, and that various proposals put forward (often forcefully) would instead be compiled into a compendium text. And so it turned out to be today. The final Declaration text stated that governments:

"also welcome the important work done by participants engaged in the cluster munitions on the text of a draft Cluster Munitions Convention, dated 21 January 2008, which contains the essential elements identified above and decide to forward it as the basic proposal for consideration at the Dublin Diplomatic Conference, together with other relevant proposals including those contained in the compendium attached to this Declaration and those which may be put forward there".

Some, including myself, were slightly surprised that all countries, especially the so-called like-mindeds (a loose grouping including Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) went along with this option. In our interpretation, if it went to a vote in Dublin (a matter of last resort), a two-thirds majority would be needed to change the draft Convention. Such a scenario, while not necessarily likely as all involved will do their best to avoid a voting situation, is certainly not impossible. In other words, to my way of thinking at least, the draft Convention is behind the firewall I described yesterday, while the compendium is not.

That's why today's statements by many states were informative. While the great majority of the 72 states who spoke up endorsed the Wellington Declaration unreservedly, 15 (Canada, UK, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, France, Netherlands, Australia, Finland, Lithuania, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in speaking order) introduced a caveat. These 15 spoke of their disappointment at a perceived lack of transparency in this week's maneuvering, and said they associated themselves with the Wellington Declaration on the understanding that the draft Convention text and the compendium would have equal standing in Dublin.

This is not my understanding of the draft Dublin rules of procedure, which make a distinction between the "basic proposal" (rule 31) - stated as the draft Convention - and "other proposals" (rule 32). I'm not a lawyer, but it implies to me a difference in status.

We'll see how this is clarified in Dublin, probably as part of the agreement process on the rules of procedure themselves. Meanwhile, there was unprecedentedly trenchant criticism from Canada of NGO Cluster Munition Coalition pressure on certain "like-minded" governments on the margins of the Conference through demonstrations and negative media coverage. This is significant because Canada is known as very civil society friendly - and of course it worked closely with NGOs at the forefront of the anti-personnel mine ban process more than a decade ago and ever since. Canada said that vilifying accusations made about it and others (like Australia) were "unfounded and unfair", such as the charge it was covering for Oslo non-participants such as the U.S., which it denied. It is possible some of the like-mindeds might seek to do what they can to limit NGO involvement in Dublin.

None of this can obscure what is an achievement all involved in the Oslo Process can be satisfied with. Despite some sledging of the core-group by the so-called like-mindeds, and of the like-mindeds by some developing countries who don't want the types of exemptions to a ban on cluster munitions they're advocating, the Conference outcome has surpassed expectations. All of the like-mindeds, who had been rumbling about walking out earlier in the week associated themselves with the Declaration, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Sweden. Even Denmark (current Chair of the CCW process in Geneva) and Finland joined in. As the ICRC commented toward the end of the final session, look how far we've come.

John Borrie

Photo by author. From left to right are Charlotte Darlow of the New Zealand delegation with Ambassador Don Mackay, Chair of the Wellington Conference, and Irish Ambassador Daithi O'Ceallaigh, Chair-Designate of the upcoming Dublin Conference.

Most documents I mentioned have already appeared on the New Zealand Government's Wellington Conference website. The Irish Government's Dublin Conference website should be operational from 1 March, at: <www.clustermunitionsdublin.ie>.

A More Responsible Trade in Guns

Next week, over 100 States will gather in Geneva to see if they can come any closer to agreeing on a set of common standards that they should all apply when deciding whether or not to export guns to other countries. The goal is to stop so many guns from finding their way into regions, countries and hands where they are likely to be used to abuse human rights, violate the laws of war or otherwise kill or intimidate civilians (for some background on this, see my posting of 18 April 2007).

This should be no ordinary multilateral conference on the small arms trade. For starters, it is taking place outside of formal UN frameworks. The venue is not the UN office in Geneva, where most official UN business takes place, but the international conference centre across the street. And, most radically of all, the wearing of ties has been officially discouraged, an unheard of deviation from standard UN practice!

To understand the context of this meeting, we need to transport ourselves back to July 2006, to UN headquarters in New York, minutes before the first Review Conference of the UN Programme of Action on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons closed without UN Member States reaching any agreement on how to follow up on their 2001 pact to eradicate the black market in guns. As the meeting fell apart, the Canadian delegate, in an attempt to salvage something from the wreckage, took the floor to invite all States to Geneva the following summer to work on developing common standards to govern transfers of small arms and light weapons. To its credit, Canada followed through on its spontaneous invitation and a surprising number of countries have answered the call.

So what does this meeting hope to achieve? On a very basic level, it aims to identify, clarify and underline commitments that UN Member States have already made to transfer guns responsibly. These existing commitments derive from a variety of sources, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law and Security Council resolutions, not to mention treaties and agreements to which States are already party. The meeting also aims to elaborate specifically on the commitments that all UN Member States have made in the 2001 UN Programme of Action on small arms regarding transfers of small arms.

Simply put, next week's meeting seeks to engage as many States as possible in collectively identifying and refining principles to govern all transfers of small arms and light weapons. But this is as far as collective action would go. The task of interpreting and applying such principles would remain at the complete disgression of each individual State.

But next week's meeting is not taking place in a vacuum. In a separate but related process, a record number of UN Member States have submitted their ideas to the UN Secretary-General on what they would like to see contained in a proposed new legally-binding agreement to regulate the transfer of all conventional weapons, from guns to aircraft carriers - the so-called Arms Trade Treaty. It would seem that governments are finally paying serious attention to regulating the global arms trade. If next week's meeting can move us one more step along that road, it will be time well spent.


Patrick Mc Carthy


References

Informal Meeting on Transfer Control Principles for Small Arms and Light Weapons, 27-31 August 2007, Geneva.

UN Programme of Action on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons

Photo credit: NorthSun on flickr.