Unacceptable Harm: Geneva launch

On Friday UNIDIR launched a new book I wrote entitled Unacceptable Harm: A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions Was Won at the Palais des Nations, the home of the United Nations in Geneva.

Chaired by the Norwegian Permanent Mission in Geneva, the lunchtime event featured four speakers: Dr. Gro Nystuen (Chair of the Council on Ethics for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global), Richard Moyes (policy and research director at Landmine Action and co-chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC)), the CMC’s Coordinator Thomas Nash, and myself. Turn-out was very good, with a full room and some interesting discussion following the presentations.

The chair of the meeting, Norwegian diplomat Hilde Skorpen, recalled the origins of the project. It grew out of a proposal I made in 2007 to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For several years, we at UNIDIR had carried out research analysing a range of negotiating processes as part of a project on Disarmament as Humanitarian Action : Making Multilateral Negotiations Work, and in the course of that work we found a lacuna in the policy and academic literature on the landmine negotiations : while some good stuff had been written about the Ottawa process, no narrative historical framework existed to tell the story of the achievement of the Mine Ban Treaty as a coherent whole – from its origins to its agreement – for a wide audience.

Memories fade quickly, and hindsight can obscure what we can learn from success and failure in multilateral negotiations. Myths can arise and take hold. This isn’t necessarily helpful when it comes to try to distill lessons learned with a view to improving the performance of multilateral negotiators. So my proposal on UNIDIR’s behalf was a simple one : shouldn’t someone try to capture what would happen on cluster munitions ; that is, if we really are to learn and so improve our performance as negotiators?

This idea must have seemed a little risky. At that stage nobody knew how the emerging Oslo process or in the CCW would turn out! To their credit the Norwegians decided to fund the project. (And then, like a good funder of such research should, they stood back to let us get on with it.)

The rest, as they say, is history. A history though that would be a larger and more complicated task than we originally envisaged in researching and writing ‘Unacceptable Harm’…

But now the book is 'out there'. Thanks to all of the speakers and those who came out for the launch on a cold, bright Geneva day. With Unacceptable Harm no longer under embargo, those readers who are on UNIDIR’s publication circulation list or those (like a considerable number of CMC campaigners) who have placed orders for the book should receive their copies through the mail before too long. In due course the book should also become available in the UN's bookshops in Geneva and New York, and eventually on Amazon.

There will be further events associated with the launch of the book in the New Year. We’re anticipating something in Oslo on 12 January and perhaps elsewhere. Read this blog for further updates.

John Borrie

Photo courtesy of Tamar Gabelnick, International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

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

Unacceptable harm: Nearing the end of a long run …

As many of this blog’s readers know, I’ve been researching and writing a history of international efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions as part of a project commencing at UNIDIR in March 2008 funded by the Government of Norway.

I’m pleased to say that the total book manuscript of Unacceptable Harm: A history of how the treaty banning cluster munitions was won is now done, and is in the hands of UNIDIR’s copy editor.

Writing a manuscript of 140,000 or more words is not something I’ve done before, and as I mentioned in April (as I was plodding along the long, uphill straight of drafting the book’s eleven chapters), running it can be a bit of a difficult, lonely business:

“It’s quite tricky psychologically to keep myself properly motivated and I, for one, tend to get depressed easily about my lack of pace, especially as deadlines begin to loom. All of this, of course, against the backdrop of story of how cluster bombs were banned that’s complicated, fascinating and ultimately inspiring as an example of how the world’s less powerful states, international organizations and civil society can make a positive difference to human security – I have no real reason for complaint!”

There are still some tasks to be done, including final changes based on the book’s editing. And, I still have to chase up some of the 90 or so people I interviewed in order to check the odd thing. But the end is in sight, and UNIDIR hope to have the book available in print before the end of this year (keep following this blog for updates).

We’re winding down for a summer break here, so the Disarmament Insight blog probably won’t be updated over the course of August. Here’s hoping you all have a pleasant month, and keep reading our stuff after the height of summer.

John Borrie

The tip of the iceberg

As regular readers of the blog may have gathered, I've been working this year on a history of international efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions.

This history, to be published before the end of the year, focuses in particular on the Oslo process, which culminated in a Convention on Cluster Munitions in negotiations in Dublin in May 2008. But it also casts an eye much further back to the origins of international cluster munition work, which date from the Swiss Diplomatic Conferences in the 1970s and proposals there by Sweden and others to prohibit "cluster warheads".

Chronologically speaking, the Oslo process, which ran for approximately 15 months from February 2007 until the end of May 2008, was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot more under the surface. Concerns had been raised about the hazards cluster munitions pose to civilians both at time of use and post-conflict for many, many years by governments and NGOs. My impression is that this isn't necessarily widely understood when multilateral practitioners think about lessons to be learned (or not) from recent international efforts on cluster munitions. Nor is the question it poses but which is often not raised: why did the Oslo process get traction when previous efforts failed?

The easy thing to do would be to point to the 2006 summer war in Southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah and the massive use of cluster munitions there as the catalyst. Others disagree: Virgil Wiebe, for instance, whose posts have graced this blog in the past, feels strongly that the Lebanon conflict was "necessary but not sufficient". Certainly, determination among Norwegian policy makers to get an international process going on a treaty to ban cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians pre-dated Lebanon. And NGOs in the Cluster Munition Coalition had been preparing for a break with the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons' talks in late 2006 unless its five-yearly review conference agreed on more meaningful work to restrict the weapon. So clearly the picture is more complex than it first appears.

The deeper I got into research for the history, the more convinced I became that it's difficult to draw useful lessons about the Oslo process for future 'humanitarian disarmament' endeavours without having this historical context. Fortunately, Eric Prokosch's classic book 'The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Anti-Personnel Weapons' (Zed Books, 1995) is an excellent resource. (This book is unfortunately out of print, but second-hand copies can be scrounged via the internet and second-hand bookshops, and should be required reading for all Geneva multilateral diplomats, in my view.) Eric also has been very kind in sharing his insights in the course of my research about how cluster munition-related concerns evolved from their early days.

Such perspectives are important. Many of the other people I've interviewed and conversed with in the course of writing my book have quite reasonably drawn their own conclusions about what we can learn from international efforts on cluster munitions, but most do so based on their impressions of events this decade. However, if one only looks at the last few years the achievement of the cluster munition ban treaty might have looked simply spontaneous, and even easy - even though it was neither.

The impact of the Ottawa process on anti-personnel mines in the 1990s and the resulting 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention also needs to be considered. There are many similarities between the Ottawa and Oslo processes, and the former's example was at the very least a major inspiration to most of those centrally involved in the Oslo process. But again, context is important. A two-day seminar we convened in November last year with various multilateral practitioners on lessons learned from the Ottawa and Oslo processes underlined that there are divergent viewpoints on what kind of 'model' that the most obvious similarities between the two processes offer, or whether they constitute a model at all. (These similarities include free-standing activity outside traditional UN forums propelled by like-mindedness rather than universal participation, government-civil society partnership, and emphasis on humanitarian perspectives.)

