Will the CCW give birth to a mouse or a monster?

The 4th Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) will come to an end this Friday, 25 November. Until then, the negotiation of a protocol on cluster munitions to be annexed to the CCW is likely to take up most of delegates’ time. Even at this late stage in the negotiations, however, it remains unclear whether states parties to the CCW will be able to reach consensus on a text. If they do, based on draft texts presented this week, it is also unclear whether the CCW will finally give birth to a mouse or a monster.

Monster...

Several aspects of the CCW’s cluster munitions negotiations are disturbing from a humanitarian, international legal and multilateral negotiations perspective. In the view of many, as it stands now, the protocol fails to bring significant and immediate humanitarian benefits. Worse even, the present draft authorizes the use of certain types of cluster munitions. A number of states, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Cluster Munition Coalition fear that this may result in greater investment in the development and production of cluster munitions that are known to cause grave harm to civilians, lead to growing use of these weapons, and therefore greater civilian casualties.

The CCW negotiations also raise a number of moral and legal questions (see e.g. this backgrounder by international law professor Nystuen). This morning, over 30 countries stated:

The current draft would represent the opposite of what we consider the overall goal of the Convention.

Indeed, a protocol that authorizes continued use of cluster munitions may run counter the very object and purpose of the CCW, whose preamble recalls “the general principle of the protection of the civilian population against the effects of hostilities” and reaffirms “the need to continue the codification and progressive development of the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict”.

As the ICRC - “guardian” of IHL - has pointed out repeatedly, agreeing to a treaty that sets a weaker standard in terms of civilian protection than the one set by the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) would constitute a regrettable precedent of regression in IHL which would threaten the “coherence, effectiveness and integrity of this field of law”.

The normative effect of a CCW protocol on cluster munitions on the CCM should be of particular concern to states that are parties (or signatories) to both treaties. Mainly, because the CCM prohibits states from “assisting, encouraging and inducing” anyone to engage in prohibited activities, such as cluster munitions use (Art.1), and obliges states parties to take positive measures in their relations with states not party to the CCM to encourage adherence to the CCM, promote its norms and to make their “best efforts to discourage” them “from using cluster munitions” (Art. 21).

Continued involvement in and facilitation of negotiations, and a fortiori, participation in a consensus decision to adopt a CCW protocol that authorizes use of cluster munitions prohibited under the CCM, may constitute a violation of that convention. Support by CCM state parties of a CCW protocol that authorizes use of cluster munitions also constitutes state practice that risks rendering the positive obligations of Art. 21 meaningless. Finally, a CCW protocol that legitimises continued use of cluster munitions would be an obstacle to the extension of the norms embodied in the CCM by way of customary international law.

…mouse…

Few of the substantive elements in the draft texts presented to date enjoy a semblance of consensus. That cluster munitions produced before 1980 should not be used, stockpiled or transferred is one of them. Additional transfer restrictions, for example in relation to non-state actors, are also relatively undisputed. CCW states parties also seem to agree that civilians should be protected from indiscriminate effects of weapons and that the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) are the relevant standard in this context.

But how to apply the rules of IHL to the weapon technology at hand, the very purpose of any CCW protocol, remains subject to dispute. Given the difficulty of adopting a comprehensive prohibition of cluster munitions in the CCW, attempts are being undertaken to translate general rules of IHL into specific prohibitions on the use of these explosive weapons. But in the latest draft text (Rev.2 of 23 November, 15h30) language previously introduced by Switzerland under the heading “Protection of civilians” was removed. Switzerland, supported by many other states, had suggested the inclusion of a prohibition on the use of cluster munitions in populated areas. A similar provision is contained in CCW protocol III on incendiary weapons and would (if not weakened by qualifiers or overridden by other provisions in the protocol) be of some humanitarian benefit.

Even if restrictions on the use and a prohibition of some (old) cluster munition types are retained in the final text, however, these provisions are hardly adequate and sufficient to address the humanitarian problem caused by cluster munitions. Especially, as other parts of the protocol may well outweigh these humanitarian benefits.

… or hedgehog?!

At the end of this week, states parties to the CCW will have to make up their minds and decide whether the text in front of them is a mouse or a monster. Of course, for musophobics the difference may be slight, but in the view of most, mice are relatively inoffensive and the damage they may cause by gnawing away at the normative structure of humanitarian protection is likely to be limited. The humanitarian and normative impact of a monstrous protocol may be far more damaging.

After years, nay, decades, of CCW talks on cluster munitions, member states still do not agree about the very objective of their endeavor, the frame of reference to assess whether that objective has been attained and/or their mandate fulfilled, let alone the methods to assess likely humanitarian impact (positive and negative) of particular provisions or the protocol as a whole.

It is hence difficult to foresee what comes out of this body on Friday - if anything at all. For many participants in this lengthy process it must by now feel like “giving birth to a hedgehog against the lie of its spines” - to quote one of my favorite Russian proverbs.

This is a guest blog by Maya Brehm. Maya is project manager at UNIDIR.

Photo: "Muppet monster 'Frazzle' is a growling monster on Sesame Street. His deceptively fierce visage hides a child-like personality and a desperate need to be included." (Source: Muppet Wiki)

Not so apocalyptic

'Where's Obama when you need him?'

It's hard not to feel a little bit like Cinderella at the moment as I plug away on completing a manuscript of a history of the Oslo process on cluster munitions, which is due to be published later this year by the United Nations. As I stare bleary-eyed and punch drunk at my computer screen, interesting developments for disarmament are happening on a couple of different fronts, one being the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Since he assumed office, there has been great optimism among many pundits (and a certain amount of dismay among some of the conservative Gaffney-types) that U.S. President Barack Obama would assume a much greater leadership role than the previous Bush administration on efforts at the multilateral level toward nuclear disarmament.

