Anti-personnel mines: Signing up to the treaty

Last May, a series of events titled “Maputo+15” was held in Geneva to draw attention to key issues arising at the Maputo Review Conference (23 to 27 June 2014) of the Anti-personnel Mine Ban Convention 15 years after the international community had first gathered in Mozambique to begin to implement that treaty.  One of the events in the Maputo+15 series was a panel discussion on 21 May that addressed the issue “Is the Anti-personnel Mine Ban Convention (APBMC) sufficiently universalised?” 

The object of universalisation is the acceptance of legally binding obligations under the Convention by the entire international community of nation states. The rationale is that the wider the acceptance of the obligations in the treaty the stronger will be the international law and norms it establishes.  The more widespread the acceptance of the law created by any treaty, the stronger will be the international rule of law.

By the time of the first Review Conference in Nairobi, Kenya in 2004 there were an impressive 143 parties to the APMBC. Between entry into force in March 1999 and the Nairobi Review Conference five years later, parties joined on average at the astonishing rate of almost 30 every twelve months. By the second Review Conference in Cartagena, Colombia in 2009 the number had risen by 13 to 156 parties. By the time of the third Review Conference in Maputo this June that number will have increased by a further 5 to 161 parties.

If results-based accountancy rules were applied to those outcomes, clearly we are experiencing the law of diminishing returns.  But it is significant nonetheless that the APMBC’s 161 parties constitute 84% of the international community of nation states. By comparison, there are 193 member states of the United Nations. In the arms control and disarmament field, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention each have 190 parties, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention 168, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty 162, the Convention on Inhumane Weapons 117 and the Cluster Munitions Convention 84 parties to date.

Of the 50 states that once produced anti-personnel mines, all but 16 are now party to the APMBC.  It is also significant that, conscious of the stigma now attached to the use of anti-personnel mines, some states not yet party to the treaty have reduced their reliance on these weapons or modified their approach to them. For example, the US has not produced anti-personnel mines since 1997 and has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the assistance of victims of those weapons.

In terms of the objective of universalisation, some of the questions that can be expected to arise at the Maputo Review Conference are:

- how content should the international community be that 4 in every 5 states are party to the APMBC? Should parties express their satisfaction and devote their energies instead to universalising other treaties such as the Cluster Munitions Convention and the Arms Trade Treaty?

- how far have we come in terms of the promise by the parties to mine victims to end the suffering and casualties caused by anti-personnel mines, for all people for all time?

- in view of the diminishing returns mentioned earlier, should we approach norm-setting in a different way, e.g., through securing political commitments from those states that are reluctant to enter into the legally binding commitments of the APMBC?

For the panel in the Maputo+15 event, the answer to the question with which it had been tasked - whether the APMBC was “sufficiently universalised” - was ‘no’.  The humanitarian imperative – the rationale of the APMBC – demands that strenuous efforts should continue to be made to sign up additional states. The focus should remain on the humanitarian impact of anti-personnel mines, not their perceived military utility.

Representations to each non-party should be pitched as having a practical purpose with an emphasis on enhancing the standing of that state in the international community as a measure of respect for international humanitarian law. It is important to demonstrate that the international significance of becoming party to the APMBC warrants the effort necessary at the domestic level to implement the obligations of the Convention.

Stressing that the rationale behind the proposed treaty action is in the national interest and will also promote regional solidarity are key ingredients in the campaign for universalisation. There should be a determination to reach the highest levels of Government, so that Ministers of parties use opportunities, for example at regional meetings, to lobby their non-party counterparts to join the treaty. 

These are important questions and messages on the issue of universalisation for the representatives of the 161 parties to the APMBC to weigh when they gather in Maputo on 23 June 2014.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

More Unacceptable Harm

The second review conference of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention commenced yesterday in Cartagena, Colombia, which is obviously this week’s big news on the multilateral conventional weapons front. Good luck to all of the folks over there and congratulations to a regime that despite its ongoing implementation challenges has retained its vitality after a decade and made a positive difference to people’s lives on the ground in many mine-affected countries. Even the United States – which, to date has resisted joining the regime – recognizes this: it’s attending the summit as an observer. (It would be even better if the US would choose to come in from the cold and join the treaty, which already has 156 state parties.)