The British historian Hew Strachan recently wrote in the journal Survival with regard to the Iraq war that "As history is turned into political science, it makes a casualty of contingency". It's a phrase I have written on my office whiteboard as a continual reminder. The most elegant international relations theories don't convincingly account (in my mind at least) for the role of individuals in the Oslo process. If anything is really clear to me, however, it's that individuals were key to that success.

I'm pondering all of this as I prepare to write my concluding chapter of the draft manuscript after a week off. Earlier this year, I related the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's comment that writing books is a bit like marathon running. I'm looking for my second wind!

John Borrie

Image credit: photo-montage of an iceberge from Wikipedia.org.

What I talk about when I write about cluster bombs

As the world financial crisis deepens and the G-20 meet in London (and as anarchist protesters angle for a bit of argey-bargey with London’s bobbies) it was at least a lovely spring day in Geneva yesterday.

It found me holed up in my apartment fighting spring hay fever and roughly halfway through researching and writing a history of efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions to be published by the United Nations later this year. The history looks at the earliest efforts to place restrictions on the weapon in the 1970s, as well as the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapon process’s subsequent attempts to engage with addressing the proven hazards of cluster munitions to civilians. But the book’s main focus is on why and how the Oslo process unfolded (which regular readers of this blog will know I’ve followed since its origins) and what some of its lessons might be.

I find writing a rewarding but lonely and difficult business. It’s quite tricky psychologically to keep myself properly motivated and I, for one, tend to get depressed easily about my lack of pace, especially as deadlines begin to loom. All of this, of course, against the backdrop of story of how cluster bombs were banned that’s complicated, fascinating and ultimately inspiring as an example of how the world’s less powerful states, international organisations and civil society can make a positive difference to human security – I have no real reason for complaint!

In the second half of last year I decided I’d get myself into shape after a long and intense period of work on the Oslo process and my UNIDIR research. I entered to run L’Escalade, a 7.5 kilometre running race held every December in Geneva to commemorate an attack by the Duke of Savoy’s troops the Genevois repulsed in 1602. (According to Genevois legend, Catherine Cheynel, originally from Lyons and the wife of Pierre Royaume, ("Mère Royaume"), a mother of 14 children, seized a large cauldron of hot soup and poured it on the attackers. The Royaume family lived just above the La Monnaie town gate. The heavy cauldron of boiling soup landed on the head of a Savoyard attacker, killing him. The commotion that this caused also helped to rouse the townsfolk to defend the city.)

Now 7.5 km isn’t far. But I’d been travelling the two preceding weeks and only arrived back in Geneva from the Oslo signing ceremony for the Convention on Cluster Munitions the previous evening. But I did run l’Escalade despite the dark, the freezing temperature and it being my first-ever running race (being jostled by a thousand bony elbows took a bit of getting used to). I even ran a respectable time (for me!) and managed to overtake some of those sets of sharp elbows later in the run.

In retrospect I think it was good mental preparation for tackling a book – since with researching and writing like this you certainly have to take a long-view and pace yourself, but keep going whatever happens.

At the moment I’m reading a memoir by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. He’s one of my favourite novelists, and a lot of what he says in the book strikes a chord with me. I loved this passage:

“No matter how much long-distance running might suit me, of course there are days when I feel kind of lethargic and don’t want to run. Actually, it happens a lot. On days like that, I try to think of all kinds of plausible excuses to shake it off. Once, I interviewed the Olympic runner Toshihiko Seko, just after he retired from running and became manager of the S&B company team. I asked him, “Does a runner at your level ever feel like you’d rather not run today, like you don’t want to run and would rather just sleep in? He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, “Of course. All the time!”

Now that I look back on it I can see what a dumb question that was. I guess even back then I knew how dumb it was, but I suppose I wanted to hear the answer directly from someone of Seko’s calibre. I wanted to know whether, despite being worlds apart in terms of strength, the amount we exercise, and motivation, when we lace up our running shoes early in the morning we feel exactly the same way. Seko’s reply at the time came as a great relief. In the final analysis we’re all the same, I thought.”

Moreover, for Murakami, the motivation to write, just like his motivation to run at least a marathon every year, has to be a sense of accomplishment rather than competition with others:

“What’s crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you’ve set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away. When it comes to other people you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, but you can’t fool yourself. In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike.”

I’m neither a novelist nor do I have much inclination at the moment to train for a full marathon.
But I did feel a sense of accomplishment after completing L’Escalade – however modest the objective; one similar to the feeling I get when I finish a piece of decent research. The feeling doesn’t last long, and it always just gets me thinking about what’s next, but for a short while it’s tangible.

I guess time will tell how apt Murakami’s advice is in the context of me getting my manuscript finished by deadline. But it did at least encourage me to gulp down some hayfever medicine and go for a decent run next to the lake yesterday evening as a break from my own historical marathon.

John Borrie

Photo ('Run like hell!!!) of a Baku roadsign by 'Today is a good day' retrieved from Flickr.

2009: Learn, adapt, succeed report now out...

Well, we're back for the New Year, and we hope all of our readers had happy holidays.

In November last year, we convened a two-day symposium as part of the Disarmament Insight initiative in Glion, Switzerland, entitled Learn, Adapt, Succeed: Potential Lessons from the Ottawa and Oslo Processes for other disarmament and arms control challenges, which brought together more than thirty individuals from invited governments, United Nations agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and representatives of civil society.

My quick post about the DI symposium in late-ish November before grabbing my bag for a couple of weeks of travel to the UK, and to Oslo for the Convention on Cluster Munitions signing ceremony, didn't go into much detail about the discussions in Glion. So I'm pleased to say that a summary report of the meeting can now be downloaded in PDF format from the 'Disarmament as Humanitarian Action' project page on UNIDIR's website by following this link. (Click on the 'DI Glion seminar report' link to Open, or right-click to see the Save option, on most computers.)

The symposium was conducted according to the Chatham House Rule, which means that we didn't identify individual speakers or affiliations there. But we hope that the report conveys a sense of what was a very thought-provoking and positive discussion on a range of human security related themes and processes - involving, for instance, ongoing efforts to curb the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, the Arms Trade Treaty, the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development and, of course, the CCW and new CCM.

This week a certain North American country will inaugurate a new President. His campaign catchphrase - "We can do it" - is already gently lampooned, even among his many supporters. Maybe, along with renewed sense of hope, there is a gnawing collective sense that no person can live it up to such expectations, especially in a country with so varied and even conflicting interests, and the massive challenges before it.

Well, maybe so. But the slogan isn't a bad one: the Ottawa and Oslo processes on anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions respectively, and to some extent progress in other arms control domains like implementing the UN Programme of Action on small arms, do show that positive change and progress on human security objectives is possible at the multilateral level, even in a pretty unpromising political environment over the last few years. It'll be interesting to see to what extent that improves with the new guy.

John Borrie

Picture by John Borrie.

2008: The end of the beginning for the Oslo Process

The Signing Ceremony for the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) wrapped up at lunchtime on Thursday. (I would have blogged earlier, but I was out celebrating like the hundreds of other delegates present in Oslo. It's a cold city in December, but the welcome was warm...)

As of writing, 94 countries have signed the Convention (a list of 92 is here - add Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea Bissau), and more seem certain to follow in weeks and months to come. There are some surprises among them such as Afghanistan as mentioned in a preceding post.

