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...

IEDs a threat to peace and security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

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

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.

Explosive issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie


Reference

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

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

Mind the Gap!

Last year we blogged about Swedish medical doctor and public health researcher Hans Rosling. Although Rosling is a well-respected teacher of international public health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, he's well-known for two other reasons: his role in co-founding the non-profit organisation Gapminder, and a stunning presentation he delivered to the Technology, Entertainment Design (TED) symposium in California, which became an internet sensation.

Last evening I had the privilege to attend a lecture by Rosling, co-organised by the United Nations Economic Commission on Europe (UNECE) and the Permanent Mission of Sweden in Geneva. (If there was ever a country to appreciate statistics, it would be Sweden don't you think. Who knew they have a "Swedish Statistician of the Year?" ;-) )

If you weren't previously familiar with Rosling's entertaining and slightly 'nutty professor' style of delivery, the attraction of a one hour lecture at the end of the working day on the topic of 'the value of statistics' might conceivably be lost on you - especially as the earnest chaps at UNECE thought they'd provide the answer in the lecture invitation:

"Statistics allow us to measure and demonstrate progress, providing evidence for effective decision-making about how and where to target development programs."

Fortunately, the fun of the journey is in the getting there. Rosling's talk was indeed fascinating. And he was visibly enjoying himself as he gently pulled the legs of various important Swedish eminent persons and statisticians along the way.

Rosling also made some serious points. Not least of these, he showed through the graphics and animations Gapminder has developed to display statistical trends in development and public health that many of the assumptions held in the 'Western' world' are - and I'm quoting Rosling here - "bullshit". Rosling observed that many of the premises students accept date from when their teachers first read a textbook. He asked his students, for instance, what distinguished family structure in OECD countries from that in developing countries. The answer he was given: rich world = long lifespan, small families; developing world = short lifespan, large families.

The problem is, this is not true. Many parts of the so-called developing world radically differ from this model. Moreover, Singapore - a so-called developing country - has lower child mortality than Sweden. Vietnam's public health indicators put it approximately where the United States was when the Vietnam War ended. And South Korea's progress in the last forty years has been nothing short of stunning.

So life is getting better for some. But not all. What is striking from Rosling's talk is the level of disparity in wealth, not just between countries or regions but within countries. While around 20 percent of South Africa's population, for instance, has a standard of living similar to that of people in rich Western European countries, a significant proportion of its people have a similar standard of living to Uganda. Latin America has massive disparity in wealth, both within the region and within countries.

While recent decades have seen an increasing proportion of the world's people pulled out of abject poverty, Rosling observed that absolute numbers of the poorest people - those living on less than a dollar a day - has remained about the same. And these people may be living nearer to you than you think, for instance if you live in Eastern Europe, or Latin America or the Middle East.

This has big implications for security, not so much of the traditional national kind, but of the human kind. In my view, it perhaps isn't any coincidence that some of the most violent societies on earth - think armed robbery, murder, illicit gun possession - are among the most socioeconomically unequal.

Rosling raised another interesting point, one that doesn't arise in his TED video: rapid development to date has been based on use of fossil fuels. How will a world trying to respond to climate change reconcile these apparently conflicting imperatives? Rosling is an optimist - he notes how inefficiently resources are used at present, citing the huge cost of agricultural subsidies in many OECD countries, for instance. If these were to be reallocated "less stupidly", he argues it would make a huge difference to the world in developmental terms.

To me, there are other dimensions though, some of which link up to concerns in arms control. At present, compelling alternatives to fossil fuel-use to drive growth and development are in short supply not just for financial reasons, but because the technology doesn't exist. Even assuming that technology can lead to new alternative sources of green energy if enough resources are thrown at key problems, it's going to take time for these to come onstream.

In the meantime, nuclear power is an increasingly compelling alternative - as was clear from discussions on civil uses of nuclear technology at last week's NPT PrepCom. Environmental concerns to one side, there are major non-proliferation challenges ahead. So, Rosling's talk provides much to think about for arms controllers as well as development and statistics boffins.

John Borrie

You can have a go with Gapminder software here. If you had been wondering when Hans Rosling's amazing Gapminder data visualization tools would ever emerge from 'beta', it seems they have been sold to Google, which intends, he said, to put them on the internet for free eventually. Good on you Google... Now make it happen, and for Macs as well as PCs please!

Shall the geeks inherit the earth?

Outside the largest conference rooms at UN Headquarters in Geneva, there are several discreet booths containing telephones. Most delegates to UN conferences these days have no idea they're there. Many would be surprised, and probably bemused, to learn that the dusty, disused booths exist for their use, provided they can reach the international operator to authorize their collect calls to capitals.

Like certain other aspects of the 'community of practice' to which disarmament diplomats belong, the UN's delegate phone booths are something of an anachronism in today's world of mobile phones, wi-fi laptops and 'push' e-mail devices like the Blackberry. In a post on Disarmament Insight last year, Patricia Lewis shared some observations about how she thought such wireless devices were changing the practice of diplomacy in settings like New York.