We have a bit of a news of our own: the history I’ve been working on for the last two years of international efforts to deal with the humanitarian impacts of another problematic weapon, cluster munitions, is now printed.

The book is entitled Unacceptable Harm: A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions Was Won. The cover image (see above) is of a French F.1 ‘Ogre’ submunition, with the gracious permission of the French artist and photographer Raphael Dallaporta. There are also colour plates in the middle of the book, with some great images by the Norwegian photographer Werner Anderson and others. The book also has a foreword written by Dr. Eric Prokosch, one of the pioneer researchers on cluster munitions, and author of the classic book The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Anti-Personnel Weapons (1995).

Unacceptable Harm explains how the Convention on Cluster Munitions was achieved through the ‘Oslo process’, a partnership of governments, international organizations and civil society not unlike the one that resulted in the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention in 1997. The book examines why it took the world so long to act on cluster munitions, why it eventually did, and what lessons banning cluster munitions might hold for future efforts on a pressing challenge of our time: protecting civilians from the effects of explosive weapons. (For further info on explosive weapons, see also Landmine Action's recent report).

The book will initially be launched in Geneva on 11 December, to be followed by events in Oslo and elsewhere in early 2010. Stay tuned to the blog for further updates.

John Borrie

The UK’s Last Word ?

States parties to the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty (APMBT) are holding their ninth Meeting of States Parties (MSP) in Geneva this week. The first part of the week was primarily devoted to the so-called ‘Article 5 extension requests’. It is the first time that states parties have had to consider such requests and many acknowledged that this would be one of the first true tests of the Convention.

Under Article 5(1) of the APMBT ever state party is under an obligation to:

…destroy or ensure the destruction of all anti-personnel mines in mined areas under its jurisdiction or control, as soon as possible but not later than ten years after the entry into force of this Convention for that State Party.

For 16 of 42 states parties that still have anti-personnel landmines (APM) on their territory (or under their jurisdiction) the destruction deadline elapses in 2009. One of them, Uganda, plans to finish work in time. The other 15 submitted requests for an extension of this deadline in accordance with article 5(3) of the Convention.

By Wednesday afternoon all requesting states had had the opportunity to present their case, receive comments and provide clarifications. Most states' requests met with general support, many receiving praise for their detailed and comprehensive submissions and good cooperation.

States identified adverse climate, lack of financial and technical resources, and limited access to mined areas as the main reasons for failing to meet the destruction deadline – and birds: Denmark noted with some pride that mine-induced lack of human activity on the island of Skallingen resulted in an exceptionally large bird breeding place there and the UK expressed great concern that penguin rookeries on the Falklands should not be adversely affected by mine-clearance activies.

Not all requests were well received, though. Venezuela has not undertaken any demining activities since the APMBT entered into force for it in 1999. Neither did the UK in the Falklands. Some states parties therefore took issue with these requests. In their view, not to undertake any clearance during the initial 10 year period was contrary to the spirit of the Convention and may amount to a violation of states' obligation to destroy APMs as soon as possible. Venezuela responded to such criticism by advising 'people without proper knowledge of the work of deminers' not to make such ‘unhealthy value judgements’.

States were even less pleased with the UK for requesting the maximum allowable period of extension - 10 years. Pushing the deadline so far into the future seemed to many to be at odds with every state party's undertaking to do its utmost ‘to face the challenge of removing anti-personnel mines placed throughout the world, and to assure their destruction’. They recommended that the UK revise its request, start demining operations, set a firm deadline for completion and submit a more detailed plan. To this the UK responded that it could do no more and that the statement tabled was its 'last word'. Overall, talks on article 5 were held in a constructive atmosphere but the UK accusing the ICRC of 'unwisely overstepping the neutrality of the institution' sucked some air out of the room.