Some big possessors and users of cluster munitions stayed away last week, of course, such as China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States. Much has been made of this in the media, but it's by now really a non-event as these countries shunned the Oslo Process and so it was no surprise they would be no-show-ers. Instead the U.S State Department's spokesperson asserted from far away in Washington D.C. that "the CCM constitutes a ban on most types of cluster munitions; such a general ban on cluster munitions will put the lives of our military men and women, and those of our coalition partners, at risk." The fact that the majority of those coalition partners were represented in Oslo in order to sign the new humanitarian disarmament norm was omitted, since presumably it is at odds with this opinion.

Brazil, however, attended as an observer, and there are some signs that it may be reconsidering its opposition to joining the CCM - not least because of the support for the treaty from so many of its Latin American neighbours. Brazil's views on joining the treaty matter to countries like its traditional regional rival Argentina (which participated actively in Dublin, but hasn't yet signed the CCM), and vice versa. Let's hope that leaders in the two countries can turn the situation into what scholars call a 'trust game'. Both would be better off in security terms joining the Convention and disposing of their stocks of cluster munitions, rather than keeping them for use against each other.

There was something of a party atmosphere throughout the Signing Ceremony week, especially as so many of those here who had been through the Oslo Process wringer together could now patch up any animosities, clap each other on the backs and have a galactic p*ss-up together. Perhaps some of this bonhomie permeated the party of NATO Foreign Ministers, who arrived en masse on Wednesday afternoon by charter plane from Brussels to make their statements welcoming the Convention and each sign the treaty before flying on to the Helsinki OSCE Summit. David Miliband - the object of British NGO Landmine Action's innovative campaign in Westminster Tube Station to get cluster munitions "Milibanned" - spoke in glowing terms about the new treaty. And French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's statement was (perhaps to no-one's surprise) the most colourful as he proclaimed (in French) "Yes, we can! We can, and the US can sign this treaty, Russia can, and China can" adding that he'll press American President-elect Barack Obama to sign. Good luck with that.

Of course, all of these signatures to the CCM obscure a more concrete and significant fact: that already four countries of the 30 required to bring the treaty into force internationally have ratified (Ireland, Norway, Sierra Leone and the Holy See). At this rate the CCM may enter into force globally rather soon - it is possible the first Meeting of States Parties will be as early as mid-2010. Laos, usually something of an international recluse and the most seriously affected country from cluster munitions, has come forward to offer to host the First Meeting of States Parties.

And more attention is now turning to how the new CCM will be implemented, which entails settling some big questions about how a regime of doing and not just being a new humanitarian norm will be developed. There is a lot synergy, of course, with the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention and how its implementation regime has developed over the last decade, and many useful lessons were learned that fed in to improving the text of the CCM treaty itself in the Dublin negotiations in May. But there are also some differences. The number of cluster munition affected countries is much smaller than were seriously blighted by anti-personnel mines in 1997, and the overall number of survivors is smaller too. Moreover, some survivors are being assisted already because of the Mine Ban Convention. And of course the Mine Ban Convention has some serious issues of its own such as states missing deadlines for clearance and stockpile destruction, which Maya Brehm and Megan Kinsella discussed in an earlier post.

One big issue for implementation will be to develop a more accurate picture of the dimensions of the cluster munition problem. Neither the mine ban nor cluster ban treaties make specific provision for this beyond their (differing) national reporting requirements for state parties. This led to the emergence of the civil society Landmine Monitor initiative in the context of the Mine Ban Convention, and a key question for NGOs now is how that expertise and experience can be further leveraged for a sort of 'cluster munition' Monitor. This weekend they are mulling over just that in Oslo.

And this touches on one of the biggest challenges of all: to ensure that while momentum is maintained and even increased for entry into force, universalisation and implementation of the CCM, implementation of the Mine Ban Convention doesn't suffer as a result. Indications are that many governments central to the Oslo Process, the UN, ICRC and NGOs like the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munition Coalition are well aware of this.

2008 has been a huge year for international efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions as regular readers of this blog may have gathered from our ongoing commentary on the both Oslo and CCW processes. Indeed, we've followed the Oslo Process from the very beginning on Disarmament Insight.

Everyone now needs a rest (and some still celebrating in Oslo may also need a hangover cure). But 2009 will require continued effort, creativity and hard work to ensure that the CCM makes a difference to people's lives on the ground, even if it's not as immediately sexy and exciting as the negotiating phase we've just been through. Meanwhile, there are still the CCW meetings on cluster munitions to play out in Geneva in the first part of 2009...


John Borrie

Reference

Documents and media related to the Oslo CCM Signing Conference are accessible here.

Picture of Bernard Kouchner giving his statement on 3 December by John Borrie.

Wish You Were Here: Banning the (Cluster) Bomb, 1958-2008

The Philippine Campaign to Ban Landmines (PCBL) designed the postcard above for the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions in May this year. The postcard was distributed to participants there with a message to support a cluster munitions ban treaty this year, and also commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and its Ban-the-Bomb symbol – a symbol that later became the more broadly meaningful Peace Symbol.

It’s timely to bring this up again on the occasion of the Oslo Signing Conference for the new Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which comprehensively bans them as a class of weapons, and which commenced on Wednesday. When we made the postcard before the Dublin Conference, achieving such a comprehensive ban treaty wasn’t yet certain. After the successful treaty negotiations at Dublin, the treaty is now about to become a reality in international law.

Through the main motifs in black and yellow orange on the front of our postcard, we wanted to show the continuing a link, from left to right, between the oldest (A-bomb) and the newest (cluster) bomb ban advocacies between 1958 and 2008. It reflects a historical continuum of 50 years of bomb banning and peace advocacy, as well as an element of solidarity with and outreach to other generations and causes in peace activism, especially those who have advocated nuclear disarmament.

The postcard was meant to recall and honour those who were generations ahead of the current Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) and paved the way for humanitarian disarmament campaigning.

The cluster bomb motif provided by CMC also indicates, aside from a cluster bomb itself, a victim’s hand and upper arm as if signaling “Stop!” or “No!”. That seems simple enough. That wasn’t the case though with the peace symbol originally designed by British anti-war activist-artist Gerald Holtom in 1958 for an Easter weekend protest march to an A-bomb research facility in Aldermaston in England. In his own words explaining it 15 years later in 1973:

“I was in despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it….”

In Holtom’s original design, the lines were not so cleanly straight as they have been in more recent years (as adopted in our postcard), but instead were curved outward on both sides of the lines where the hands palm outstretched, the head and feet of the despairing figure were supposed to be.

Almost as an afterthought, Holtom also saw that the symbol represented a composite of the semaphore signals for the letter N (someone holding a flag in each hand stretched outwards and downwards) and D (a single flag held vertically above the head) – thus Nuclear Disarmament. So, in those earlier years in Britain, it was known more as the “disarmament symbol,” “ND symbol,” or “CND symbol.” Holtom himself was said to have regretted the connotation of despair and wanted the sign inverted to instead connote something more like hope, resurrection or elation. Also, the inverted image of a figure with arms stretched upwards and outwards represented the semaphore signal for U – Unilateral, as in unilateral action as the key to nuclear disarmament. But the original symbol is what stuck and caught on.