As readers know, I recently attended the Wellington Conference on cluster munitions. Nowhere have the implications of new technology on a multilateral disarmament process been more stark to me.

Let's consider my own case, for instance. I carried a laptop of course, equipped with a built-in webcam, wi-fi and a flash card reader, which enabled me to transfer pictures or movies quickly from my digital camera. It also enabled me to save and edit the contents of my digital field recorder (sort of a souped-up dictaphone-cum-portable recording studio). It's also possible, of course, to record interviews and sessions using a laptop and the right audio cable. I saw several delegates doing this, which adds a new dimension to "the diplomatic record" of an international meeting.

While I wrote my daily reports for DI readers nightly, it would have been perfectly feasible to send out pictures, audio, messages and even video almost in real time from the Conference. In fact, like Geneva, New York and many other parts of the world, it's easy to get on-line with a commercial hot spot in Wellington for only a few dollars an hour, and upload to sites like YouTube or, indeed, Disarmament Insight.

Moreover, it's fair to say that digital equipment connected to the internet is transforming the ability of civil society advocates to co-ordinate internationally in order to try to influence government polices - not only with national delegates in the vicinity of the conference room, but indirectly by engaging with authorities in capitals to try to have delegation instructions changed.

Thanks to instantaneous communication, NGO information is sometimes more up-to-date and more comprehensive about negotiating dynamics than those of governments, thanks to the slower reporting cycles of encrypted official cables. Moreover, one Cluster Munition Coalition delegate, a veteran of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty process told me,

"Ten years ago, when we depended on faxes and international calls, we couldn't have afforded this level of co-ordination, let alone been able to sustain it".

And government officials themselves are looking more broadly for analysis and information. For many years, independent analysts like those of WILPF and the Acronym Institute have, for instance, published excellent analyses of multilateral processes like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meetings and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiations. Diplomats take note of these. But such reports were usually not timely enough to feed directly into delegation decision-making cycles, and mainstream media analysis wasn't detailed or engaged enough. That's changing too.

Nevertheless, while keen to avail themselves of benefits like these, some government officials also seem a bit uneasy about the implications of greater transparency and the involvement of more of the great unwashed in multilateral processes. As diplomats they are, after all, the representatives of peoples - not largely unaccountable specialist interests like NGOs. And there was certainly some on-the-margins grumbling among a number of them about the degree and kind of NGO pressure on them. It was mixed with respect for the substantive knowledge and tactical ability of non-state experts to mix it with states in the informal consultations.

In the wake of the Mine Ban Treaty a decade ago, some claimed it heralded a "new diplomacy" between governments and civil society actors co-ordinating on international issues of human concern. But there was disappointment when it seemed not to eventuate in other areas of international security. Is it now almost here, thanks to collaborative technologies of the Web 2.0? Or is it just in the Oslo Process? And are these new developments entirely good or bad? What do readers think?

John Borrie


Picture of a sculpture in Kingston Upon Thames in the UK by David Mach called "Out of Order". Photo by Maria Kristin Steinisson, downloaded from Flickr.

The Hub, a “YouTube for human rights”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“See it. Film it. Change it.”

Aurélia Merçay


References

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

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

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

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

Worldmapper

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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


Aurélia Merçay


References

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

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

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

What do survivors think of cluster munitions?

Did you ever wonder what a cluster munition survivor thinks of cluster munitions? We found out a few weeks ago during training in Belgrade, Serbia, for individuals from communities affected by cluster munitions in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Serbia and Tajikistan. Their answers were stunning, and touched on devastation, the death of parents and relatives, babies torn apart, terror, trauma, blindness, horror and poverty. There was also guilt and uncertainty - why am I the only survivor of the family? Why did ‘they’ kill my little brother, my mother, even our sheep? What should I do now? And, what do I have to live for, since cluster munitions have killed my family and neighbours?

Over two days, my colleagues Patrizia, Jelena, Firoz, Loren and I heard these moving stories from a small group of rather amazing people. We expected something strong to come out of the meeting but were not prepared for something as strong as that.

The main goal of this pilot project is to enable individuals from affected communities to take part and influence the Oslo process to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions in a way that responds to affected communities’ needs. The project is born out of research on the human impact of cluster munitions that my organization, Handicap International, and our research partners conducted over the past two years (see Fatal Footprint and Circle of Impact, our two reports on the global human impact of cluster munitions). Beyond research into the impacts on the ground, we felt that there was a need to involve in the diplomatic process those people for which the Oslo process has been developed, in partnership with other NGO’s active in survivor and cluster munitions issues. In fact, you could see this project as a global community liaison project, establishing a two-way communication between affected communities and the diplomatic community.