The decisions on the extension requests will be taken on Friday. In spite of the APMBT foreseeing a decision by a majority vote, many states expressed a wish to proceed by consensus, as has been the practice so far. Others, like Canada, cautioned that 'consensus by all means but not at any cost' should be the objective. We will have to wait until Friday to see who has the last word. Clearly, though, many states are deeply concerned about the negative precedent that accepting the UK’s request in its present form could set for the Convention’s future.

The second major issue the MSP has to deal with concerns Belarus, Greece and Turkey who are currently in violation of their obligation to destroy their stockpiles of APM. Several other states risk finding themselves in a similar situation soon. Greece and Turkey have at least set new deadlines for completing destruction, but Greece has yet to destroy a single APM and Belarus wasn’t able to given an indication about how to resolve the issue.

On a positive note, Indonesia surprised many by announcing that it had destroyed all its stockpiles, 3 years before its deadline. This is an achievement that will hopefully inspire others to follow suit and served as a reminder that most states do in fact honour their commitment.

Megan Kinsella and Maya Brehm.

Megan is a graduate student at Norman Patterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa and presently an intern at UNIDIR.

Photo Credit: 'Expressive Rockhopper' by man_with_noname on Flickr

Losing Control

Unless you've been on Mars these last weeks, the unfolding international financial crisis centred on Wall Street can't have escaped your notice. Some of Wall Street's biggest names have disappeared, either having collapsed (such as Lehman Brothers) or having been pushed into commercial shotgun marriages (Bear Stearns bought by JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch by Bank of America). The American taxpayer now owns the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and early last week the U.S. Treasury stepped in to bail out and effectively nationalise American Insurance Group (AIG).

In the last day or so, after enjoying decades of being Wall Street darlings, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last of the Wall Street independent investment banks, have sought to become bank holding companies. Analysts have noted that this subjects the two institutions to far greater regulation and closer government supervision, but the banks' motive is to gain access to the full array of the U.S. Federal Reserve's lending facilities. Times are that tough.

The New York Times opined in a headline that "Goldman and Morgan Shift Marks End of Era in Finance". More bluntly, to paraphrase a a commentator I heard on CNBC today, it marks the impact point in a period in which Wall Street has enjoyed the profits and socialized its losses. The group picking up the tab for the U.S. Treasury's rescue package, which some estimates put at US$700 billion, is of course American taxpayers. (Central banks and Treasuries in other countries are mounting their own efforts, like those underway in Great Britain: these costs are not included and ultimately their taxpayers will foot the bill for their endeavours.)

To put this 700 billion dollar Wall Street rescue package into perspective, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' 2008 Military Balance, the U.S. National Defense Budget Authority request for this year was estimated to be 695 billion dollars, plus loose change of a few tens of millions. This included supplemental funding requests of almost 190 billion dollars for the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT). (Incidentally, according to IISS, with the supplemental enacted as of May 2007, Congress had approved a total of around 610 billion dollars since 11 September 2001 - more than two-thirds of it spent in Iraq.) Although the figures are not neat, it's clear that we're not talking loose change here - either for a Wall Street bail out or the GWOT.

No doubt these expensive financial rescues are necessary under the circumstances, although it's by no means certain whether they'll actually serve to prevent the global financial meltdown, the prospect of which frightens governments and investors alike. Political and financial leaders, with the spectre of the Great Depression of the 1930s over their shoulders, are doing their best to soothe fragile investor confidence. And, of course, the public is worried too: in a globalized world anyone with a bank account, a job, a car loan or even a warranty on a toaster is stuck in this together.

Meanwhile, economists talk about the externalities of economic decisions. This sounds more abstract than it is. To quote that paragon of accuracy (it serves well here), Wikipedia:

"Standard economic theory implies that any voluntary exchange is mutually beneficial to both parties involved in the trade. This is because if either the buyer and the seller would not benefit from the trade, they would refuse it. An exchange, however, can result in additional effects on third parties. From the perspective of those affected, these effects may be negative (pollution from a factory), or positive (honey bees that pollinate the garden)."