Obama seems to have become president in the middle of something of a 'perfect storm' - with a global financial crisis (including the near bankruptcy of huge American carmakers GM and Chrysler), a deteriorating security picture in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the ongoing Iranian and North Korean nuclear sagas and even a swine flu pandemic outbreak. Obama versus the four horseman of the apocalypse it would seem. So one might be forgiven for thinking that the Obama administration might put good intentions about nuclear leadership on the back burner.

And talk is cheap. The truth is, that until the NPT Preparatory Meeting that began at the beginning of last week in New York, no-one outside the U.S. government really knew what kind of tone the new administration would try to set, especially as its ambassadorship to the Conference on Disarmament has been empty, and it has generally kept pretty quiet in Geneva so far this year.

I attended parts of last year's second Preparatory Meeting in Geneva, and to be honest it was a bit of a depressing spectacle. Nevertheless, but for infernal book writing I would love to have gone to New York this May to see if the atmosphere has changed. By various accounts, the U.S. delegation, led by Rose Gottemoeller, seems to have set a very positive tone, reading a message from President Obama to the meeting, and delivering an assessment of the U.S.'s basic positions on the disarmament, non-proliferation and nuclear energy pillars ot the NPT.

From time to time, I've been reading Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will's very useful blog following the course of the NPT meeting, which said this about Gottemoeller's statement:

"She reaffirmed that the U.S would seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiations on a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty. Most importantly, she reaffirmed the decision to extend the NPT in 1995 and decision made at the 1995 and 2000 Review Conferences, including the 1995 Middle East resolution."

Good one. Nevertheless, theNPT Preparatory Meeting hasn't finished yet, and Acheson noted that it remains unclear whether it will be able to agree draft recommendations by the end of the week:

"The amount of time remaining could possibly allow for a second revised document to be offered Thursday afternoon, giving the PrepCom a last chance to adopt it Friday afternoon. However, if the Committee cannot agree to adopt the revised document on Thursday, it is likely that the Chair will have to forward it to the RevCon as a working paper, despite his aversion to such a solution."

Reaching Critical Will (which is a project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) also did great work in reporting on the Oslo process, which delivered the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) last May in Dublin, and which we also covered extensively on this blog. There are positive developments on the CCM front too.

The CCM needs 30 ratifications to enter into force. 94 states signed the treaty in Oslo last December, and now the count stands at 96 with seven (Austria, The Holy See, Ireland, The Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mexico, Norway and Sierra Leone) having ratified. This is actually pretty good going, given the challenges involved in national legislation processes. It now looks like two pretty big countries - Germany and Japan - are likely to ratify by the end of May. This is great news, as is Germany's commitment to hosting a conference on cluster munition stockpile destruction issues in Berlin in June. And ratification is in the pipeline for a bunch of others, with results starting to emerge before the summer recess.

It means we could be looking at international entry into force of the CCM sometime in early 2010, all going well. Lao PDR (the most cluster munition affected country - bombed to smithereens in a secret U.S. bombing campaign in the 1960s and early 1970s) has offered to host the CCM's first meeting of states parties, which underlines the commitment of affected countries to the treaty. I believe planning for the meeting has (wisely) already started.

Under the Bush administration, the U.S. shunned the Oslo process, although American legislators like Leahy and Feinstein have been very supportive of it. It'd be great to see some of Obama's magic bridge-building in the context of the the CCM too.

John Borrie

Picture credit: Albrecht Dürer's The Revelation of St John: The Four Riders of the Apocalypse, 1497-98, Woodcut, 39 x 28 cm, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. Image downloaded from Wikipedia.

CCW cluster munitions: work without end ...

As suggested in my preceding post, although this was the last formal week of time allocated in 2009 for negotiating a proposal for a protocol on cluster munitions in the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)’s expert group (which had already missed its end of 2008 deadline and awarded itself two more sessions, of which this week’s was the second), its Chair came up with an effective fudge today to allow efforts to continue.

Basically, the group’s Chair, Mr. Ainchil of Argentina, told delegates that he would need more time: he would write to government shortly, he said. The upshot is that the Chair intends to hold ‘informal consultations’ later in the year – tentatively scheduled for the week of 17 to 21 August in Geneva.

The Chair then opened the floor and the Czech Republic (as European Union President), Brazil, Croatia, Japan, Canada, France, Austria, India, China, Ukraine, Switzerland, the United States, Norway, Germany, Russia, Israel, Turkey, Ecuador, Republic of Korea, Pakistan, Mexico and Cuba spoke. Some huffed and puffed about the need for flexibility (from others, mostly, of course), some tut-tutted about the weakness/rigorousness/absence/presence of specific provisions, but all assented to the further consultations.

What does this mean? It means – on the face of it – that the chances of some sort of Protocol VI on cluster munitions is increasingly likely to be presented this November at the CCW’s next meeting of State Parties.

To this end, the Chair was able to get his procedural report agreed, annexed to which is an updated ‘consolidated text’ based on his consultations bilaterally and in small groups over the course of the week. That this text has evolved further toward a final product since his last text issued in February is undisputed. But it has not grown noticeably any more robust in its provisions, and some argued that on key issues such as definitions, general prohibitions and restrictions, and articles on stockpile storage and destruction clearance, as well as rules on cluster munition transfers, the new text was a backward step.

States that have shunned the Oslo process and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) such as Brazil, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States are the keenest to forge ahead. They insist that the CCM should not be the benchmark for the CCW’s efforts (certainly the strength of that Convention’s provisions make the ‘consolidated drafts’ proposals look wan indeed), and that any product of the CCW will automatically have substantial humanitarian benefit by virtue of the fact that (if they joined and applied its rather loose provisions) the protocol would apply to their large current stocks of cluster munitions. As it has argued before, the US argued that the text, if agreed, would have implications for 95 per cent of its cluster munition arsenal.

In the other corner are many countries, including many in the European Union, as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Cluster Munition Coalition who argue the CCW exercise has some way to go before it delivers real humanitarian benefit, will not conflict with the CCM’s more robust provisions or contain much in the way of meaningful prohibitions.

