CD: Telling it how it is

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) is less remembered these days for its successes than for its paralysis and failings.  Key disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control agreements hammered out in the CD include the NPT, BTWC, CWC, and CTBT. But the negotiation of the last of these treaties was concluded as far back as 1996.

Since then the Conference has fallen on lean times.  Its only negotiations have almost without exception concerned the question of what it should do next.  Bickering over that issue remains inconclusive.  Worse than that, the approach that the CD has been taking since 2000 to find a workable solution is fundamentally mistaken: the Conference is pursuing an approach that is not only inconsistent with its rules of procedure but is also perpetuating inactivity.

This is not something to which the 65 member states of the CD are blind. Many realise that this prolonged period of deadlock jeopardises what remains of the integrity of the forum. In this regard, the credibility of the CD this morning suffered a serious setback.

During its annual Women’s Day message to the Conference, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) announced that ‘it was finally time to cease [its] engagement with this body’.  WILPF said it had reached this decision in part because the CD ‘operates in a vacuum … is disconnected from the outside world [and] … has lost perspective of the bigger picture of human suffering and global injustice’.

Tellingly, WILPF went on to say ‘[m]aintaining the structures that reinforce deadlock has become more important than fulfilling the objective for which [the CD] was created—negotiating disarmament treaties. We can no longer invest effort into such a body. Instead we will continue our work elsewhere. There is much work to be done’.

The CD’s virtually non-existent relationship with civil society is itself highly damaging to the fabric of the Conference.  Based on recent debates in the Conference, some members may shrug off the withdrawal of WILPF’s engagement.  But it is hard to deny the accuracy of the League's assertion to CD members that ‘some of you put process over progress’.

The discontinuation of its reporting on the CD by Reaching Critical Will, WILPF’s disarmament programme, will be widely missed in the disarmament community.  But WILPF did the Conference a favour this morning.  Not by the announcement that it was withdrawing engagement, but by telling the CD directly just how this body is seen. Let’s hope that for the sake of multilateralism it is a salutary lesson.

Tim Caughley

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.

Dublin: Treaty negotiations at the half-way point

Half-way through the two-week negotiations in Dublin on a treaty to ban cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians, where do things stand?

As noted in preceding posts, there are a couple of big issues - defining cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm, and military interoperability among them - that are claiming a lot of attention and are tough nuts to crack. Indeed, much of my week has been spent observing meetings working on these topics. But that shouldn't be taken to mean that considerable progress hasn't been made overall. Below I provide a brief article-by-article state of play on the draft Convention text. A copy of the draft Convention text and other official documents can be downloaded here.

Article 1 (General obligations and scope of application): this Article contains the treaty's core prohibitions. Over the course of the Oslo Process there have been proposals to amend this article, most for reasons bound up with the interoperability issue. By general agreement, draft Article 1 has been left alone, with the Swiss Friend of the President's (FoP) work focusing on developing potential additional provisions on the issue of interoperability in other Articles.

Article 2 (Definitions): this article has been a major focus of attention in informal consultations. New Zealand ambassador Don Mackay has focused work as FoP on the crucial definition of a cluster munition and - more specifically - the nature of any exemption from the definition of a cluster munition under tiret (c). This afternoon he presented a new proposal for everyone to think about for the weekend, basically an earlier proposal by Germany but without the weight criteria for cluster munitions and submunitions suggested earlier in the week.

Other definitions in Article 2 were handled by Irish Colonel Jim Burke, as "friend of the friend" of the President. Considerable progress was made, especially to ensure these are consistent with other international agreements such as protocols of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).

"Cluster munition victims", although in Article 2, were defined as part of work on victim assistance in Article 5.

Article 3 (storage and stockpile destruction): Ambassador Steffen Kongstad of Norway - FoP for this Article - reported that he was close to finalizing a new draft based on morning discussions in the CoW. Issues raised include consistency with the provisions of Article 4, and submunitions retained, ostensibly for the development of and training in cluster munitions and submunitions detection, clearance or destruction techniques, or for the development of cluster munition counter-measures. Agreement seems close, however, and it hoped that there can sufficient agreement emerging early next week for the President to transmit the text to the Plenary as a paper, to join the many other such Articles (see further below).