After a few days of training the participants - Snezana, Sladjan and his wife Dusica, Umarbek, Dejan, Danijel, Milosav, Rasha, Ali and Jonuz - had become Ban Advocates, meaning that we’ll work together over the course of the coming year to explain to diplomats, military and the media why the Oslo process on cluster munitions is so necessary and how it should address affected communities’ needs. More than us, they know what a cluster munition is and why it should be banned. They know what the ‘victims’ needs are. And beyond the theoretical discussions that often take place in multilateral talks, they know what is needed in their communities and can inject a much-needed sense of reality. And they have already begun to do this, for instance at an international conference of cluster munition-affected states in Serbia earlier this month.

If you come to Vienna, Wellington or Dublin for the next international meetings of the Oslo process, you’re likely to meet these Ban Advocates. Please, listen to them. If you do, what they shall tell you is likely to radically modify your understanding of what a cluster munition is and what its effects are.

The Ban Advocates initiative will be launched officially just before the Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions in December this year.


Stan Brabant

This is a guest blog by Stan Brabant. Stan is Head of Policy at Handicap International, Belgium, and coordinates the ‘Ban Advocates initiative’.


Reference

Photo of the Ban Advocates in Belgrade courtesy of Stan Brabant (front row left).

Satellites of Love?

"Satellite's gone up to the sky
Things like that drive me out of my mind
I watched it for a little while
I like to watch things on TV
Satellite of love ..."

In our third volume of research, Andreas Persbo and Michael Crowley from the London-based Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC) looked at the roles Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) play in the monitoring and verification of international arms control and disarmament agreements. They observed that:

"one area of NGO activity that has not been adequately studied has been the crucial role played by the NGO community in monitoring, and in some cases verifying, international agreements. Indeed, non-governmental monitoring, sometimes referred to as "citizens' reporting", "inspection by the people" or "civil society monitoring", has become an important element in the international community's evaluation of how effectively states implement their treaty obligations on a wide range of issues."

Once upon a time, technologies like satellite imaging were restricted to a few governments, and during the Cold War were initially harnessed for surveillance of the adversary's territory and activities. Eventually, satellites emerged as important elements of arms control verification. And, over time, the cost of space satellite imaging technology has come down and been increasingly commercialized for a huge range of uses - to the point where an ordinary schmo like me can look up Google Earth (which almost seamlessly blends satellite and aerial imagery) on the internet for free to see if I can see my home (I can).

Unsurprisingly, some civil society actors have woken up to the fact that such technologies could be helpful in trying to hold governments accountable for their actions, for instance for human rights violations or failure to protect civilians in conflict. In June of this year, for instance, Amnesty International launched a website in partnership with the University of California at Berkeley to keep watch over imperiled villages in the Darfur region of Sudan, and to post images online in order to enlist help to prevent violence. These images show, for instance, before and after photographs of scores of apparently destroyed settlements.

Earlier this month, the journal Science reported that its publisher, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), had released similar satellite images of Myanmar, showing that dozens of villages in the eastern part of the country had been uprooted or razed to the ground. Science displayed images of a village near Kewy Kee in east Myanmar photographed by a commercial satellite on 5 May 2004, which had disappeared in an image taken on 23 February 2007.

It remains to be seen how effective such images will be in motivating the international community to step in to prevent such violence. But commercial satellite imagery is certainly very powerful in documenting abuses. And, it can provide plausible alternative interpretations to those put forward by government officials. Occasionally, it might even embarrass the intelligence community. One organization doing good work in this regard is the Federation of American Scientists, which has used openly available satellite imagery - some of it from Google - to pinpoint the launch, for instance, of new Chinese nuclear ballistic missile submarines.

A few weeks ago I was invited to a conference in Italy to talk about developments on the horizon in the life sciences with potential for hostile misuse. To illustrate the difference in scale between nuclear and biological facilities and challenges for verification, I showed my audience some satellite images of the Bushehr and Natanz nuclear facilities in Iran, alongside pictures of the Palo Alto district in Silicon Valley, California. An Iranian official in the audience afterward demanded to know where I had obtained these "sensitive" pictures. I told him I'd obtained them from Google Earth. I kid you not: "Who is this Google Earth?" he demanded to know.

It's serendipitous that Lou Reed's song, Satellite of Love (quoted above) came from an album entitled 'Transformer'. Not everyone's heard of Lou Reed yet, or is going to be a fan once they've listened to what he has to offer. Sounds like the same may be true of my pal, Google Earth - but hear from him and his ilk they will.


John Borrie


References

"Myanmar's Secret History Exposed in Satellite Images", Science (vol. 318), 5 October 2007.

"Satellites to Watch for Darfur Violence", Associated Press, 6 June 2007.

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum+Google Earth website on 'Crisis in Darfur'.

Andreas Persbo & Michael Crowley, "The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in the monitoring and verification of international arms control and disarmament agreements".