And, they argue their proposals to improve the text have not been reflected in the new version of the consolidated text to any great degree. Several pointed out that the emphasis on submunition reliability as a basis for acceptability in the consolidated text is based on assumptions about testing that were discredited during the course of the Oslo process, and that the Chair’s draft has little to say to address the inaccuracy of cluster munitions and the hazards that poses to civilians.

These are sound arguments, in my view. The problem for the maximalists at present is that however firmly they make their points, the psychological advantage lies with the more minimalist in the negotiation. It is easier for the Chair to believe that the latter may play procedural games to prevent an outcome too strong for their liking, rather than others blocking an agreement on the grounds that they perceive it to be weak.

John Borrie

CCW: Still searching in the undergrowth

The UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)’s Group of Governmental Experts began a four-day meeting today, the latest – and perhaps the last – in its efforts to negotiate a protocol on cluster munitions.

When the last CCW Meeting of States Parties wrapped up late last year it had not been able to produce an agreement. Two-third of the CCW’s membership were about to sign the new Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in Oslo, and concerns were widespread and deeply felt that the CCW product being touted by Denmark, the GGE’s Chair at the time, would deliver too little humanitarian benefit, and would conflict with the CCM’s obligations to ban the weapon and help victims. They dug in, much to the chagrin of CCW members shunning the CCM and unhappy at being depicted as international bad guys in the media and by civil society.

So, the compromise achieved was for two more short GGE sessions in early 2009 to see what could be salvaged. Argentina took over from Denmark as GGE Chair, and we reported in February that the new Chairman had made some progress – although the differences between the ambitions of major possessors and producers shunning the CCM (like Brazil, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States) for a cluster munition protocol still seemed very different from the higher humanitarian standard others expected. The European Union, for instance, has repeatedly stated that any new protocol should deliver measurable humanitarian benefit, be compatible with the obligations of the CCM, and must contain some sort of substantive prohibition, whether on use, transfer or some other aspect of cluster munitions.

In this morning’s general debate to start off the four days of GGE meetings this week, there seemed little new of note. Argentina’s “consolidated Chair’s text” distributed at the end of the February meeting was generally accepted as a basis for work, although most countries also raised problems about key Articles such as its definitions, how the protocol’s obligations would sit with existing international humanitarian law obligations, the nature of its prohibitions, and derivative questions related to stockpile destruction such as transition periods.

None of these issues are new, although many delegations speaking today seemed keen to sound as constructive as possible. Even so, it is difficult to see how a protocol agreeable by consensus could be agreed in the space of four days: the International Committee of the Red Cross has pointed out in detail a number of serious problems remaining in the text, which many Europeans and others agree with, for instance, and which others will resist.

That said, while the GGE mandate for meetings (which cost money, and therefore need the CCW Meetings of States Parties to okay them) effectively runs out at the week, it doesn’t necessarily mean negotiations will end. There is nothing to stop Argentina continuing bilateral and small group consultations with a view to having a final draft to offer to the next CCW Meeting of States Parties later this year. That is what I suspect it will do.

John Borrie.

Photo by author of battle area clearer searching for unexploded submunitions. From a photograph in an exhibition in the Esplanade des Nations (outside the CCW's meetings in the Palais), taken in November 2007.

CCM: Positive developments

Earlier this week, the Lao People's Democratic Republic ratified the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) at a special event in New York at United Nations Headquarters.

Lao PDR’s accession to the CCM is significant not least because this South East Asian nation is the most heavily affected country in the world from unexploded submunitions due to a secret American bombing campaign in the 1960s and 1970s that pulverised entire areas of the country such as the Plain of Jars. A generation on, and Lao PDR’s people – the majority of them not even born during the bombing period – are saddled with a deadly legacy of unexploded ‘bombies’ (submunitions) in their fields, rivers and woods that threaten livelihoods and their very lives.

The figures are staggering. Lao PDR’s National Unexploded Ordnance Programme believes that, even under ideal firing conditions, at least 30 percent of the more than 260 million submunitions dropped on the country during the Indochina War would have failed to function as intended, leaving an estimated 78 million bombies to pose hazard to people going about their daily lives. Fifteen of Lao’s seventeen provinces were left affected by cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance, and today ten provinces are still severely infested – with an estimated 300 people injured or killed per year.

As such, Lao PDR is always going to be a special case for the new treaty. It is generally (if tacitly) recognised by others involved in the Oslo process that – even with the international assistance promised by other members of the CCM – Lao PDR is unlikely to achieve the treaty’s ten-year deadline for clearance and will eventually require an extension (as has just occurred in the Mine Ban Treaty context, for example, for certain countries that have not completed anti-personnel mine clearance activities for various reasons). But, hopefully, membership of the CCM will be a means to continually draw attention to and resources for post-conflict activities to reduce the hazards of unexploded submunitions and other ordnance on Laotian civilians.

At the same ceremony, the Democratic Republic of the Congo – another cluster munition-affected country – signed the CCM, which makes it the 96th to do so. And Iraq made a statement indicating its intent to join the CCM once domestic steps have been completed. Also, a week earlier, on 11 March, the Mexican Senate approved that country’s ratification of the CCM.

Although a country can provisionally apply the CCM at any time, to enter into force internationally the CCM needs to be ratified by 30 states. Less than five months after the CCM’s signing ceremony in Oslo last December, the treaty can already count on 6, and more will surely follow as 35 other states have publicly committed to ratify as soon as possible. As Iraq’s statement indicated, the number of signatories, which presently stands at 96, is also certain to increase soon.

So far many of the world’s largest producers and users of cluster munitions remain outside of the treaty. But there were encouraging developments last week in the US. On 11 March, President Obama signed the Omnibus Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2009, already passed by Congress. It enacts a ban on American exports of most cluster munitions, and has been described as a “qualified ban”.