Rising interest rates are an externality of recent aggregated economic decisions: positive if you have money in the bank (although inflation is rising too), but negative if you have a mortgage or other debts. Many people are finding this out the hard way, and an approaching backlash is palpable. I was in the UK last week, and the newspapers all contain increasing numbers of stories about fat-cat city boys, especially if they're getting their comeuppance in a falling property market or a courtroom. Some stories verged on the nasty, but underline the resentment growing about the allegedly greedy and amoral activities of those involved in high finance.

The fact is that such blatant moral hazard - in which an elite reap the majority of benefits from some activity, but others largely pay the price (or seem to) - is hardly limited to international finance. We have only to look to the international arms trade and its effects. The reality is that, in much of the world, many communities are suffering the effects - the externalities - of transactions of arms they weren't involved in. The effects on civilians of weapons like anti-personnel mines and unexploded cluster submunitions are cases in point. Another is the illicit trafficking in small arms and light weapons such as assault rifles. Many were supplied by the superpowers during the Cold War to their proxies in brushfire conflicts, but now these weapons slosh from insecure environment to insecure environment arming paramilitaries, violent insurgents and criminal gangs. The people who suffer from the presence and use of these weapons aren't just the ones who wield them, but ordinary people whose lives and livelihoods they threaten.

So spare a thought for those who endure such externalities and lend your support to ways to reduce their insecurity. Following the Wall Street crisis, governments and voters are going to be more wary (at least for a while) of unconstrained market activity as an end in itself. We should be similarly wary of the international arms trade in its current form: even when legal the longer term effects of the arms trade can be hard to predict, and can come back to haunt us. All the more reason for an Arms Trade Treaty, and continued implementation of the Programme of Action on curbing the illicit trade in small arms.

John Borrie


Reference

International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2008 (London: Routledge/IISS: February 2008).

Paul Rogers' book Losing Control: Global Security in the Twenty-first Century (2nd edn), (London: Pluto Press: 2002) explores and analyzes big themes such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the impact of human activity on the environment, paramilitaries and the growth of hypercapitalism and attendant inequality, poverty and insecurity. Paul's Open Democracy column is also well worth following.

Picture credit: 'Free Fall in the City' by cactusbones (8 January 2008) downloaded from Flickr.

The CCW: Can it find its way?

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

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

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

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

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

Scope of any regulation or prohibition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transition Period.

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

Storage, Destruction, Transfers.

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

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

The way forward?

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

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


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


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

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

Virgil Wiebe, Maya Brehm & John Borrie

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

Cluster Munition Fact Sheet: A view from the field

Last week, we posted on the blog a U.S. public document on “Putting the impact of cluster munitions in context with the effects of all explosive remnants of war” issued on 15 February. In this blog post, Andy Smith offers a view from the field.

It’s always good to know what the official U.S. Department of State attitude is on a given subject. That said, a recent "Fact sheet" or “White Paper” seems to me, as a professional in demining, to present only one side of a polemic. The timing of its release seemed clearly intended to counter the Wellington Conference on Cluster Munitions.

Having just updated the Database of Demining Accidents, I have found time to respond to several of the points in the U.S. “Fact sheet”…

"...For example, there are practically no United States-produced landmines being found by de-miners anywhere in the world today."

This is simply not true. U.S. mines are being cleared in large numbers today. For example, the minefield on the border between Syria and Jordan has more than 57,000 M14 anti-personnel blast mines. There are also more than 15,000 M15 and M19 anti-vehicle mines. Clearance of this minefield is happening now. These numbers don’t seem insignificant to me.

U.S. mines aren’t common. That much is true. Most of the mines found around the world are old Soviet stuff, with mines from Italy, China and Pakistan also common. But the USA cannot claim to be clean. M14 and M19 mines have featured in demining accidents in Iraq, Cambodia, Laos and Afghanistan. The US makes well-designed mines – and unfortunately they continue to function thirty years after they were placed (which is a large part of the reason for wanting to ban their use).

"...some are claiming that unexploded cluster munitions constitute a major category of post-conflict hazard, warranting new mechanisms beyond those that already exist in Amended Protocol II and Protocol V of the CCW."

Actually, unexploded “cluster munitions” do constitute a major post-conflict hazard for deminers. Cluster-bomb submunitions feature in more demining accidents than any other ordnance type other than mines. And, unlike mines, the submunitions that have featured in demining accidents are predominantly of U.S. design and manufacture.