Photo of the beginning of the burning of Um Zelfa village courtesy of Brian Steidle, Alert/Sudan.

30% less pupils in Helmand province

According to IRIN (the Integrated Regional Information Networks of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)), more than 30,000 pupils attending school in the Helmand province in southern Afghanistan last year were absent in 2007. This represents a reduction of more than 30% in school attendance:

“This year we have 70,000 students in 90 functioning schools in Helmand province,” said Saeed Ibrar Agha, head of the provincial education department.[]
In 2002, less than a year after the Taliban were toppled, there were 224 functioning schools all over the province [].”

Insecurity explains why most schools are shuttered in the Helmand province. In the past 15 months, according to Saeed Ibrar Agha, Taliban insurgents and other armed groups targeting schools as symbols of the government have burned down more than 20 schools and killed 17 students, teachers and other staff.

The deterioration of security conditions has led to a flow of children to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. Today, half of all provincial pupils (i.e. 35,000 children) are to be found in Lashkar Gar. The 27 schools open in the city have been unable to keep pace with demand and some classes have to be held in the open.

To end on a positive note, the number of female students – who were denied the right to attend school under the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001 – has increased from 12,228 in 2006 (12%) to 14,500 in 2007 (21%) in the Helmand province. This is important. As a 2006 Human Rights Watch report observed, increasing females’ access to education not only benefits girls and women, but also the country’s development:

“It is now well-established that increasing girls’ and women’s access to education improves maternal and child health, improves their own children’s access to education, and promotes economic growth. For example, research has shown that an additional year of school for girls can reduce infant mortality by 5 to 10 percent, and that reducing the gender gap in education increases per capita income growth. Indeed, studies have found greater returns through higher wages on school investments for girls than for boys, particularly for secondary education.”

Aurélia Merçay


References

AFGHANISTAN: Boys' education slides in Helmand, IRIN’s report, 8 October 2007, available online at http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74690 .

Human Rights Watch, Education in Afghanistan and its Importance for Development in Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan, July 2006, available online at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/afghanistan0706/3.htm.

Photo by Jim Birt retrieved from Flickr: brightly coloured burqas worn by Afghan girls on their way to school in Gereshk, Helmand Province (Afghanistan, May 2007).

Announcement: New Oslo Process resource website

There is a new website specifically dedicated to documents and other resources about the Oslo Process to address the humanitarian effects of cluster munitions. You can find it at:

http://www.clusterprocess.org

The idea behind the website is to act as a gateway for information about the cluster munition humanitarian process for participants and interested actors. It's meant to be fact-oriented, up-to-date, and easy to access and navigate even for slower internet connections - eschewing photos, animations and other bandwidth-heavy attributes.

On this site we've gathered two main categories of information. The first category concerns information produced for the Oslo Process such as the Oslo Declaration, the Lima Discussion Text and a calendar of events.

The cluster process website also contains broader information on the cluster problem and efforts to tackle it, with links to other meetings, publications, organisations and initiatives of interest - including Disarmament Insight.

The website is a work in progress, but will be updated and adjusted continuously. It's sponsored by the states hosting conferences in the Oslo Process so as to facilitate the need for access to documents and general information on its work.

I hope you find the site useful.


This is a guest blog by Christian Ruge, a consultant to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and technical editor of the Oslo Process website.

Re-humanize yourself: The Belgrade Conference of states affected by cluster munitions

Unexploded ordnance clearance experts are among the unsung humanitarian heroes. Their work is tricky, often tense and - because rendering unexploded munitions safe is an art rather than a science - also sometimes unavoidably dangerous. Disposing of unexploded submunitions is one of the worst jobs because these weapons are anything but "duds": they're unpredictable, difficult to locate (being small and hard to see), unreliable and yet often deployed in large numbers.

These brave, ordinary people ultimately put themselves at risk to protect civilians. Bad things can and do happen to them.

In 2000, Branislav Kapetanovic, a Serbian UXO clearance expert, was working to render an unexploded submunition safe when it detonated. Branislav was lucky: he lived. But he lost both legs and the ends of his arms and now gets around in a wheelchair. The rehabilitation process has been long and hard, especially in a country in which resources are scarce - as they are in all but the richest nations of the world.

This week, I was fortunate to meet Branislav, who has become a spokesperson for the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) - a network of civil society groups dedicated to banning these weapons - in Serbia at the Belgrade Conference of states affected by cluster munitions. I've just returned from that Conference, and thought I should offer a few impressions.

The idea behind the Belgrade Conference was to allow affected countries to share their experiences and jointly produce some recommendations to feed into international efforts to deal with the humanitarian consequences of cluster munitions. The Conference agenda focused on survivor assistance, explosive ordnance clearance, and international assistance and cooperation.

It was preceded by a half-day civil society forum organized by the CMC on 2 October, in which cluster munition survivors talked about their horrific, real-life experiences - as they were also able to do during the latter Conference.

