“Comprehensive and Balanced”: Sink or Swim

The report (CD/2033) of the chair of the Conference of Disarmament’s informal working group on the vexed question of the CD’s programme of work is commendably concise. Perhaps too concise. One of its conclusions appears to run together a number of separate issues.

The text in question says this: “The focus on the core agenda items should remain as a priority in order to find a consensus formula for a comprehensive and balanced programme of work” (paragraph 6 (a)). Let’s break this down in terms of the CD’s rules of procedure:

- The four core issues will require—if negotiations on each of them are to be undertaken—negotiating mandates individually or collectively.

- But there is no requirement that those mandates be incorporated in the programme of work.

- Nor is there any requirement that the programme of work be “comprehensive and balanced”.  This is simply code for linking all four negotiating mandates together so that none is agreed until all are agreed (in the time-honoured way of multilateral diplomacy).

The Conference is making things very hard for itself in the following ways:

-  Its programme of work need be no more than a schedule of activities.

- The negotiation of mandates can simply be listed as an item on that schedule, with an appropriate allocation of time.

- Lumping together the four core issues (dealing with nuclear disarmament, a fissile material ban, preventing an arms race in outer space, and multilaterally agreed negative security assurances) constitutes a hugely indigestible feast of work.  Even if negotiating mandates on those topics can be agreed, imagine the difficulty of finding consensus on the sequence in which they should be negotiated.  Negotiating them more or less simultaneously would be beyond the means of all but the largest delegations.

A short look at the history of the CD (repeated from earlier posts on this site) puts this mis-application of the rules of procedure in context:

The Rules of Procedure, as well as CD/1036 (a decision on the “Improved and Effective Functioning” of the Conference adopted on 21 August 1990), envisage a streamlined approach whereby the programme of work would be no more than a mere schedule of business rather than an overarching mandate or mandates for beginning to elaborate a treaty or a politically binding text on one or more of the core issues.

Decision CD/1036 led to the current rule on the work programme, rule 28, with its emphasis on establishing rather than adopting. This is not a matter of semantics. It means that having established through his or her consultations that no reasonable objection exists to the schedule of business (i.e., work programme) for the year, the Conference president would get work underway without a formal decision. In theory, the work programme, shorn of mandates, would be so simple as not to require a formal, consensus decision of the Conference.  It would be wiser, however, to establish formally by a decision of the CD that there was no objection to this course of action (i.e., consensus).

Returning to successful approaches prior to 1999 would involve the following:

1. In the opening days of the annual session, there would be an allocation of time to be spent on each of the 4 core issues and other substantive agenda items.  That schedule or timetable would also allocate space for the annual high-level segment and for agreeing the CD’s report to the UN General Assembly.  In addition, it would reserve time for discussion of the outcomes of its work especially on mandates.

2. In the course of its work on the core issues, the central matter for CD members to resolve would be: under rule 23 of the Rules of Procedure, is there a need to establish a subsidiary body in which engagement would be intensified? That is, does a basis exist for the negotiation of “a draft treaty or other draft texts”?  Note that a subsidiary body is generally regarded as being more appropriate for facilitating intense engagement than the comparatively stilted, formal option of conducting work in plenary, although under the Rules, plenary meetings are the default option.

3. As, when and if the questions arising under rule 23 are answered in the affirmative, members would immediately apportion time from the reserved allocation (see 1. above) for the negotiation of the necessary mandate(s).

4. Agreement on the negotiated mandates would require consensus. For so long as Members insist on linkages among the four core issues, agreement on mandates is most unlikely to be achieved individually.  The timetable would need to be flexible enough to deal with the reality that a package deal would thus need to be developed.

The key difference from the present situation is that work on the mandates would be taking place under an agreed, streamlined work programme within the rules constituting a schedule of activities shorn of negotiating mandates. With the work progamme blockage removed, the beginnings of a basis of trust might be regenerated. The focus would turn to determining whether a basis exists for developing a negotiating mandate, issue by issue, and hence for setting up subsidiary bodies and tackling issues of substance rather than procedure. The CD’s sense of purpose as a negotiating body would be restored.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the weight of a linked set of negotiating mandates will ultimately sink the Conference. There is a way, however, if there’s a will…

Tim Caughley

Resident Senior Fellow

ATT Consensus: Voting – what if...?