The order of frequency in recorded demining accidents is as follows: M77, BLU-97, KB-1, BLU-26. All except the KB-1 are made in America. From a wealth of anecdotal reports, I strongly suspect that the accuracy of this record is slightly skewed by the lack of independent post-bombing data from Afghanistan and that the BLU-97 would come out top if access to the demining accident data from that period were available. (Nevertheless, the M77 is also of U.S. manufacture, so the top two would simply change positions.) When all data is in from Lebanon, the M77 is likely to re-emerge as being the most frequent offender. But deminers often survive an M77 incident. They are rarely that lucky with the BLU-97.

It should be stressed that I am only writing about accidents during demining, and not accidents to the general population. And it is true that there are some countries heavily contaminated with submunitions that have never caused post-conflict injury without the kind of human intervention that boggles the mind. (My favourite is the shepherd on the Tajik mountain who was cold and whose campfire needed fuel. He knew that explosives burn – he’d seen soldiers making tea on a TNT fire – so he put a few submunitions into the fire to try to keep it going. The next surprise is that two out of three shepherds sitting around the fire survived.) The point is that people do interact with ERW in unpredictable ways – and all of it must be removed if the innocent are to be protected from the effects of past conflicts in which their role was always limited to that of unwilling victims.

Outside Vietnam and Laos, most areas contaminated with submunitions that are reliably not movement sensitive are strewn with old Soviet submunitions. These submunitions have simple impact fuze systems; that is, "all-ways" acting fuzes, but requiring a real IMPACT. A lot of early U.S. stuff was like that, but inside Vietnam and Laos the range of experimental submunitions dropped by the USA was so wide that you can never be confident about the sensitivity of what you find - and there have been demining accidents. And, of course, here have been many civilian accidents with submunitions in Laos.

It’s disingenuous to suggest that submunitions are no worse than mortar bombs. Yes, deminers and civilians die in accidents when quantities of mixed ordnance detonate - and civilians sometimes die when taking mortars apart with hammers or when playing with grenades. However, leaving mines aside, in humanitarian demining no category of ordnance comes close to “submunitions” in the accident record.

In my opinion, the Mine Ban Treaty definition of a mine was always flawed. It includes the weasel word "designed" - as in "designed to be victim initiated". If it had not done so, it appears obvious to me that many US submunitions would be justifiably classed as mines. It is not the design, but the outcome that matters – and when an outcome of long-term civilian hazard is undeniable, the continued use of the weapon includes knowledge of that outcome. In my view, ignoring the known outcome is irresponsible. Foreknowledge and “design” begin to merge and the outcome begins to look deliberate.

And, in general terms, regardless of how they are designed to be used, U.S. cluster munitions have been used against civilian areas. Their delivery in combat is often not "precise" and their deliberate spread means that they can never be better than broadly "accurate". Their failure rate everywhere has been far higher than in user trials. They are indiscriminate weapons, which I believe breach the spirit of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, if not the treaty’s letter. And, they kill deminers, who are cleaning up after our wars, which is really rather important.

"U.S. policy for its own cluster munitions is that new types must have a 99% functioning rate in testing".

Sadly, this was also true of those in current use. It proves that the "testing" does not accurately reflect how they are used and the resultant failure rate. While for many munitions, a dud is usually a dud, it could be fatal to think that of a U.S. made submunition. Indeed, such submunitions have been fatal for many serving U.S. soldiers, as well as for a few well-trained Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialists in humanitarian demining and some unfortunate deminers.

The Fact Sheet also provides a country-by-country analysis using selected figures. In each case, its claims could easily be argued against. From my own experience, I took pictures of BLU-97 strikes on Iraqi buildings, with the submunitions in place and the US "rapid reaction force" nowhere to be seen in late 2004. Other examples abound but a brief summary would only repeat the DoS error of citing selected details to support a conclusion that was not derived, and so appears to have been a hidden premise.