Well, so what? After all, affected states have long played a major role in the implementation of the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and a special emphasis put on ensuring the participation of landmine survivors. Indeed, a slogan of the Landmine Survivors' Network - a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) - is "nothing about us without us".

But, in the disarmament field, the Mine Ban Convention has largely stood alone. Talks on cluster munitions in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) have, for years, been largely of military, legal and technical nature. They've often felt rather remote from the actual concerns of those living with the effects of this weapon - whether victims like Branislav, relatives of victims, or communities adversely affected by unexploded submunitions.

In February of this year, a new international track emerged, the so-called Oslo Process, with much more ambitious objectives to "address the humanitarian problems caused by cluster munitions". Since February, the number of states associating themselves with the Oslo Process has grown to more than 80 and it prompted the Belgrade Conference.

The Conference was important in several respects:

- It was specifically intended to bring together representatives from affected states (including survivors), interested countries, UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the CMC and others to discuss how a new treaty should effectively address the specific needs of states, communities and individuals affected by this weapon.

- It highlighted the plight of individuals maimed by cluster munitions from places such as Afghanistan, Croatia, Cambodia, Lebanon, Laos, Serbia and Tajikstan and their needs. Hearing their stories, while often painful for them and shocking for all, has helped to humanize the issue. It's one thing to talk about international measures concerning cluster munitions in the abstract - quite another when you've met victims face to face. Medical and ordnance clearance personnel also shared their practical experiences.

- It's added additional impetus to the Oslo Process. Despite many evident political and practical challenges over the year ahead to achieve a treaty, there was much to gain strength from.

- Notably, civil society campaigning on cluster munitions has grown markedly in sophistication and effectiveness over the last 12 months, and this Conference added yet more impetus and energy.

- And, increasingly, affected countries - who are mostly developing countries with scant diplomatic resources and who are usually marginalized in discussions dominated by cluster munition user and producer states in the CCW - are speaking out too.

I was particularly affected by the story of one Serbian cluster munition survivor, a clearance expert like Branislav (I didn't catch his name) who lost an arm and a leg to a submunition. He told the Conference that initially he didn't want to talk about his experiences as a survivor, because he didn't think it could make a difference. Imagine what he must have been through, and yet be made to feel like that? But emerging international efforts, primarily the Oslo Process, had changed his mind, he said.

It's vital that we don't let these people down. As Emil Jeremić, Regional Representative of Norwegian People’s Aid in South East Europe told the Belgrade Conference, “Negotiating a ban treaty is not all about technical issues and military interests. It is first and foremost about protecting human lives”.

Next time you're told something can't be done, be reminded about the real costs of failing.


John Borrie


References

CMC Press Release, "Contaminated Countries Embrace Ban on Cluster Munitions" (2 October 2007).

Photo by John Borrie.

Thinking Outside the Bomb: The Road From Oslo

Negotiations on an international treaty to ban anti-personnel mines were successfully concluded ten years ago this week. A decade later, the Mine Ban Treaty has 155 state parties and, although substantial implementation challenges remain, is generally seen as a "success in progress" in destroying stockpiles, clearing mined land and assisting victims of anti-personnel mines.

Perhaps more than any other disarmament-related treaty, the mine ban norm has retained focus on helping mine-affected people and their communities on the ground through its partnership between both mine-affected and donor governments and civil society. And the treaty has stigmatized mine use around the world to an impressive degree.

This week, I've been participating in a round of events in Oslo to commemorate completion of the Mine Ban Treaty, all grouped around the theme of "clearing the path for a better future". It's been great to see so many familiar faces - of friends and colleagues who've come, gone and returned over the years of the mine ban process - and to renew these old ties.

This week's events have also added impetus to the international campaign to ban cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The Oslo Process, which emerged in February of this year with support from 46 governments, had expanded to 80 by the start of this week and has since grown further. At this rate of growth in support, the process will have more than 100 states behind it by the end of 2007.

Although not a view shared by all of those governments represented at the 10th anniversary event yesterday, there is a growing sense that the time is ripe to seize the opportunity to tackle cluster munitions, as those in the Ottawa process did a little over a decade ago in response to problems caused by anti-personnel mines. Most likely this will be through a ban on at least some cluster munitions, which will be the object of tough negotiations to come at international conferences in Vienna (December), Wellington (February 2008) and Dublin (May 2008). And, with the Mine Ban Treaty's focus on enhancing the security of ordinary people in mind, it's likely the agreement that emerges next year will have similar measures to assist victims of submunitions.

Seizing this opportunity is not without political risk, but like the mine ban treaty before it, it'll be worth it. Some of the biggest cluster munition producers and users - like China, Russia and the United States - are not yet onboard. This clearly makes several NATO countries nervous and they would prefer work to be in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) process in Geneva. But hopes that the CCW will agree on a robust negotiating mandate at its November meeting are likely to be in vain in view of its consensus practice.