Meanwhile, many members of both chambers of Congress have apparently cosponsored legislation to enact a ban on most cluster bombs – galvanised by Senators Patrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein. And President Obama’s transition team are apparently studying the issue of whether the US should go the whole hog and join the CCM.

We’ll seek to provide more analysis in coming weeks.

John Borrie

Photo credit: Mary Wareham. Ambassador Kanika Phommachanh, Permanent Representative of the Lao PDR to the UN in New York, depositing her government's ratification of the Convention on Cluster Munitions with the UN's Office of Legal Affairs represented by Treaty Section Chief Annebeth Rosenboom. Laos became the fifth state to ratify - a total of 30 are required for the treaty to enter into force.

Lao reference: Lao PDR National Regulatory Authority, Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme and UNDP, Hazardous Ground: Cluster Munitions and UXO in the Lao PDR (2008).

CCW: The Sounds of Science...

"Now here we go dropping science, dropping it all over
Like bumping around the town, like when you're driving a Range Rover
Expanding the horizons and expanding the parameters
Expanding the rhymes of sucker MC amateurs

"Naugels, Isaac Newton, Scientific EZ
Ben Franklin with the kite, getting over with the key
Now rock shocking the mic, of the many times times the times tables
Rock well to tell dispel all of the old fables"

- Beastie Boys, Sounds of Science"

Last week I postulated Borrie's third law of CCW diplomacy (I'll tell you about the others some time - but it will cost brave readers at least a drink, and perhaps some sanity). The hypothetical law states that the CCW process will expand to fill all available time, and is based on my empirical observations of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons process over a long period - especially when the CCW is held over a steady flame and shaken, for example by proximate precipitation of a weapons ban treaty like a Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).

I invited falsification of my theory by observation or physical experiment. Yet, the theory still stands for now. On Friday, the Argentinean Chair of the 2009 CCW Group of Governmental Experts, Gustavo Ainchil, adjourned the meeting after he quickly gavelled through a procedural report that included agreement for a further four days of meetings in April in Geneva, based on an agreement in late 2008 that:

"The GGE will meet for up to two weeks in 2009, from 16 to 20 February 2009 and subsequently, if required, from 14 to 17 April 2009".

As explained in the preceding blog post, although the atmosphere at last week's GGE was significantly improved over a testy November Meeting of CCW States Parties, there are no firm signs anything will come of the extra sessions. The positions of states still seem to be too far apart. An annex to Friday's procedural report containing the Chair's take on a "consolidated text" of a draft protocol appeared to display the same characteristics that caused substantial disagreement over November's text. Implicitly, this is recognised in the new Chair's text, with various footnotes noting delegations' "expressions of concern" and that "discussions continue".

This should not detract from Mr. Ainchil's efforts, which appear to have been exemplary so far. Argentina is really giving the negotiation its best shot and most of last week's allotted time to the GGE was mostly taken up with various Chair-faciliated bilaterals and other informal meetings, and it was a clearly tired Mr. Ainchil who adjourned Friday's session. But few in the room envy him his rather thankless task - of achieving a protocol that looks as far from agreement as in November, or of winding down the process in as face-saving a manner as possible, thus sparing the CCW regime any damage.

April will tell whether the CCW's work will be a Solid Gold Hit, or or the end of the road for the GGE work. And, of course, another test for the hypothetical third CCW law....

John Borrie

Papers from the CCW GGE meeting should eventually turn up on the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs' website here.

Look into my eyes: CCW and the kinetic theory of gases

In my preceding post, I posed the question: has anything really changed since last year's difficulties in the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)'s efforts to negotiate a protocol on cluster munitions in the wake of agreement by 107 states in Dublin in May on a Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) that comprehensively prohibits the weapon?

As the CCW Group of Governmental Experts meeting this week approaches its end, the answer looks like 'No'. As foreshadowed, the incoming GGE Chair, Argentina, has focused his efforts on informal consultations at the bilateral and small group level, and there have been few meetings in Plenary, except for an hour on Monday morning and a few minutes yesterday. In each case Argentina distributed "elements for discussion papers". Monday's paper contained textual options on general "prohibitions and restrictions" for a putative agreement, "storage / and destruction" and "transfers". On Wednesday morning the Chair's second discussion paper was circulated, this time on "Protection of civilians, the civilian population and civilian objects" - previously the purview of the Japanese Friend of the Chair on these issues, who has now left.

Where does this leave us? Pretty much where we were in November, in my view. The Chair's "elements for discussion" do not differ significantly from what was put on the table by the previous Chair, Ambassador Wigotski of Denmark, in November, and which was unacceptable then to a significant proportion of the CCW's membership . Nor are there really any signs of significant shifts in position since: if anything, the more issues of ratification and practical implementation loom for CCM signing countries, the less keen they will be on weaker restrictions being agreed in the CCW. Russia has made noises that it is now willing to go along with agreeing a protocol in principle, but really this confirms the hunch most operated on previously. The US has reiterated its position, and unlike the other major users and possessors of cluster munitions outside the CCM, has explained in clear terms what the implications of its proposals (as taken up in the Wigotski draft and new elements papers) would have for its national arsenal. But it is unclear whether there actually is anyone at a senior policy level to give them further instructions right now in Washington D.C. with the change in administration.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) perhaps put it best. The ICRC has noted its surprise to the Chair that what is in effect the Wigotski package is still on the table since it is hard to imagine it being either effective or agreed upon. At best, the package is a menu of things countries might do, and would have the effect of legitimising for decades a weapon type that the majority of the international community have now specifically prohibited. The ICRC (again) urged a very different approach: a comprehensive transfer ban on cluster munitions and a prohibition on use of the weapon in populated areas - as has been argued previously on this blog, these would have real humanitarian impact.