I can sympathize a little with the United States over the anti-personnel mine ban – because the North/South divide in Korea is probably impossible to demine to humanitarian standards without many casualties. That said, despite U.S. claims that anti-personnel mines are essential weapons, they haven’t reported using them in conflicts since the Mine Ban Treaty, which indicates they weren’t THAT essential – and that they do have some flexibility in meeting the concerns of allies. So, we should take claims about the operational necessity of cluster munitions and portents of doom about the implications for military interoperability if U.S. allies decide to ban them (a big issue in the Oslo Process, I understand) with a big grain of salt. It seems obvious to me that the U.S.A. really doesn’t need indiscriminate submunitions either.

"...assistance to victims should be provided purely on a humanitarian basis and not be made conditional upon a state's agreement to any politically motivated international agreement, whether that agreement concerns landmines, cluster munitions or any other conventional weapons."

Professionals in Mine Action know how "political" the decisions over where to give humanitarian assistance are - and how frequently national self-interest dictates humanitarian demining spending. In my experience, the U.S. is certainly no exception here. Nevertheless, if you’re going to have rational criteria for providing support to solve a finite problem (and clearing ERW is a finite and measureable task), then making the delivery of humanitarian demining funds dependent on a commitment not to use the most indiscriminate weapons (mines and submunitions) again makes a lot of sense – because it limits the potential for that country to become similarly contaminated at a later date. The logic of this is rather more compelling than some other highly “political” criteria for the provision of aid that I have encountered.

To complete the picture and offset any impression of this being an attempt to bash the U.S.A., that minefield on the border between Syria and Jordan I mentioned above contains thousands of antique British-made mines in really poor condition. It probably also has a few of the very nasty Canadian C3A1/2 AP mines that include a small shaped charge to really make your day (the "Elsie). No country is squeaky clean.

From the perspective of one who has to pick the things up, the Department of State release of a spin-doctored cluster munition "fact-sheet" built on hidden premises and selective number-crunching mixed with factual errors looks distinctly "grubby" and not a little desperate..

This is a guest blog by Andy Smith. Andy has been working in humanitarian mine action since 1994. He has demining experience in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Iraq, Kosovo, Mozambique, Namibia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Zimbabwe and is currently working on the border between Jordan and Syria. Andy is involved in the Database of Demining Incidents and Victims and is an independent member of the International Mine Action Standards Review Board.

Picture shows the author trialing water jets and mine boots in a minefield on the border between Jordan and Syria on 5 March 2008. The blue stick at Andy’s feet is an M14 anti-personnel mine.

Dealing with Deadlock in Multilateral Disarmament Negotiations

We've had a very interesting start to the week on the disarmament front here in Geneva.

On Monday, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy organised a Negotiation Day to analyse the state of the art of multilateral negotiation with the help of the PIN Group (PIN stands for 'Processes of International Negotiation').

Today, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, made a statement formally presenting the Conference on Disarmament with a draft treaty on the 'Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects' (PPWT).

The same question ran through my mind at both events: How can multilateral negotiation processes best deal with deadlock when it occurs? In other words, when parties to a multilateral negotiation find themselves in a mutually hurting stalemate but cannot find an obvious way out, what options are open to them?

Moday's negotiation day offered a number of mostly theoretical answers that focused mainly on diluting or re-interpreting the consensus rule in order to allow for more fluid decision-making. This may seem like a good idea but, unfortunately, is not always practicable.

In the case of the Conference on Disarmament, for example, this strategy simply won't work since the consensus rule is formally enshrined in the Conference's rules of procedure. Changing these rules to allow for majority decision-making would itself require consensus; an impossible prospect given that the States likely to be marginalised by such a development would never support it.

In any case, the consensus rule in the Conference on Disarmament did not come about by accident. It is similar in some respects to the veto power of permanent members of the UN Security Council insofar as it reassures the larger powers that the Conference cannot agree disarmament or arms control measures against their respective wills. Whereas only 5 States wield vetoes in the Security Council, however, in the Conference on Disarmament all 65 member States do so.

The presence of Mr. Lavrov in the Conference on Disarmament today provided a more practical illustration of another strategy that may be used to overcome deadlock in multilateral negotiations - bringing in the big guns to apply a high-voltage defibrillator to what some describe as a moribund body (clear!).