Ten years ago, the United Nations was behind the curve on the Ottawa process. In contrast, the UN family today announced a new, more ambitious position on cluster munitions, which

"calls on Member States to address immediately the horrendous, humanitarian, human rights and development effects of cluster munitions by concluding a legally binding instrument of international humanitarian law that:

- prohibits the use, development, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians;

- requires the destruction of current stockpiles of those munitions; and

- provides for clearance, risk education and other risk mitigation activities, victim assistance, assistance and cooperation, and compliance and transparency measures.

Until such a treaty is adopted, the UN calls on States to take domestic measures to immediately freeze the use and transfer of all cluster munitions."

John Borrie


Reference

If you'd like more background about cluster munitions, and an account concerning treatment of this weapon in the CCW and Oslo processes so far, you might be interested in reading a pre-print of my Disarmament Diplomacy article, "The Road from Oslo: Emerging international efforts on cluster munitions" on the Acronym Institute's website.

Analyzing armed violence: the Taback - Coupland model

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Aurélia Merçay


References

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

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

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

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

0800-HOW-IS-MY-DIPLOMACY? Technology and humanitarian action

Regular readers of the Disarmament Insight blog will have gathered that, among many things, we're interested in the impacts of technology on international decision-making. Patricia Lewis, for instance, has offered some of her personal observations about the changes mobile phones and Blackberries have wrought on interactions in multilateral meetings she's attended (See "Zapped! Mobile technology in the conference chamber").

There seems little doubt that continued improvements to wireless communications have radical implications for the coordination of international activities at many different levels.

For instance, The Economist newspaper ran a story on 26 July entitled "Flood, Famine and Mobile Phones". In it, the Economist argued that technology is transforming humanitarian relief - and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients.

It all sounds great. But the Economist conceded that - beyond anecdotal evidence - there isn't a definitive verdict yet on how much of a difference such new technologies have made in achieving more effective humanitarian aid delivery.

Nevertheless, the evidence has been compelling enough to result in a brace of new initiatives. Non-Governmental Organizations have begun forming consortiums like NetHope, which spreads the cost of satellite communications and internet links. UN agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Programme have taken a particular interest in trying to achieve practical benefits in aid delivery from better communications, activities which should (in principle at least) result in superior coordination.

Meanwhile, even in the poorest parts of the world, technologies like mobile telephony are increasingly widespread. It's likely that such technologies really do have the capacity to transform aid delivery in some disaster situations - if donors and deliverers of aid are willing to listen to feedback from aid recipients and, of course, if the technological infrastructure itself still works or can be made to work in the midst of the disaster (a big "if" indeed, and glossed over by The Economist).

There's also another, deeper, point here. Quite often, there's a temptation to think of disaster victims as passive beneficiaries of aid, who should be grateful for anything they get. This attitude has to change: the ability of affected people on the ground (or in the flood water) to contribute to the information loop and decision making about their own welfare is crucial to improving responses to disasters, whether natural, man-made or conflict-related. Packages dropped to people from relief helicopters are only aid if they're what those people actually need. (The Economist noted the NGO Save the Children's finding that, in some recent humanitarian relief situations, victims would prefer cash help to food hand-outs.)

In other words, accountability is important, even in apparent situations of altruistic giving like disaster relief. Accountability is something we would do well to bear in mind in disarmament and arms control. In a recent book, former British diplomat Carne Ross argued that diplomats are a largely "unaccountable elite", who often don't take into account the interests of those they are supposed to be helping or representing, drawing on his personal experiences in the UN Security Council setting.

It's possible Ross over-states his case in parts. But in multilateral arms control there does sometimes seem to be a considerable distance between negotiators and those affected by lack of multilateral results, for instance on controls on small arms or the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions.

It's a bit like the white van driver who may not care if she drives inconsiderately or even dangerously. The vehicle she drives belongs to the business she works for - it's hard to identify her or make her accountable. So in places like the United States, lots of business vehicles now come with a "how am I driving?" sign on them along with a hotline telephone number. Is 0800-HOW-IS-MY-DIPLOMACY? connected to a television hotline or Parliament maybe?

One question we perhaps need to ask is this: How - beyond their convenience - can new technologies make decision makers more accountable, and therefore more effective in achieving disarmament and humanitarian goals? Domestic electorates know remarkably little about what their diplomatic representatives do on their behalf overseas, and might be surprised at the degree of preoccupation of multilateral practitioners with process. Voices from the field therefore need to be heard and heeded more often.


John Borrie


References

The Economist, "Flood Famine and Mobile Phones", 26 July 2007

Carne Ross, Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite, London: Hurst: 2007.

Photo (Namibia: Helicopter rescues people from flood hit areas, Image ID: 20044304) courtesy of IRIN.