It is a very peculiar situation. As several colleagues (who shall remain nameless) put it to me; if the CCW were working on, say, torture issues rather than cluster munitions, it would never be acceptable to negotiate a package of weak restrictions allowing the continued use of torture by the biggest culprits after the establishment of a standard prohibiting it. It would be seen as an egregious double standard and there would be outcry. Yet it seems to be acceptable to many in the CCW on the assumption that weak restrictions capturing non-CCM likely candidates is better than nothing. I'm not convinced of that: those countries would be better (as the Cluster Munition Coalition has argued) to take national level actions until such time as they're in a position to join the CCM.

Meanwhile, in side meetings and lunchtime events, the members of the CCM along with international organisations and NGOs such as the CMC have been getting on with the task of figuring out how to bring the treaty into force as soon as possible and position the new regime for implementation.

I would be very surprised if the CCW Chair - despite his patient, best efforts, which are to be commended - is in a position to present a protocol package tomorrow that can command agreement among the CCW's membership, which operates on a consensus practice. The question remains whether, then, use will be made of the CCW GGE's optional four days of further talks after Easter from 14 to 17 April.

Borrie's third law of CCW diplomacy (itself derived from the kinetic theory of gases, naturally) states that the CCW process will expand to fill the available time. In this way, it will be compelled to award itself its short week in April, just as this session was awarded by the CCW despite its undertaking to "negotiate a proposal" by the end of 2008.

Like any Popperian I invite falsification of my theory. Come on CCW, this is your chance to prove me wrong ... ;-)

John Borrie

Image of the 19th century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (who developed a kinetic theory of gases), aged 31 with his wife, Henrietta, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

CCW: From pause to play?

Next week, the big bag of diplomatic hurt the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) process on cluster munitions seems to have become will resume again in Geneva, for the first of what might be two sessions to see if something can be salvaged from last year's fraught efforts to "negotiate a proposal" on restrictions or prohibitions on the weapon.

At the end of 2008, Argentina bravely stepped up to the plate to chair the CCW's Group of Governmental Expert (GGE) sessions in February and (optionally) April 2009, and to try to fashion a consensus in that timeframe. This week, the incoming Argentinian Chair, Mr. Gustavo Ainchil, shared his views in consultations with states and others here in Geneva about how he intends to proceed.

In sum:

• - Next week's agenda remains the same as the previous Group of Governmental Experts' meeting in November 2008;
• - The Friends of the Chair (FoC) on various issues have been re-confirmed in their roles for next week's session, although the Japanese FoC (who was dealing with thorny international humanitarian law questions) has departed;
• - The Argentinian Chair will not present any new papers before next week's meeting starts.

In effect, next week's GGE presses the play button after a three-month pause. Will the message on the tape now sound sweeter, or will it self-destruct? Mr. Ainchil's task of consultation to identify where some forward progress might be achieved on the contentious issues in the paper put forward by the 2008 GGE Chair, Ambassador Wigotski of Denmark (which was one basis for last November's talks and which looks set to continue for now) will not be easy.

The Argentinian Chair also stressed that he doesn't want to re-open issues for which he already considers there is consensus, preferring to focus only on contentious ones. But such delineations may not be easy to maintain in view of the nature of these negotiations in which "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed". He looks willing to take a shot at trying his hand at some compromise text, in any case.

So, we'll see what happens. Personally, I'm not hopeful anything will be achieved, especially as the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) has now been signed by 95 countries and the tactical importance of negotiating work in the CCW may have passed, both for those strongly supportive of the new CCM, as well as those unfriendly toward it.

But, of course I've been proven wrong before. Nevertheless, it's a pretty safe bet that if clear evidence of a consensus doesn't emerge in the course of next week's CCW GGE, the likelihood of a new, sixth CCW protocol on cluster munitions will be considerably diminished.

John Borrie

Image of 'Tape' by Ronald K, sourced from Flickr.

The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work

Although 2008 was a busy year on other fronts, we also completed the final publication of the current 'Disarmament as Humanitarian Action' series, which is entitled The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work.

Although there have been recent stand-out achievements like the new 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), success has been hard to attain in recent years in other areas of multilateral disarmament and arms control work. Political problems exist, to be sure, but they're not the sole problem. Professional diplomatic or journalistic shorthand like "lack of political will" can take on the mantra of an explanation that obscures specific underlying problems - problems that also differ across processes. However, to quote Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Act 1, Scene 2) in this regard:

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves ...

In our third volume, Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations, we explored some of the potential obstacles that are worth considering with a view to improving negotiators' performance that aren't often noticed by many of those in the thick of disarmament work. For instance, obstacles to progress can be the unintended consequences of past practice, or they can stem from the complex challenges those involved must deal with.

It's also likely that aspects of multilateral disarmament practice compound cognitive challenges individuals face in managing their perceptions and interactions with others. This has been an abiding theme of some of the posts on the Disarmament Insight blog, as some readers know.

We were keen to examine some of these aspects in greater depth, and to try to give form to some of the disparate observations and insights we've gathered within the project over the last few years that weren't included in the first three DHA volumes or other published work we produced. And a key catalyst was a workshop we held as part of the Disarmament Insight symposium series in September 2007, when two of our speakers on the topic of complexity and arms control, Philip Ball and Paul Ormerod, discussed Scott Page's book, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies.

Page's book contains a lot of useful generic insights about group prediction and problem solving - often in conditions of conflict, as well as cooperation - that prompted Ashley Thornton and I to consider how this might link up to some of the DHA project's research and observations about disarmament negotiating environments.

Drawing on the work of Page and many others from a range of disciplines, our little book makes the argument that while there is no way to ensure success in multilateral disarmament endeavours, practitioners can improve their chances by recognizing and harnessing cognitive diversity (or 'perspective diversity', in Page's parlance). This is effectively what humanitarian perspectives in disarmament processes such as the Ottawa process leading to the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention and the Oslo Process resulting in the CCM have shown.

And progress in multilateral disarmament needn't stop there. The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work discusses practical suggestions to help achieve this.