Bayard Rustin, an American activist in the 1958 march, took the symbol back to the U.S., where it eventually became the Peace Symbol globally. From a symbol of despair, it came to acquire near universal significance as a symbol of peace and protest, especially of the anti-war sort.

At the back of our postcard pictured above, we indicated in upper left the occasion and venue: “DUBLIN DIPLOMATIC CONFERENCE ON CLUSTER MUNITIONS, 19-30 May 2008, Croak Park, Dublin, IRELAND” with the Irish shamrock symbol to its immediate right. (We misspelled the name of historic Croke Park.) Because the venue was Ireland, we wanted to use the Irish colour green for this text, but decided to stick with black to economize on production costs.

And so that text and the Irish shamrock at the back of our postcard came out in black. When we showed the postcard to Irish peace activist friend Clem McCartney and his Chilean anti-war activist partner Roberta Bacic on meeting up with them in Dublin outside the conference, surprisingly they commended us for its “black shamrock,” – which we learned from them is an Irish symbol of mourning and resistance. Huh, PCBL had inadvertently used an Irish protest symbol?

And so – perhaps like Holtom – our postcard was loaded with anti-war symbols to a greater extent than we had originally intended. In fact, toward the end of the Dublin conference we actually came across that “Black Shamrock” symbol again on the T-shirt of an Irish anti-war activist who participated in a side event to the conference, a Public Talk on “Achieving a Cluster Munitions Ban: Blueprint for an Ethical Foreign Policy?” with former Irish Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, sponsored by Action from Ireland (Afri).

At the end of the conference I chanced upon Finnish campaigner Jan Koskimies of the Peace Union of Finland/Committee of 100. He was wearing on his lapel a Peace Symbol pin of Holtom’s original design. Seizing the moment, I asked Jan if I could buy (yes, buy) his pin. He said, no, he would give it to me since there were many more of them back where it came from in his organization. It turns out that the Committee of 100 was the more widely known successor to the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC), which had planned the 1958 Easter weekend protest march to Aldermaston. To somehow return the favour, I could only give Jan our postcard – maybe not the fairest exchange.

Exchange? Yes, let’s learn the lessons from each other’s campaigning histories and so connect the dots between arms control, disarmament, humanitarian law, human rights, and peace. Let’s invoke the spirit of the best in humanitarian disarmament and peace campaigning. And we may yet develop a new, more interlinked and holistic, humanitarian disarmament network.

This is a guest blog by Sol Santos. Sol is Coordinator of the Philippine Campaign to Ban Landmines. Image courtesy of Kara M. Santos.

CCM: And the signing count is ...

At close-of-play of the first day of the two Signing Ceremony of the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) at 6 o'clock this evening, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr-Store announced that, so far, 92 countries have signed the treaty.

More will follow tomorrow. Whether the treaty will hit the symbolic 100 mark then is uncertain. But irrespective of whether it does, the fact that more than 90 countries - including the most heavily cluster munition-affected states including Afghanistan, Laos and Lebanon - sends a very strong signal of international support for this new humanitarian disarmament norm.

John Borrie

Newsflash! Afghanistan to sign CCM

Afghanistan's representative has just taken the floor at the Signing Ceremony of the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) to announce that his delegation has received new instructions from President Hamid Karzai. Afghanistan, some readers of this blog will recall, did not participate in the Dublin negotiations. Afghanistan said just now that this "principled position" concerning non-participation in the Oslo Process because of its national situation had now changed, and the country will immediately move to sign the CCM - I assume here in Oslo City Hall today.

Afghanistan's support for the CCM is very significant, being as it is a country affected by cluster munition contamination and in which a war is being fought. NATO forces have - apparently as a matter of policy - not used cluster munitions since 2003, on the basis that they are inappropriate weapons for the conditions. Afghanistan joining the Convention will cement this.

John Borrie

Convention on Cluster Munitions: Oslo Signing

This is a very quick post from Oslo City Hall, where I'm attending the Signing Ceremony of the new Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), a ground-breaking humanitarian disarmament treaty agreed in negotiations in Dublin at the end of May.

The Norwegians have played a major role - both as instigators of the so-called Oslo Process, and as members of the core group - and so it's very fitting that Norway host the signing. And, although a cold day outside, there is a very warm atmosphere in the meeting hall. The ceremony was opened by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and high level speeches followed from Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr-Store, International Committee of the Red Cross President Jakob Kellenberger, the United Nations and several Ministers of various governments including two key cluster munition affected states, Laos and Lebanon, set an upbeat tone.

Two of the most powerful statements were from the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), the civil society consortium that has worked in partnership with governments, the UN and ICRC to achieve the CCM. CMC coordinator Thomas Nash and spokesperson and Ban Advocate and cluster munition survivor Branislav Kapetanovic (pictured) each spoke movingly of the campaign's journey from voice in the wilderness to treaty, and Branislav also related some of his own experiences and the challenges of living as a survivor.

Signing of the treaty has already begun as I write this, and Ireland, Norway, Sierra Leone and the Holy See have indicated that they are also in a position to ratify the treaty straight away. It's unclear yet how many countries will sign the CCM in Oslo, but it should be at least in the high 80s. It's not inconceivable that the symbolic number of 100 is reached, but since very specific requirements have to be met in terms of letters of legal powers for delegations to be allowed to sign, there will be inevitable hiccups that might prevent that. We'll see, but it's great to be here to see after such a huge amount of effort over recent years.

John Borrie

Picture of Branislav Kapetanovic and Thomas Nash (CMC) by 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...

The CCW: Can it find its way?

This blog has provided a lot of commentary on both the CCW’s work over the last year-and-a-half and on the Oslo Process that emerged in early 2007 because of frustration among many counties about the slow pace of the CCW’s work. Last week the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)’s fourth round of talks this year tried to make further progress on its mandate to “negotiate a proposal” to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions “while striking a balance between military and humanitarian considerations”. We provide some further thoughts on our observations from last week below.

The Oslo Process culminated in a Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in Dublin in May 2008, which has a humanitarian emphasis and bans all cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians – describing this through a complicated but quite comprehensive formula in its Article 2. Such a formula is probably too rich for the blood of some of the major producers, stockpilers and exporters of cluster munitions such as China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States. These countries shunned the Oslo Process but were nevertheless prodded to do something in response to the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions in the CCW, to which they all belong.

While there were two international processes underway, there was hope among some states participating in both that the CCW, even if less ambitious than the CCM, would at least capture these countries in some sort of humanitarian standard on cluster munitions that goes beyond the general rules of international humanitarian law (IHL). That is, a CCW agreement would make them at least part of the solution rather than the problem, even if it is not as good as joining the CCM.

It is our view that the direction in which the CCW Group of Governmental Experts is heading will leave it teetering on the brink of whether it helps or hinders in alleviating the hazards to civilians posed by cluster munitions. Moreover, it seems we're not alone. By the end of last week’s round of talks, it was clear that CCW delegations disagree quite deeply on what approach to take to defining, prohibiting or regulating cluster munitions there.