Small arms: not a happy birthday

Monday’s International Herald Tribune ran a front-page story about the 60th birthday this year of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov assault rifle:

“In cash-hungry Russia, Kalashnikov is now an informal brand. And as purchases of Kalashnikov rifles and their derivatives continue on foreign markets, Russian arms manufacturers and exporters worry not about ideology and world dominance, but over sales opportunities lost.”

To people in many societies around the world suffering the effects of the wide availability of small arms and light weapons - the Kalashnikov is its sinister poster-child - such concerns must seems a little strange, if not cynical.

The Kalashnikov first emerged with the most patriotic of intentions after Mikhail Kalashnikov, a Soviet tank commander, was wounded in combat in late 1941. While recovering in hospital he began sketching gun designs and then joined a depot workshop of the Moscow Aviation Institute. In 1947 Kalashnikov designed the AK-47 and two years later it became the Soviet army’s standard issue rifle.

Exported all over the world during the Cold War, the AK-47 and its variants became 20th century icons of communist struggle and revolution, famed for their durability and simplicity. The rest, as they say, is history. Or rather it would have been if production and trade hadn’t spread further after the Cold War ended.

Interviewed in his placid retirement in October 2003 by The Guardian newspaper, the 83 year-old Kalashnikov displayed few qualms about how inextricably his name had become connected with “what was to become the world’s most prolific killing machine”.

But three years later, Kalashnikov announced that he backed UN moves to halt the illicit trade in small arms. “It is not the designers who must ultimately take responsibility for where guns end up - it is governments who must control their production and export”, he said.

According to figures quoted in a 2006 article in The Independent (“Global arms trade: Africa and the curse of the AK-47”), some 60 per cent of guns in the world are in civilian hands. Each year, the arms trade adds 8 million more guns to the 650 million already in circulation around the globe. Of these, Control Arms Campaign figures quoted in the story estimate about 100 million are AK-47s or variants. Significantly, “The majority of people who are killed by guns are not killed in situations of war but in those of crime and personal attack.”

One year ago last week I sat in on the UN review conference on the 2001 programme of action (PoA) to curb the illicit trade in small arms in New York, which closed without result. While a blow to international efforts to curb this trafficking and its human costs, the non-result was hardly terminal because PoA implementation will continue.

Moreover, last October the UN General Assembly voted through a resolution toward negotiation of an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Earlier this year the UN Secretary-General began consultations with member states on its possible content on which he’ll report this October.

Such initiatives suggest that the complaints of Russian arms manufacturers about unauthorized knock-offs of their Kalashnikovs aren’t likely to attract wide sympathy unless they show their commitment to strict controls to ensure the weapons they make don’t end up being exchanged illicitly.

And that doesn’t just apply to the Russians but to all arms producers. In October 2006, for instance, a U.S. government report revealed that the American military had failed to track hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces. Many weapons had gone missing. Some are turning up in the hands of the insurgency, others - including many American models - in the booming Iraqi black market in small arms.

Meanwhile, the arms trade - both legal and illicit - is a big global business. Global controls on arms to prevent them falling into the wrong hands are going to need real sense of commitment by arms producing countries, along with willingness to accept the financial costs of rules.

This is why civil society is so important and in particular the Control Arms Campaign and the International Action Network on Small Arms. They’ve already helped to build a lot of international momentum by highlighting the human costs of Kalashnikov and its ilk and encouraging governments to do what they see as the right thing on moving toward an ATT.

Serious demands will be placed on the ability of civil society actors to persuade and gently nudge countries during an eventual ATT negotiation - and to subsequently implement it. These are more subtle skills than cajoling or finger pointing at existing abuses, important as that is. But they’ll be vital skills if the world is to ensure future anniversaries of the AK-47 are less unhappy.


John Borrie


References

“Russia’s trademark gun turns 60 amid rumblings of profits lost”, International Herald Trib-une (15 July 2007), available online here.

“Kalashnikov backs weapons control”, BBC News (26 June 2006), available online here.

“Global arms trade: Africa and the curse of the AK-47”, Independent (6 April 2006), available online here.

“Black-Market Weapon Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos”, New York Times (10 December 2006), available online here.

“U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis”, New York Times (30 October 2006), see here.

Information about the Control Arms Campaign is available here.

Picture retrieved from Flickr.com.

War and Peace and Primates…and Podcasts

The Disarmament Insight initiative aims to encourage disarmament practitioners to think differently about human security.

In line with that aim, the Disarmament Insight initiative held its second symposium, entitled “Human Security, ‘Human Nature’ and Trust-building in Negotiations”, at Château de Bossey near Geneva on 25 May 2007.

To stimulate fresh thinking and discussion, we invited some outstanding speakers including Frans de Waal, one of the world’s foremost authorities on ape behaviour and author of books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Peacemaking Among Primates (1990) and Paul Seabright, economist and author of The Company of Strangers: a Natural History of Economic Life (2004).