John Borrie

Reading the Tea Leaves: Obama and Cluster Bombs

What will US President Obama do about cluster bombs? The new administration announced immediate changes in some defense and national security related matters, most notably on interrogation methods and the closing of Guantanamo Bay detention center within the next year. No such quick action on cluster munitions took place, however. For clues about future action, we can look at President Obama’s voting record as a Senator, positions taken after the campaign, and the orientation of his senior and midlevel appointments in national security positions.

Obama’s Record in the Senate

In September 2006, Senator Obama voted for Senator Feinstein’s proposed amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill:

No funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be obligated or expended to acquire, utilize, sell, or transfer any cluster munition unless the rules of engagement applicable to the cluster munition ensure that the cluster munition will not be used in or near any concentrated population of civilians, whether permanent or temporary, including inhabited parts of cities or villages, camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or camps or groups of nomads.

The amendment failed by a vote of 70-30. The proposal was certainly a modest one and came before the ban movement got traction, but that the future President was willing to take a positive stand is certainly an encouraging sign. While the focus of this blog is on the Obama administration, it should be noted that the US Congress is likely to consider similar legislation again this year.

After the Election

Following the election and on the eve of the signing of the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in Oslo, a spokesperson for the incoming President gave the following statement:

President-elect Obama is deeply concerned about the well-being of civilians in situations of conflict, as reflected by his support of the legislation in 2006 that would have prohibited the use of cluster munitions near concentrations of civilians. As president, he will carefully review the new treaty and work closely [with] other countries to ensure that the United States is doing everything feasible to promote protection of civilians in conflict.

Not a resounding endorsement of the Oslo treaty, but it holds some promise.

Do Obama’s cabinet and staff picks give us any clues?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voted against the September 2006 Feinstein amendment. As did Joe Biden (now the Vice President) and another cabinet member, Ken Salazar (now Secretary of the Interior). More recently, written questions about the broad principles that are likely to guide the Obama Administration’s policy review on cluster munitions were put to her as a part of Secretary of State confirmation procession in the US Senate. The written response was as follows:

The incoming Administration has not taken a position on the new cluster bomb treaty. I look forward to working with the President-elect and the rest of the national security team on this issue in order to develop a policy that upholds our moral obligations while protecting our troops. The new Administration will carefully review the treaty in consultation with military commanders and work closely with our friends and allies to ensure that the United States is doing everything feasible to promote protection of civilians - especially children.

In the words of one observer close to the process: “they punted.”

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ position on cluster munitions, while he was serving at the pleasure of President Bush is well known. On June 19, 2008, after the CCM had been adopted but not signed, Gates issued a new Department of Defense Policy on cluster munitions. That policy, in part, states that:

DoD recognizes that blanket elimination of cluster munitions is unacceptable due not only to negative military consequences but also due to potential negative consequences for civilians. Large-scale use of unitary weapons, as the only alternative to achieve military objectives, could result, in some cases, in unacceptable collateral damage and explosive remnants of war (ERW) issues.

President Obama decided to retain Gates as Defense Secretary. Will it be President Obama’s pleasure to change Gates’ mind?

National Security Advisor James Jones, Jr. is a retired marine who began his career as a platoon leader in Vietnam. In the late 1990s, he served as a military assistant to President Clinton’s Defense Secretary William Cohen.

It’s not clear how much he was involved in the formulation of the now abandoned Cohen policy on cluster munitions, which required all cluster munitions produced after 2005 to have a failure rate of no more than 1%.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was on the National Security Council (NSC) staff as Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping and then became Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs during the Clinton Administration. Eventually, she moved over to the State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

When the Eritrea/Ethiopia War broke out in 1998 , she was tasked with trying to negotiate a settlement. She likely remembers the carnage caused when the Eritrean air force dropped cluster bombs on Mekele, Ethiopia in the opening days of that conflict. In 1999, Rice co-wrote an op-ed piece in the International Herald Tribune castigating the conduct of the Sudanese government against its own people.

Rice is certainly no John Bolton (the former US ambassador to the UN who openly disdained the organization – he was eventually replaced by Zalmay Khalilzad), and will take a much more multilateral approach to issues. Being in New York may limit her impact on conventional arms control issues, though.

Mid Level Appointments

Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn has been the Senior Vice President for Government Operations and Strategy at Raytheon. Prior to that he has served in a variety of DoD positions. Raytheon manufactures various versions of the Joint Stand Off Weapon (JSOW), a “precision attack glide bomb”. Among the payloads for the JSOW are both the BLU-97 CEM bomblets (tagged as one of the “dirty dozen” cluster munitions by Human Rights Watch) and Textron’s Sensor Fuzed Weapon.

Lynn’s confirmation ran into a snag because of the new president’s ethics rules that “ban lobbyists who join his administration for two years from working on issues they were previously involved with.” Not to worry – President Obama waived that rule for Lynn.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, president and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, is counted among the “counterinsurgents”. She held several positions in the Clinton administration (including Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy). She does not appear to have directly addressed the issue of cluster munitions, but an approach that stresses connecting with local populations would likely place a premium on reducing harm to civilians. In a piece published in October of 2008, Flournoy and Shawn Brimley called on “the new civilian leadership in the Pentagon” to “adopt an ethic of responsible stewardship.”

Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Charles Johnson has been a partner at the DC office of the Paul Weiss law firm. Beginning in 1998, he served for 27 months as General Counsel to the Department of the Air Force. In that position he very likely had to consider the legality of the use of cluster munitions, as the weapon was used extensively by the USAF in the Kosovo campaign. Johnson is certainly a change from William Haynes III, his predecessor, who has been seen as one of the most aggressive defenders of the Bush era interrogation policies.

Deputy Secretary of State for Policy Jim Steinberg served as Deputy National Security Advisor under Clinton from 1996 to 2000, covering the time of the Kosovo campaign. He held other positions in the State Department and served as Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brooking Institution. Along with Kurt Campbell, Steinberg recently launched a book entitled Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power in which they caution against quick changes in policy, but also the need to consult with allies.