Political, technical, legal and procedural factors are all key elements in treaty negotiations - procedures being the practices through which the other elements play out. Pertinently, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) observed last week that a diplomatic (or procedural) success could nevertheless be a humanitarian disaster. The ICRC recalled that the original CCW Protocol II on landmines in 1980 did nothing to prevent the subsequent exponential growth in the use of anti-personnel mines. For that matter, Amended Protocol II is not necessarily an unambiguous improvement: some of its state parties have chosen to defer compliance with cornerstone provisions on detectability of mines, self-destruction and self-deactivation set out it its Technical Annex.

Scope of any regulation or prohibition.

There is a real danger, in our assessment, that the smorgasbord approach of Article 4 in the current CCW text (a Chairman’s room paper – and to our knowledge not yet available on the web) will serve to legitimize the status quo, if eventually agreed.

Article 4(1) offers options within options as to cluster munitions that will NOT be prohibited. For instance, the version of Option (A) discussed toward the end of last week would allow for a cluster munition to be exempted from the Protocols prohibitions if it has any one of five more or (rather) less defined features that would “effectively ensure that unexploded submunitions would not longer function as explosive submunitions.”

But as this blog noted last week, “effectively” is a very open term. Allowable would be submunitions with (i) a self destruct mechanism (like the discredited M85); OR (ii) a self-neutralization mechanism OR (iii) a self-deactivating mechanism OR (iv) two or more fuzing features (like the deadly U.S. manufactured BLU-97) OR (v) “any other mechanism or design” (again, not defined in any way).

A new version of Option (A), presented at the very end of the meeting remains essentially unchanged, except that, thanks to a Swiss proposal, the requirement that any safeguard “effectively ensure that the unexploded submunitions will no longer function as explosive submunitions” is now put into brackets. This is not an encouraging prospect.

The latest version of Option (B) contains heavily bracketed, alternative sub-options (a), (b) and (c).

Sub-Option (B)(a) represents a moderate improvement on Option (A) in that it includes additional criteria, some of them cumulative and omits the “two or more fuzing features” and the “any other mechanism or design” criteria. It reads as follows:

Each explosive submunition [is designed to detect and engage a single target object and] contains a[n electronic] self-destruct mechanism and either an independent self-neutralization or [electronic] self-deactivation [feature] [mechanism] which effectively ensures that the unexploded submunitions no longer function as explosive submunitions

Sub-Option (B)(b) is the 1% solution offered by the United States. An unspecified mechanism is to ensure - not only in testing, but across the range of “[intended] operational environments” - that the failure rate is no more than 1 %. Many questions were raised about how to assure such a rate, what would happen in “unintended” operational environments, and how this would alleviate the humanitarian impact of submunitions when very high numbers are being used.

The latest version of Sub-Option (B)(c) draws on the cumulative approach of the CCM. Allowed are cluster munitions with [all] five or with [two or more] of the listed characteristics:

(i) Each munition contains fewer than ten explosive submunitions;
(ii) Each explosive submunition weighs more than four kilograms;
(iii) Each explosive submunition is designed to detect and engage a single target object;
(iv) Each explosive submunition is equipped with an electronic self-destruction
mechanism;
(v) Each explosive submunition is equipped with an electronic
self-deactivating feature;

Although, at first glance, this seems to mirror Article 2 of the CCM, it is significantly weaker than the CCM’s approach because it would allow states to choose any TWO criteria rather than having to adhere to them all, enabling them to merely address a cluster munition’s lack of reliability or its inaccuracy / area-effect but not necessarily both.

Transition Period.

A transition period of yet unspecified duration, riddled with inconsistencies and qualifiers, remains in the latest room paper. Yet another baffling alternative (in brackets) incorporates India’s proposal that the “shelf-life” of cluster munitions a state possesses should determine the length of that transition period. Yet a clear majority of delegations are fundamentally opposed to the very concept of a transition period - indeed, the CCW negotiation process showed that arguments for them hold no water. It seems indeed difficult to reconcile transition periods with the urgency with which the CCW agreed in its 2007 mandate it should address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions. Supporters of the concept are mainly concerned with the cost implications of destroying cluster munitions and replacing them with other weapons.

Storage, Destruction, Transfers.

While a line-by-line discussion of articles 5 & 6 occurred on Thursday, the discussions did not advance substantively much beyond the debate earlier last week. India, Israel, Korea, the US, Russia, and Pakistan questioned the need for any specific timeline at all for destruction of prohibited weapons. Safe storage until feasible destruction (or, in India’s opinion, until cluster munitions go sour on the shelf) is all that’s needed. Others, as might be expected, supported stockpile destruction under firm deadlines.

One interesting area of agreement between states usually on opposing sides of the issue was hearing Germany, Canada and Korea call for an immediate transfer ban on cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians – something mooted on this blog in July. Also, some discussion was had last week about how to keep cluster munitions, whether prohibited or not, out of the hands of non-state actors. This is certainly not a bad idea in view of the reported use by Hezbollah of cluster munitions in the 2006 war with Israel.

The way forward?

The fifth and last meeting of the GGE in 2008 is scheduled to take place in early November, a month before the signing ceremony of the CCM. With only five working days left for negotiations (and informal discussions planned for the end of October), there appear to be three possible outcomes:

• Outcome 1: a repeat performance of the CCW’s Anti-Vehicle Mine negotiations earlier this decade – a failure to reach consensus on even the most fundamental of issues, such as the approach to defining the object of regulation, let alone the more detailed provisions on what should be prohibited or not under the Protocol.


• Outcome 2: a repeat performance of CCW Protocol II on mines – an agreement for the sake of an agreement that leaves observers scratching their heads in vague confusion and States Parties with few actual constraints on behaviour.


• Outcome 3: a protocol that contains clear provisions on those cluster munitions that are most problematic in humanitarian terms, such as a complete and immediate prohibition on their use, production and transfer, coupled with clear restrictions on other cluster munitions that measurably constrain the behaviour of those states that feel, as yet, unable to join the CCM.

As of writing, Outcome 3 does not look as likely as the others, which again begs the question we asked in this blog’s last posting – is nothing better than something, if that something doesn’t make a difference to people on the ground?

Virgil Wiebe, Maya Brehm & John Borrie

Photo credit: “Day 126: No Direction Home” by Berserker on Flickr.

Pointing fingers on cluster munitions use in Georgia

The question on many of our minds these days is, "have cluster munitions been used in Georgia and, if so, by whom?" There have been accusations, counter-accusations and denials. Fingers are being pointed in many directions. To briefly recap:

• -- On 15 August, the NGO Human Rights Watch reported on Russian use of cluster munitions in Georgia, after it identified strikes on Gori and Ruisi on August 12 that it said killed at least 11 civilians and injured dozens more.
  

• -- On the same day, according to the Cluster Munitions Coalition of NGOs, the Defence Minister of Norway - the country that has spearheaded international efforts to ban cluster munitions and that will host, on December 3, a signing ceremony for the new Convention on Cluster Munitions - expressed grave concern at Russia’s alleged use of cluster munitions.
  

• -- Also on the same day, Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of the Russian General Staff, is reported as stating that, “We did not use cluster bombs, and what’s more, there was absolutely no necessity to do so.”

• -- On 19 August, the Russian Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva accused Georgia of using cluster munitions against South Ossetian civilians and Russian peacekeepers.

• -- On 21 August (yesterday), Human Rights Watch rejected Russia's denial that it had used cluster munition, saying that it had documented additional Russian cluster munitions attacks during the conflict in Georgia.
  