Mr. Lavrov is just the latest in a stream of top-level officials to have passed through Geneva in recent weeks in an attempt to revive the Conference. Last week it was the UK Defence Minister, Des Browne, and the Administrator of the US National Nuclear Security Administration, Thomas D'Agostino. The week before that it was UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who delivered a particularly frank call for the Conference finally to begin negotiating. Nor is Mr. Lavrov likely to be the last high-level official to stop by Geneva in an attempt to get things moving again.

But there is also a third strategy for dealing with deadlock in multilateral disarmament negotiations and that is changing the forum in which the negotiations take place. This strategy may not always work, but there is evidence for its effectiveness in some cases.

The most obvious example is the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. When the best that States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) could do in 1996 was to agree to regulate, not ban, the use of anti-personnel mines, this led a small group of States and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to take the negotiations out of the United Nations. By the following year, this stand-alone process produced a treaty banning anti-personnel mines that today has 156 States Parties.

A similar thing has recently happened with cluster munitions. Again, it was the inability of States Parties to the CCW to agree a negotiating mandate that would address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions that led Norway at the end of 2006 to invite interested States to Oslo to begin a stand-alone process to negotiate a treaty banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. Over 80 States now subscribe to the Oslo Process, over 110 are registered to participate in its next meeting in Wellington, New Zealand (next week) and a diplomatic conference in Dublin at the end of May will negotiate a new Cluster Munitions Convention. In the meantime, the CCW has also been spurred into action and has agreed a negotiating mandate, albeit a vague one, on cluster munitions with the result that, from nothing, we now have two parallel negotiating processes on this issue.

Interestingly, a similar strategy of changing the venue of negotiations has also been tried out on the Conference on Disarmament. In 2005 at the UN General Assembly's First Committee on disarmament and international security, a group of States proposed to create ad-hoc committees in the General Assembly that would essentially do the Conference on Disarmament's work until such time that the Conference was in a position to do so itself. Unsurprisingly, the idea did not go down well with the Permanent Members of the Security Council and the proposal was withdrawn, albeit with the proviso that it might be re-introduced at a later date if there was still no progress in the Conference on Disarmament.

That was over two years ago and the Conference on Disarmament is still deadlocked. Time to try another strategy perhaps? Any bright ideas out there?

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: 'Locked' by Pedro Da Silva on Flickr

Landmines: Dead Sea Goals

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Conference was important in several respects:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


John Borrie


References

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

Photo by John Borrie.

Thinking Outside the Bomb: The Road From Oslo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie


Reference

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

Landmines: Disarm!

Anti-personnel mines continue to kill and maim people, mostly civilians, around the world. Their effects are often worst in the poorest and most vulnerable communities that are trying to recover from conflict.

In 1997, a new international treaty was negotiated to ban anti-personnel mines, clear contaminated land, destroy mine stockpiles and help the victims. Later this month a conference in Oslo will commemorate 10 years of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and Disarmament Insight will report from there on its highlights.

But the job isn't done yet. It's easy in all of the hullaballoo and feel good vibe to overlook the real human costs of anti-personnel mines. A powerful reminder of the real life challenges of anti-personnel mines is the excellent independent film 'Disarm', co-produced by Mary Wareham, a contributor to our second volume, Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: From Perspective to Practice, and the film-maker Brian Liu.

I first saw 'Disarm' on the margins of the Nairobi Summit toward a mine-free world in late 2004. In the two-and-a-half years since word has spread and buzz has built about the documentary, and recently a 25 minute edit was broadcast on the Al Jazeera International satellite news channel.





The two parts of the edited film have been posted on YouTube, and you can watch them by clicking on the frames above or by following the links at the bottom.


John Borrie


References

There is a link to the 'Disarm' film website here.

'Disarm', Part 1, available on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaFCPNeb_MM.

'Disarm', Part 2, available on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohe5siXeAxU.

Mary Wareham, "The Role of Landmine Monitor in promoting and monitoring compliance with the 1997 Mine Ban Convention".