So, what does all this reading of the tea leaves tell us?

Unlike the immediate decisions to reverse Bush administration policies on torture and the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, no such quick turnaround in policy will likely result on cluster munitions unless there is considerable pressure to do so. That said, there is a general sense of “out with the old and in with the new.” The new administration is committed to multilateralism and listening in a way not usually associated with the Bush administration, so there is room for strong NATO proponents of the CCM to make an impact. The decision makers discussed above at least on the surface appear to have a greater respect for the opinions of their military counterparts. If US allies who are supporters of the Oslo Treaty are to have a positive impact, they will need to be working at convincing not only civilians in the new administration, but also their US military colleagues.

This is a guest blog by Virgil Wiebe, Director of Clinical Education and Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minneapolis.

Photo: ‘Paragon Fortune Telling Teacup’ by Beads by Laura on 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: What a year!

2008 is drawing to an end. If you're concerned about the humanitarian effects of cluster munitions or you've just been a Democratic Presidential candidate in the United States it's been a pretty good year, but not so if you run a large car manufacturing company, or a bank, or indeed just have a mortgage. Indeed, the Roaring Naughties are well and truly over - with human security implications down the line I'm sure no-one can fathom yet, although already it looks like around a billion people will go hungry in coming months because of rises in food prices, the majority of them in the developing world. Why are people still going hungry in this day and age? Where have our priorities been?

In Geneva we've had a snowy cold snap in the last little while, so while the global financial meltdown continues we can at least snowboard while Rome burns, and watch the newly-bankrupted mega-rich huddle in their fur coats and Jimmy Choo shoes on the rue du Rhone around the Porsche Cayennes they've torched to keep warm.

Just kidding. But the festive season is coming, and so it's time for Disarmament Insight to sign off until January. Below we continue our long-standing tradition (well, okay, the one we started last year) of looking back at some of our main blogging themes of 2008.

It's hard to believe that this time a year ago the Vienna Conference of the Oslo process on cluster munitions was underway. Twelve months on and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) is a reality after a tough meeting in Wellington, New Zealand in February, and the negotiations themselves over two weeks in May in Dublin, Ireland, not to mention a huge amount of effort from so many people over the last several years. It's been truly inspiring to participate in the Oslo process, and the week before last 94 states signed the treaty in Oslo, Norway, which just capped it all off. Disarmament as humanitarian action, indeed.

Things haven't gone so well in the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) talks in Geneva, which underwent something of a crisis in November as the Danish Chair's attempt to push through a protocol based on his draft text were rebuffed by a group of 26 states. A rather nasty blame game ensued, but the CCW managed to agree to come back for a week or two in the first part of 2009 to have another shot at trying to achieve something acceptable both to those cluster munition user/possessor states who shunned the Oslo process, and the majority of the CCW's membership that support the CCM. With the best will in the world, the CCW will have its work cut out for it in the New Year.

There was an extremely important domestic election for world politics in November. Yes, that's right, Helen Clark's Labour Government in New Zealand were voted out in favour of the centre-right National Party. Oh, yes, and there was that other election...of that Obama guy. Currently the arms control world - particularly inside the Washington beltway - is rife with speculation about what Obama's administration will do after taking up the reins of power in January '09 on nuclear weapons. President Obama pushing for successful U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would be a great start it seems to me: it may not bring the treaty negotiated more than a decade ago into force thanks to the CTBT's international entry-into-force formula, but it would send a very positive signal and further embed the emerging global norm against nuclear testing.

And some leadership and clear momentum is needed right now on nuclear issues, especially if the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 2010 review conference is to be a success. Issues over Iran and compliance continue to dominate its preparatory process, of course. But more generally there is the sense around that we may be on the cusp of something hopeful with respect to nuclear disarmament. While the last two decades have seen too many missed opportunities for the world to move closer to nuclear abolition, the next couple of years hold considerable promise if some of the new ideas and new coalitions that have emerged over the last year or two are taken up by states and Iran's alleged NPT non-compliance is substantively addressed. Meanwhile, paralysis in the Conference on Disarmament continues.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) initiative is evolving too, and an Open-Ended Working Group will meet in 2009. An ATT resolution in the UN General Assembly late this year was opposed by only two countries - the U.S. and Zimbabwe . The prospect of a negotiating process on an ATT seems tantalisingly close...

2008 was also a significant year for work on curbing the effects of small arms and gun violence. In July, Patrick Mc Carthy wrote that the UN small arms process is "back on track" in its implementation of the 2001 Programme of Action following difficulties in 2006 that prevented assessment of the PoA's overall impact and strengthening of implementation. Despite opposition from Iran and Zimbabwe, the 2008 Biennial Meeting of States in New York adopted a substantive and forward-looking final document.

We've had a bunch of other interesting posts on this blog covering all sorts of issues, from piracy to the Mine Ban Treaty to expertise in mediation and negotiation with respect to Zimbabwe, biological weapons and even why the Arcade Fire and Duran Duran are like the Oslo process and CCW. We've also had the odd book review, which have prompted some spin-off blogs.

Meanwhile, we've been very fortunate on the Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project at UNIDIR to have had two sterling Visiting Fellows this year, who've provided welcome intellectual argument, lots of coffee and prolific blogs. Maya Brehm came from Copenhagen University for three months and never left, which worked out very nicely for us. Our other visiting fellow, Rocky Horror Picture Show fan Virgil Wiebe, helped us to keep track of the CCW, but finally had to return with his family to tropical Minneapolis at the end of November. Ferney-Voltaire will never be the same again... We've seen some other departures too, with Patricia Lewis leaving UNIDIR and taking up a new role as Deputy Director and Scientist-in-Residence at the Monterey Institute. And Patrick Mc Carthy moved to a new role with UNDP from October concerning the Coordinating Action on Small Arms (CASA). His successor as Geneva Forum Network Coordinator, Silvia Cattaneo, has now come on board, so welcome Silvia, and good luck Patrick!