• -- Also yesterday, the Irish Foreign Minister, who hosted the diplomatic conference in Dublin in May of this year at which 107 States (although not Russia or Georgia) adopted a new treaty banning cluster munitions, expressed "deep concern" over allegations that cluster bombs were used by Russian forces.
  

Media coverage of the use of cluster munitions in Georgia has been extensive and the public outcry has been loud. The Cluster Munitions Coalition has organised protests and vigils outside of Russian embassies around the world.

The fact that there has been so much protest - both from governments and the general public - over the use of cluster munitions in Georgia, and the fact that Russia has thought it necessary to deny that it has used these weapons, is strong evidence that the stigmatisation of this particular weapons system is now well rooted in the global public conscience. As the Norwegian Defence Minister Anne Grethe Strøm-Erichsen put it:

The majority of the world’s states have, with the adoption of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, made it clear that the use of such weapons cannot be considered acceptable

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: A group of aerial bombs as depicted on the website of Miltra Engineering Ltd. The cluster munition that Russia is accused of using in Georgia - the RBK-250 - is on the far right.

The Essence of Agreement

In my recent post on "Moving closer to an Arms Trade Treaty," I stated that,

As the recent 3rd Biennial Meeting of States to consider implementation of the UN Programme of Action on small arms and light weapons demonstrated, many States are losing patience with the low level of results being posted by multilateral disarmament and arms control processes...

An anonymous reader of our blog added,

Seems to me this began not with the BMS, but the more significant agreement of the Oslo Treaty.... surely, it must have shown some of the diplomats that progress is possible...

S/he makes a good point. Certainly, the Oslo Process on cluster munitions, like the Ottawa Process on anti-personnel mines before it, is a clear demonstration of a significant grouping of States (1) losing patience with inadequate or non-existent progress on pressing humanitarian issues and (2) deciding to go outside of the framework of the United Nations in order to achieve collective security goals. The success of these processes has indeed brought home to many disarmament diplomats that 'progress is possible' even if more traditional routes seem to be blocked.

However, it may also have some other, unforeseen effects on multilateral disarmament diplomacy within the United Nations. Many of the States that participated in the Oslo Process and that adopted the new Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in Dublin in May were nevertheless uncomfortable with having to move outside of UN structures to achieve results. Given the choice, they would have preferred to achieve the same result in the UN. Despite its success, therefore, there is not much appetite for moving outside of the UN in order to overcome obstacles in other areas of disarmament and arms control unless these have very clear and tangible benefits.

On the contrary, it would seem that the Oslo Process experience, generally speaking, has actually made States more committed to making progress on disarmament and arms control within UN structures. As such, the Oslo Process has strengthened the UN, not undermined it. It's shaken things up by demonstrating that there are alternatives to traditional processes and that, if the UN wishes to remain relevant in disarmament and arms control, it must deliver results that demonstrably improve state and human security.

These new demands on the UN system would also seem to be leading States to re-assess their understanding of the level of agreement that must exist before progress on any particular issue is possible. More and more States would now seem to be questioning the hitherto widely-accepted notion that that negotiations on issues related to security, disarmament and arms control must proceed on the basis of what has become known as 'consensus.' The most fundamental question that is being asked is, 'What does agreement by consensus actually mean?'

So, what does 'consensus' mean? According to the Oxford English Dictionary it means "general agreement or concord." Dictionary.com prefers "majority of opinion." So, the first thing to understand, obviously, is that consensus is not the same as unanimity, where absolutely everyone is in agreement. The concept of consensus encompasses the possibility of disagreement. Consensus means that almost all parties agree.

This (and in my view correct) understanding of consensus has been largely overshadowed in disarmament diplomacy by an interpretation that equates consensus with unanimity, thereby granting de facto veto power to every party to a negotiation. What's more, some States have become so used - or, indeed, addicted - to wielding veto power that they no longer think twice about blocking progress that is obviously desired by most, or even all, other UN Member States.

One of the perhaps unintended consequences of the success of the Oslo Process is that this overly restrictive interpretation of consensus is now being reconsidered. The concept of consensus is perhaps finally being rehabilitated and put in its proper context.

A clear illustration of this is the vote that took place at the end of the 3rd Biennial Meeting of States to monitor implementation of the UN Programme of Action on small arms and light weapons (see "UN small arms process 'back on track'"). In that instance, Iran was the only hold-out on an agreement to move the UN small arms process forward. A few years ago, Iran's action might have scuppered the possibility of an agreement. This time, the many other States that wanted an agreement did not shy away from voting to settle the issue. In the end, Iran, joined by Zimbabwe, decided to abstain from voting. All other States present and voting (134 in all) voted in favour and the agreement passed.

This is how the consensus mechanism should work. If this new way of working becomes more widely applied to disarmament and arms control negotiations, we may well see more progress being made, albeit with some States deciding to opt out. And the need to make progress in disarmament and arms control is, I think, something on which we can all agree.

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: José Puche's 1998 'Monumento a la Paz y a la Concordia' (Monument to Peace and Agreement), Plaza de la Vírgen, Valencia, Spain. Photo by henneorla on Flickr.

CCW: Out of step and almost out of time?

Almost two months after the culmination of the Oslo Process in a ground-breaking new international Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in Dublin, what does the traditional forum for regulating conventional weapon systems, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), have to show? Is it indeed making progress toward an agreement by the end of 2008 that will also have a positive impact in reducing the risk of harm to civilians from cluster munitions? Or was the CCW's third (and longest) session of its Group of Experts this year instead a case, as someone in the Conference room put it, of "the treadmill is turning, but the hamster is dead"?

Those readers who've followed this blog's commentary on work in both the CCW and the Oslo Process on cluster munitions may recall that the CCW achieved a mandate in November 2007 to "negotiate a proposal to address urgently the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions, while striking a balance between military and humanitarian considerations." It could be observed that the CCW was galvanized into action by the emergence of the Oslo Process and the way it snowballed.

Some major users and producers of cluster munitions shunned the Oslo Process. China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States (all CCW members) said the CCW was the appropriate place to negotiate on cluster munitions. Nobody would disagree, but it's indisputable that the Oslo Process emerged because of the CCW's failure to act. Yet in November 2007, as it by coincidence, the CCW achieved a mandate to work, although clearly less ambitious than the February 2007 Oslo Declaration, which called on states to "prohibit cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians."

Most countries in the Oslo Process echoed the UN Secretary-General's statement that the two processes on cluster munitions were "complementary" and "mutually-reinforcing". Many delegations worked in both, and some (especially the Europeans) argued that the CCW could deliver added value to any treaty agreed in Dublin by achieving CCW standards that would capture the big users and producers not in the Oslo Process, even if these benchmarks were lower. And, while the political stewardship of the CCW has been (in part because of its consensus practice) markedly imperfect, the CCW is an important international legal norm, and its protocols do have value and deserve universal support and adherence.

But now that the Dublin celebrations have subsided, there is a CCW a hang-over to deal with. Unlike most hang-overs, it's possible that with time this one will become worse and not better.