As usual, we recorded talks in order to put them up on the website. Today, we have the pleasure to announce the release of Frans de Waal’s presentation: “War and Peace and Primates”.

In his talk, Frans de Waal explores what multilateral practitioners can learn from our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, including the chimpanzee and the bonobo, about negotiating, the nature of conflict and reconciliation.

We hope you enjoy this truly amazing presentation. Ideas worth spreading...

Coming soon: Paul Seabright’s presentation “How have human beings tamed our warring instincts?”

Watch this space!


Aurélia Merçay


Reference

Photo retrieved from Flickr.

And now for something completely different

Regular visitors to this site will have noted that over the last month or so our blogging has focused on two important multilateral meetings - the preparatory meeting of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in Vienna and, more recently, a meeting of the Oslo Process in Lima, Peru, which is working to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions.

I would have been in Peru blogging to you personally, dear reader, but for a meeting of our own near Geneva, hosted as part of the work of the Disarmament Insight initiative to help multilateral disarmament practitioners think out of the box.

On Friday 25 May, around 25 invited disarmament diplomats at both ambassador and working level, experts from United Nations agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), researchers, civil society representatives and the Disarmament Insight team met for a one-day symposium on the themes of "Human security, 'human nature' and trust building in negotiations".

To help us, our speakers included:

- Frans de Waal, Director of the Living Links Center and C.H. Candler Professor of Primate Behaviour at Emory University, who explored what multilateral practitioners can learn from our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, including the chimpanzee and the bonobo, about negotiating and the nature of aggression and reconciliation. Frans was recently named by Time magazine as one of its 100 people shaping the world in 2007.

- Paul Seabright, Professor of Economics at the University of Toulouse and author of "The Company of Strangers: a Natural History of Economic Life", who analysed the interactions between our minds and our institutions in modern life, which may help us to understand better why in some contexts conflict seems so intractable.

- Dr. Robin Coupland, the ICRC's adviser on armed violence and the effects of weapons and a former war surgeon, who discussed how de Waal's and Seabright's views tie into understanding armed violence.

- Yours truly. I talked briefly about the notion of 'cognitive ergonomics' - of looking at multilateral negotiating processes and how we could better design them to leverage our cognitive and social skills as human beings.

The emphasis of the symposium was on informal discussion and it followed the Chatham House rule. While respecting that rule, we'll be posting more information about the symposium here, including pod casts of some of the presentations, over the coming weeks.

So check back regularly for some fresh ways of "thinking differently about human security" from what was a productive gathering of big-brained social apes.


John Borrie


Reference

Info about the ICRC's work on weapons and humanitarian law is available here.

Facing the facts on cluster munitions

People who live and work in areas where cluster munitions have been used are only too familiar with the horrific humanitarian impact of this weapons system, both at the time of use and for long after the bombs have stopped falling.

NGOs and UN bodies have been documenting this impact for years, in greater and greater disturbing detail. But on Wednesday (May 16), the NGO Handicap International sketched the most complete picture yet of the impact that cluster munitions have on the lives, limbs and livelihoods of the people unfortunate enough to live in their midst. Their report makes for sobering reading. Its key findings include:

- The available data shows that cluster munitions have nearly always been used in or near civilian populated areas against unknown or unspecified targets

- 400 million people currently live among unexploded cluster sub-munitions

- 98 percent of cluster sub-munition casualties are civilians, killed and injured while returning home in the aftermath of conflict or while going about their daily tasks to survive

- The majority of victims are poor, uneducated males, many of them boys under the age of 18

These are just some of the hard facts that will have to be faced by the governments gathering in Lima, Peru, on May 23-25 to take the first step along the path agreed in Oslo in February (see the May 15 and April 24 postings by John Borrie for background on the "Oslo process" on cluster munitions).

The Oslo declaration does not - necessarily - foresee a complete ban on cluster munitions, but rather a ban on those cluster munitions that cause "unacceptable harm" to civilians. The Handicap International report has made it more difficult to claim that some cluster munitions cause harm that is "acceptable" in any humane sense of the word.

To pass the muster of international humanitarian law, the military advantage to be gained from the use of a weapon must be proportional to the civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects caused by the attack. This notion of "proportionality," it seems to me, is closely related to the concept of "unacceptable harm" that will be at the heart of the Oslo process negotiations.

Clearly, a 98 percent civilian casualty rate is neither proportional nor acceptable. It is also difficult to imagine what cumulative military advantage could be worth 400 million people living in daily fear of losing their lives or their loved ones.


Patrick Mc Carthy


References

"Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities." Handicap International - http://en.handicapinternational.be/index.php

Photo by Dave Mitchell on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/davemitchell/279352521/. The photo is of a child picking up a fake cluster sub-munition at a Derry Anti-War Coalition demonstration (Northern Ireland).