Article 4 (clearance and destruction): there was considerable progress here. There has been a change in the clearance deadline from 5 to 10 years.

Article 5 (victim assistance): there was a fantastic discussion in the CoW on this Article of paramount humanitarian importance this morning, following a number of consultations on this issue throughout the week. Great credit is due to Markus Reiterer of Austria as FoP on this Article: the President told the CoW today he would transmit language on this Article, which breaks new ground for helping cluster munition survivors and their families, as Presidency text.

Article 6 (international cooperation and assistance): the Irish are carrying out consultations on this, and a new non-paper was to be circulated today for discussion early next week. There is little to worry about here: it was difficult to make a lot of headway in finalizing a proposal on this Article until work on other areas of the draft Convention, such as victim assistance, clearance and destruction had made some progress, which they now have.

Article 7 (transparency measures): Irish-led consultations are underway and "going well", the President told the CoW today. This Article also depends on other articles to be sketched out in sufficient detail to move toward finalizing a proposal, especially Articles 3,4,5 and 6. Likewise, facilitation and clarification of compliance (Article 8) consultations continue, guided by FoP South Africa.

Articles 9 to 12 (national implementation measures, settlement of disputes, Meetings of States Parties, Review Conferences) have been forwarded as President's texts to the Plenary.

Articles 13 (amendments): President's texts, along with guidance from the UN's Office for Legal Affairs (OLA) have been forwarded to the Plenary, as well as one other proposal.

Articles 14, 15 and 16 (costs, signature and ratification, acceptance, approval or accession) have been forwarded as President's texts to the Plenary.

Article 17 (entry into force) has been discussed in the CoW, but the President has decided to come back to it later. In my view, this is sensible, as this a question usually settled late in multilateral negotiations, when delegations have a better sense of a treaty text overall and its implications for them.

Article 18 (provisional application): the President said no difficulties had been identified with this Article, but there is, of course, a German proposal for a transition period for cluster munition possessing states, and there are two other proposals for a separate article to the same effect. Today, the President asked Germany to consult with other delegations over the weekend with a view to narrowing differences next week. The latest Swiss FoP's proposal today circulated to the CoW still does not specify which Article interoperability text - if it is agreed - would reside in. At least 35 delegations said today that they oppose such a provision, with half a dozen or so speaking in favour.

Article 19 (reservations): this is being set aside for now, probably because it might prove to be a source of options on the interoperability issue, it seems to me.

Article 20 (duration and withdrawal) text has been transmitted by the President to the Plenary.

Likewise Article 21 (depositary) and Article 22 (authentic texts). Treaty depositary is to be the UN Secretary-General, like the Mine Ban Treaty and CCW.

There is also a proposal by one country for an additional Article on the relationship between the cluster munition convention and other treaties. It's unclear to me whether this will be taken up.

In addition to what's going inside the conference chambers, there is a lot of other stuff going on. The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) have been extremely active, and I'd recommend Katie Harrison's very comprehensive daily updates on the proceedings of the Dublin Conference on the WILPF website if you wish for more detail. There is a cluster munition survivor's blog I've already mentioned, a CMC/ Handicap International 'Ban Bus' blog, a daily campaign newsletter and, of course, a huge amount of media coverage of the Conference out there.

John Borrie

Photo courtesy of Mary Wareham of Aotearoa New Zealand Cluster Munition Coalition. Survivors of landmines and cluster munitions at a photo call for media in O'Connell Street, Dublin on 22 May. From left to right: Ny Nhar (Cambodia), Soraj Ghulam Habib (Afghanistan), Tun Channereth (Cambodia), Youen Sam En (Cambodia), Branislav Kapetanovic (Serbia), Pham Quy Thi (Vietnam) and Berihu Mesele (Ethiopia).