The basic problem for the CCW is that its members don't all agree on meaningful new international legal measures on cluster munitions. Russia has been the most vocal about its reluctance (it's more interested in 'best practice' of existing international humanitarian law (IHL) rules) but Russia isn't alone. No-one working in the CCW environment is under any illusion that anything can be achieved that's as ambitious as the CCM, but it's hoped that something is possible despite foot-dragging to date. Moreover, now 60 per cent or so of the CCW's membership have a new challenge: to ensure that whatever is developed in the CCW doesn't undermine what was agreed in Dublin.

And such a scenario is distinctly possible. In June, the Chair of the CCW this year, Ambassador Bent Wigotski of Denmark, circulated a working paper for "the sole purpose of providing a basis for further negotiations", adding that "It is based on proposals by the Friends of the Chair, as well as contributions put forward by delegations". Although containing gaps, Wigotski's paper was structured as a draft protocol.

The paper followed difficult discussions earlier this year in which concerns were raised, for instance, about selective use of IHL rules (and therefore scope for creative reinterpretation) in drafting proposals by one of Wigotski's Friends of the Chair. Although talks have continued this July, these concerns haven't subsided.

In addition, unease among some turned to consternation part-way through the three-week July CCW expert meeting when the Chair issued a "draft common approach paper" of possible elements to be included in a text as the basis for negotiations on several articles (2,3,4,5 and 6) of his earlier paper. This paper seemed to many to pander to a US Department of Defence policy on cluster munitions and unintended harm to civilians dated 19 June, widely regarded as very minimal, and which was castigated by the Cluster Munition Coalition.

Whatever the case, it was not great for trust in my view. The emergence of the paper appeared to polarise those in the conference chamber. And there are signs that CCM-supporting states (including not only the Oslo core group countries but Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and other Europeans) are preparing to dig in, if necessary, against aspects of the Chair's papers despite the slightly strained and artificial outward bonhomie of this CCW meeting. It will be interesting in coming months to see what they make of his new edition of a text circulated at the very end of the expert meeting on its final day last Friday.

Historically in the CCW, the progressives have rolled-over in the face of disappointing agreements - perhaps figuring that some agreement is better than none at all, as in the case of Amended Protocol II in 1995-96. The situation is different now. There is already a robust standard, one agreed in Dublin and with high-level political support from CCW heavyweights among the NATO Europeans, among others. All bets are off that CCM supporters will allow themselves to be rolled for a lower standard in a CCW agreement that conflicts with or undermines the CCM.

If the Chair's approach, which focuses primarily on rules on use of cluster munitions, won't ultimately fly, is there any realistic alternative?

One option would be to go for a transfer ban, either in a legally-binding protocol or as a political declaration of CCW members. While not achieving any prohibitions or specific restrictions on cluster munition use, such an approach would at least acknowledge the reality that demand for cluster munitions internationally is going to diminish as the CCM takes hold. It could be a brief agreement - drafted in a paragraph - not an inconsiderable factor when the CCW experts have only a week in September of work time left and a few days in November to wrap things up. It wouldn't require any changes to military doctrine - always a complicating factor in negotiations for internal decision-making among the military powers. Most importantly, it would have a discernible humanitarian impact, ensuring that, as we've seen with other weapon systems, the oldest and least reliable stocks of cluster munitions disposed of from major military states don't end up proliferating (or being dumped on as 'military aid') to others and then being used.

Crucially, however, any such alternative path would have to be on the understanding that would only the first stage in further CCW work to ensure that, in coming years, other meaningful measures on cluster munitions are negotiated.

So the hamster's not dead, but that's no reason for complacency. Both the CCM and the CCW are too important.

John Borrie


Picture by author of the Philippe Schiller's landmine chair sculpture and Handicap International Suisse banner outside the Palais des Nations courtesy of Handicap International Suisse.

Ripples from Dublin

It was a bit of an anti-climax coming back to Geneva following the historic breakthrough in Dublin last week that led to the adoption by 111 States of a new, legally-binding Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). (This will be opened for signature in Oslo in December and will enter into force as soon as 30 States have ratified it).

After the suspense, drama, emotions and celebrations of Dublin, getting back to ‘business as usual’ in Geneva has not been easy. Not that most Geneva-based disarmament diplomats have had any choice in the matter: On Monday morning it was straight into a week of meetings of the Standing Committees of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. After two weeks of intense negotiations on cluster munitions, a further week of implementation discussions on landmines would not seem to me to be the ideal way to wind down. But the disarmament calendar has no mercy this year it seems.

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) also continues to plod along, trying - valiantly but with ever decreasing vigour it would seem - to break its now 11-year deadlock. Observing the CD's public plenary meeting on Tuesday morning was a rather surreal experience. The room looked strangely empty (probably due to the intersessional meetings of the Mine Ban Treaty going on at the same time down the street). Although this was the first CD meeting I’d managed to get to in over a month, the tone and tenor of the statements were much the same as the last ones I had heard. Nothing’s changed. The deadlock remains.

In the middle of proceedings, the Irish representative lobbed into this stagnant pool a report of what had happened in Dublin over the previous two weeks: A new treaty banning a whole class of conventional weapons; agreed in 18 months; setting a new norm and a new standard of international humanitarian law that will protect civilians and assist victims of these weapons. The contrast exposed by this statement could not have been starker, as was recognised by the CD's current President, the UK, who said that the success of the Dublin conference "flows directly from dissatisfaction at the existing international architecture for arms control and disarmament's ability to grapple with these issues" (see the 'Reaching Critical Will' CD report of June 3).

It will be interesting to see what ripple effects, if any, the Dublin negotiations will have on other areas of disarmament and arms control, including, but not limited to, the CD. Minds are already turned to this question. In its closing statement in Dublin, for example, Norway wondered how the lessons of the Oslo Process on cluster munitions could be applied to revitalising other areas of disarmament and arms control. Many others would like to know too, and this has, of course, been the focus of research by my Disarmament Insight colleagues at UNIDIR's Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project.

As foreshadowed in our last DI post, it will be particularly interesting to see the impact that the new Convention on Cluster Munitions will have on the remaining 5 weeks of negotiations that are scheduled to take place this year in the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). The CCW, as reported in previous posts, is negotiating a 'proposal' on cluster munitions intended to balance military with humanitarian concerns. Many of the States that have just adopted the new Convention banning cluster munitions are also party to the CCW. Some of the big users and producers of cluster munitions that did not participate in the Dublin negotiations - such as the US, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Israel - are too.

This should create an interesting dynamic when the CCW meets again in July. States that were in Dublin could find themselves in the awkward position in the CCW of negotiating relatively weak provisions on cluster munitions when they have themselves already agreed to ban them. States that were not in Dublin might wonder why they are negotiating with other States that have already committed themselves to standards that are much higher than the CCW is every likely to achieve.

The question then is, does the CCW still have something to offer on cluster munitions? I think yes. The Dublin conference focused on the weapons themselves - particularly on their humanitarian impact - and banned them. The CCW, given its membership, will not achieve this and is not attempting to do so. However, the CCW could make a contribution by seeking to moderate the behaviour of States that possess cluster munitions but that have not (yet) agreed to ban them. This could include strongly urging these States never again to use cluster munitions and/or getting them to sign up to strict regulation of their (potential) use of cluster munitions in the future (although we know that any further use of these weapons will result in severe condemnation by the rest of the international community).