As 2008 ends, so too the Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project draws to a close after five years of research and outreach, four volumes of published work (our final volume will be out very shortly) and numerous articles, meetings and, of course, blog posts. A big thank you is due to our principal donor, the Government of Norway, as well as to the Netherlands along with all of those people who've helped us with input and support along the way (not least our guest bloggers).

However, this is not really the end of DHA. The Disarmament Insight blog will continue in the New Year, and we might run further meetings along the lines of the five symposia we've held with our partner the Geneva Forum, which have been very successful and culminated in our November residential seminar in Glion. And, Maya and I have been carrying out research since March of this year on a spin-off DHA project to research an analytical history of international efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions, to be published in late 2009. The CCM and the Mine Ban Treaty's implementation have shown that humanitarian disarmament is alive and well.

So, it's busy, busy, busy. I hope everyone who reads our blog has a wonderful festive season. Keep reading Disarmament Insight and commenting on it: we'll be back in the New Year.

John Borrie

Picture by John Borrie. We're tired out pussycats too.

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

CCW: Let's do the time warp again...and again in 2009

For the last two days, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) has been holding what is, in effect, its annual general meeting. It follows a week of difficult cluster munition expert group talks (see preceding DI blog posts), and annual meetings of two of the CCW's protocols earlier this week - on explosive remnants of war (Protocol V) and mines and booby traps (Amended Protocol II) respectively.

Although general in scope, the High Contracting Parties meeting that concluded this afternoon has been dominated, of course, by the saga of cluster munitions. With no prospect of collective agreement on Chairman Bent Wigotski of Denmark's text of a protocol this year, there have been some ill-tempered exchanges and blame game politics going on.

The U.S. and Israel, in particular, yesterday tried to lay the blame squarely at the feet of the 25 or more countries who told the expert group meeting last week that the Chair's text in its current form would not be an acceptable outcome for them. Israel - failing to mention the strong objections it raised over the course of this year about key provisions of the Chair's text as recently last week - was particularly strident. The U.S. argued that failing to agree on the Chair's text was a missed opportunity, since the users and producers of cluster munitions had moved so far in dealing with the issue. Some states who shunned the Oslo Process bemoaned its (alleged) insidious effects in making states unrealistic (that is, too ambitious) about what could be achieved in humanitarian terms in the CCW. Looking around the room, this observer noted that many eyes rolled at this - and it is not clear to me that even those saying such things really believe it.

And evidence of that movement was hard to see in Russia's interventions. Yesterday afternoon's Russian statement showed scant movement in substance from their position a year earlier. And Russia again said it would not agree to a mandate for continued work on cluster munitions - this time for 2009 - containing the word 'protocol' (2008's expert group mandate talks of "negotiating a proposal"). Pakistan, the incoming CCW president for 2009, urged everyone to keep calm: everyone agreed they wanted a mandate for continued work, the Pakistani ambassador said, and everyone knew what the mandate would mean in substance, if not in precise form. Rather, the real issue was political will to complete the negotiation, not the wording of the mandate. The refrain of many Western states, especially the Dutch: Why can't we just call a protocol a protocol then? Nyet, came the reply.

Subsequent consultations - both inside the CCW chamber and in private - were thus concerned about actually summoning the flexibility the most vocal protagonists in this debate all said they possessed. And, lo, the CCW did achieve a mandate, which was agreed this afternoon. It is as follows:

"The Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) will continues its negotiations, taking into account document CCW/GGE/2008-V/WP.1 and other present and future proposals by delegations, to address urgently the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions, while striking a balance between military and humanitarian considerations.

"The GGE should make every effort to conclude its negotiations as rapidly as possible and report to the next meeting of the High Contracting Parties.

"The work of the GGE will be supported by military and technical experts.

"The GGE will meet, [sic] up to two weeks in 2009, from 16 to 20 February 2009 and subsequently, if required, from 14 to 17 April 2009."

The mandate doesn't mention a protocol. Nevertheless, it means that in the New Year the CCW will have another window of opportunity to try to come to a consensus on the work it has started on agreeing a protocol/proposal/instrument/thingummy.

So the CCW seems to be on a trajectory to achieve something on cluster munitions in its expert group: the question is how robust that outcome will be, and that probably has a bearing on how legally-binding it is, which is perhaps where the Russians are coming from in saying they won't agree to a protocol until they see what's in actually in it. The ICRC warned at the end of today's meeting that in view of 2008's developments, cluster munitions could no longer be considered as just another weapon able to be dealt with adequately by general international humanitarian law rules: whatever comes out of the CCW, all states need to take relevant national actions. The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), for its part, was in no doubt about what it thought of the situation: it immediately issued a press release stating that, in the CMC's view, the talks had failed despite a renewed expert group mandate.

Of course, the political constellation next year will also be different, following the Oslo CCM signing ceremony this December and changes of government in various places. But will 1 or 2 weeks of extra time in 2009 be enough to transform the Wigotski text into something that isn't too strong for cluster munition producers and users, while at the same time not too weak for those countries concerned about whether it will deliver sufficient humanitarian benefit? I'm not particularly optimistic.

John Borrie

P.S. Best of luck and many thanks to Virgil Wiebe, who has been our visiting research fellow for the last three months. Virgil is returning to his day job at the University of St Thomas, Minnesota next week. Kia kaha (stand strong) Virgil, and thanks for all the blogging!

References

The procedural report and other documents from the CCW meetings over the last fortnight can be found - or will shortly be found - on the UN's website here.

Random picture of a penguin (made by Lizzy Borrie) celebrating further CCW work for 2009 by dancing to the Rocky Horror Picture show vid from the preceding blog. Photo by John Borrie.