Civil Society Schizophrenia

Reading John Borrie's daily postings from last week's Wellington conference on cluster munitions (see below), I was reminded of something that I have been mulling over in my mind for some time now but have not yet had the chance to examine properly. I am referring to a highly specific professional disorder that seems only to afflict disarmament diplomats. It's called 'civil society schizophrenia.'

Last week in Wellington, 122 States slogged it out with each other and with the now formidable Cluster Munitions Coalition of NGOs to agree a draft text that will serve as the basis for negotiations on a new Cluster Munitions Convention. NGOs were present in Wellington's Town Hall for the entire duration of the conference. They intervened at will in the discussions and openly criticized certain States for attempting to weaken the Wellington text. NGOs provided valuable inputs to the debates based on sound research, interpretation of evidence and testimony of victims. In short, civil society was an integral, dynamic and vital element of the Wellington conference that influenced the outcome of the meeting.

Compare this with what happens in the Conference on Disarmament, another negotiating forum that features regularly on this blog. One NGO - the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom - has one opportunity each year to address the Conference; on March 8, International Women's Day. But they may not do so themselves. They must pass their statement, drafted by a separate conference of women's NGOs from around the world, to an official of the Conference, invariably a man, to read out while they observe in frustration from the public gallery. This dismal situation has at least created some comic relief in the past, such as the occasion a few years ago when the (male) Deputy Secretary-General of the Conference began reading the statement with the ringing words, "We, the women of the world..."

The thing that really puzzles me, however, is that the diplomats who engaged, argued and strategised with NGOs at last week's Wellington Conference on cluster munitions and those who routinely acquiesce to the Conference on Disarmament's almost reflexive exclusion of civil society are, for the most part, the same people. How can this be? Is there some special module in training courses for disarmament diplomats that help them to deal with the cognitive dissonance that this must create? Or, does it actually help a disarmament diplomat's career to be a just a little bit schizophrenic?

The two examples I cite - the Oslo Process on cluster munitions and the Conference on Disarmament - lie at opposite ends of a spectrum that measures the extent of formal civil society integration into multilateral disarmament processes. In between are a number of other processes that complicate even further any desire that a disarmament diplomat might have for consistency with regard to engagement with civil society. Moving from the most restrictive to the most open to formal NGO inputs, I would suggest the following ranking:

(1) The Conference on Disarmament, (2) the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, (3) the Biological Weapons Convention, (4) the UN Programme of Action on the Illict Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, (5) the Convention on Certain Convention Weapons, (6), the Oslo Process on cluster munitions and (7) the gold standard of civil society integration; the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (Ottawa Convention).

I feel unqualified to place the Chemical Weapons Convention in this ranking since, as an exclusively Hague-based process, I have no direct experience of it (perhaps readers can enlighten me?). It also remains to be seen where negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty, when they begin, might fit into this scheme (although, based purely on the impressive role civil society, in the form of the Control Arms campaign, has played to date, it should score quite high).

Any such ranking cannot be set in stone, however. As an illustration of this, recent experiments with enhanced NGO and industry integration into the Biological Weapons Convention process could, if they are continued, eventually lead the BWC to overtake the UN small arms process, which seems unable to move beyond a rudimentary openness to NGOs despite the vast amounts of research, field work and policy advice being churned out by civil society on this issue.

Also, to their credit, a number of States in the Conference on Disarmament do regularly complain about the exclusion of NGOs from their work. As a direct result of this, the CD decided recently to devote one half-day session per year to NGOs; but only after the Conference has been able to reach agreement on a programme of work, something that has eluded it now for more than ten years. This concession, hard-fought though it was, hardly moves the CD out of its pole position in my ranking.

It is a mystery to me how the Conference on Disarmament and the Oslo Process on cluster munitions can exist in the same universe. It baffles me even more that they can be populated by the same diplomats. Remaining unfazed in the face of such inconsistency regarding civil society integration takes special skill. Or a split personality.

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: 'Schizophrenia_01' by dogsivu on Flickr.