Any contribution that the CCW can make along these lines cannot, however, conceal the fact that almost three-fifths of UN Member States have already agreed to ban cluster munitions. The weapon is already well and truly stigmatized and it will be this that defines the debate from now on, rather than anything the CCW might be able to achieve in the time left to it this year.

As a colleague of mine asked me this week: What do you get when you take the CCW and turn it upside-down? The CCM!

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: The Dublin Spire by IrishPics on Flickr.

Cluster ban treaty: 'interoperability' in context

There has been a lot of media coverage of last week's agreement in Dublin on a Cluster Munition Convention - a groundbreaking agreement that prohibits cluster munitions that "cause unacceptable harm to civilians".

Some of this media coverage has been thoughtful, measured and insightful. Indeed, some journalists, especially a number from Japan (for instance, see here), have followed the Oslo and UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) processes closely for many months now and are well aware of their many nuances. Certain other media coverage has been less thoughtful, and sometimes even misguided.

I guess this is to be expected when overworked journos are under pressure to produce copy quickly for the general public, which captures the Dublin negotiation's essential elements. But it's hard to communicate something accurately when you don't properly understand it, especially on the vexed issue of so-called interoperability (Article 21 on "relations with states not parties to this Convention" - for relevant Dublin documents see here).

The Convention's interoperability provision has been held up in some news stories as a massive loophole - The Times of London even led with a story that the British Prime Minister "Gordon Brown blows a loophole in ban on cluster bombs". To be sure, in a perfect scenario, it would be better not to have such a provision in a treaty and international legal experts I have spoken with are a mite unimpressed with the clumsy wording of Article 21. Bonnie Dochety, a Harvard academic and Human Rights Watch legal researcher described Article 21 as "a step backwards".

But let's see it in context here. For one thing, it's wrong to single out the UK. Concerns to ensure that states party to the new treaty could continue to interoperate with non-members were widely held, including by Oslo Process core group countries such as New Zealand and Norway, as well as some countries of the South. And it's no secret that a number of American allies - by no means only the UK - were consulting frequently with their American counterparts during the Dublin negotiations. Given that they are military allies, this is only to be expected, and is no cause for surprise, let alone scandal among those involved in the Oslo Process.

Interoperability has, meanwhile, also been an issue in the context of the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban treaty throughout its implementation. The Mine Ban Treaty process has depended on national statements interpreting its prohibitions on things like "assist", "encourage" and "transfer" in its Articles 1 and 2, but unanimity has never been achieved. The new Cluster Munition Convention has managed to improve on the Mine Ban Treaty's provisions for helping victims and in other areas - its not unreasonable to expect some governments want to achieve greater clarity on the issue of interoperability too.

Moreover, concerns about jurisdiction and state and individual liability have cropped up in recent years in a number of areas, not least in how detainees have been transferred in the so-called Global War on Terror. For better or worse, the cluster ban treaty's interoperability provision reflects the times we're living in.

...Again, this is not to say Article 21 is optimal. But three points, which haven't come out clearly in the media, are salient here. The first point is that it's now a matter of treaty implementation to ensure interoperability doesn't act as a loophole in the cluster bomb treaty - an issue to be confronted whether the Article 21 provision existed or not. The fact that the provision does exist, unlike in the Mine Ban Treaty, will at least form some benchmark for monitoring. As Bonnie Docherty further pointed out:

"The codification of a legal precedent qualifying the prohibition on assistance is unfortunate for the development of future weapons treaties, but in practice it is unlikely to cause a humanitarian problem. States can still make declarations explaining their understandings of the provision, and the United States will likely bow to political pressure and not put their allies in awkward positions."

I agree. And the fact that Article 21 is news can be seen as a good thing: it raises attention to an issue of implementation that would otherwise not be on the public record, and might be slid under the carpet.

The second point is that the cluster ban treaty will have a stigmatizing value over the longer term, even if it is below the media's collective radar most of the time. Parties to the treaty will have to spell out their treaty commitments every time they interoperate with a non-party, which will be a continual reminder of the stigma attached to using cluster munitions.

And, thirdly, the interoperability provision is part of an overall package: as one ICRC colleague put it to me: "If I were playing baseball, I'd call this a 6-1 win, rather than 7 runs to zero. Nevertheless, it's a good day on the ball-field." In addition to the various strong provisions mentioned earlier, the treaty has a robust, cumulative definition of cluster munitions.

Some media stories have been quick to point out that there is an eight year period until cluster munition stockpiles have to be destroyed. But those acceding to the cluster ban treaty are actually obligated to destroy their stockpiles "as soon as possible and no later than eight years after entry into force of this Convention" (my italics), and signatories are obliged not to act against the treaty's object and purpose in the meantime.

Importantly, a formal transition period didn't make it into the cluster ban treaty: once states accede to it, they won't be able to operationally use their stocks of cluster munitions or transfer them on to others for use. Countries like the UK, Germany and France, which have historically used cluster munitions, are already unilaterally moving to take much of their stockpile out of service right now. Gordon Brown's announcement toward the end of the negotiations that the UK would destroy its M85 and M73 cluster munitions was a hugely important positive signal of commitment.

So, let's keep things in perspective: the cluster ban treaty is good news, whatever the cynics say. It will be interesting to see what all of this means for the CCW's work in July.

John Borrie
Photo of a random old bomb at the Warbirds Museum in Wanaka, New Zealand.

Cluster Munition Convention: "Disarmament as humanitarian action"

Today, the new Cluster Munition Convention banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians was adopted by the Dublin Conference at around 10h10. There were no objections expressed from the floor.

A great number of delegations spoke to welcome the new treaty, which will enter into force internationally six months after 30 states have ratified or acceded to it. Given the speed at which the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention entered into force internationally almost a decade ago and the energy and commitment expressed in the conference chamber today, this may not take long.

The final version of the treaty in English, French and Spanish should be available on the Dublin Conference website shortly, in addition to the Conference's procedural report.

A couple of points stood out from the plethora of closing statements. The Ambassador of France said the Dublin Conference had been the most successful diplomatic conference he had taken part of in his career. I suspect many others - especially those involved in multilateral disarmament over the last decade - would agree.

Iceland's representative, a noted international legal scholar, set out his views on interoperability, which will be worth further careful study in the course of implementation of the new treaty, especially its Article 21. Of course, the United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross and Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) spoke to welcome the new treaty, and the CMC presented its implementation action plan to Norway's Deputy Minister of Defence, who spoke along with Ireland's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

But Norway's working head of delegation and a key figure in the Oslo Process, Ambassador Steffen Kongstad, summed up the feelings of many when he noted that although "a moment of joy and gratitude" in practical terms, implementation of the treaty starts today. Moreover, he described the Cluster Munition Convention, and the Oslo Process leading to it as "disarmament as humanitarian action".

Those of us associated with UNIDIR's project on 'Disarmament as humanitarian action: Making Multilateral Negotiations Work' couldn't agree more. It is an historic day, indeed.

John Borrie

Photograph by John Borrie. Ambassador Dáithí O'Ceallaigh, President of the Dublin Conference, and its Secretary-General Colm Ó Floinn, prepare to open today's closing ceremony.