With the dust beginning to settle after the high drama of the negotiations of the Arms Trade Treaty, some reflections on the decision-making process are beginning to emerge. Here's another one ...

To recap, in 2009 the United Nations General Assembly agreed in A/RES/64/48 to convene a UN Conference to elaborate a treaty setting the “highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional arms”.  The UNGA also agreed that the conference would proceed, on the basis of consensus, to “achieve a strong and robust treaty”.

In short, the goals were a strong, robust treaty containing standards that were the highest possible that could be achieved without any nation formally opposing the adoption of the final product of the Conference.

For the United States in particular the possibility of blocking the adoption of a treaty that did not meet its needs was a major factor behind the incorporation of the consensus rule.  UN Conferences are masters of their own rules: the ATT Conference could equally have adopted the rules of the UNGA under which decisions on important questions are made by a two-thirds majority of member states present and voting.  

In the event, consensus eluded the negotiators of the ATT. The culminating act of the Conference should have been the adoption of the draft Treaty but Iran, North Korea and Syria objected to the text.  Those 3 countries did not just shrug their shoulders and resign themselves to the reality that almost 180 other countries were more or less satisfied with the draft.  Nor did those 3 states decide simply to remain silent and content themselves with not signing, ratifying or acceding to the new treaty.  They chose instead to rely on the consensus rule to formally voice their opposition, so blocking consensus and burying the product of the Conference.

Well, not quite. The draft survived intact. Sixty-four countries tabled it a few days later for decision in the UNGA where consensus, as noted earlier, is not required.  It passed easily with 154 nations voting in favour including the US, but with the DPRK, Iran and Syria still against, and 23 abstaining.

Circumventing the consensus rule in this forum-shopping manner had its detractors amongst the naysayers and abstainers in the GA. But a prior question to ask is why the consensus rule was adopted by the Conference in the first place.  The rationale for the consensus rule in treaty negotiations is ostensibly to prevent the national security interests of a minority being jeopardized by a large majority.  Yet treaty obligations cannot be imposed on any state without that nation’s consent.  Consent is not implied by the mere act of being part of a consensus.  Consent must be expressed explicitly both through constitutional procedures as well as in the manner prescribed by the treaty (usually ratification or accession).  These are national decisions entirely within each state’s control.

At the international level, consensus means that negotiators must strive at all times for the greatest meeting of minds possible. There is nothing wrong with aiming for general agreement.  In the context of hundreds of thousands of deaths each year from armed violence, the objective of the ATT of producing “highest possible common international standards” patently requires it.  To hold any real meaning, however, that same expression surely recognises that a lowest common denominator outcome must be avoided.

And this is where voting comes in to play.  As we’ve noted before, the possibility of voting, however remote, concentrates the minds.  In so doing, it improves the ultimate product by raising the level at which compromise is finally brokered.  What if the ATT rules of procedure, in prescribing consensus, had also provided for voting by a very high majority but only after all feasible efforts to reach general agreement had been exhausted? Would the text have been stronger? Would the standards have been higher? Would consensus have been achieved? Would Iran, North Korea and Syria still have stood aside? Would the US even have participated in the Conference?

Difficult questions to answer.  But let’s finish with perhaps a more fundamental question.  Isn’t this a situation where the international community to its cost has overlooked the reality that the consensus rule can invest disproportionate power in the naysayers?  Or has the UN General Assembly become the de facto voting mechanism of last resort, as in this case and that of the CTBT?  Not a tidy way of proceeding, but arguably one that justifies the means - one that in effect “corrects” the misguided original adoption of the consensus rule by the GA in 2009. International comity, however, would be better served by a less haphazard way of developing treaty law, and especially by a more enlightened application of the consensus rule.


Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR 

CD: Getting to first base on a simplified programme of work

The need to simplify the programme of work of the Conference on Disarmament is at last gaining some momentum. Already the subject of an item on this blog on 24 February last year, the notion of reviving an earlier practice of the CD is increasingly seen as a means of getting the Conference to first base.

In short, the idea is to view the organizational tasks of the CD in two steps, rather than one. First, the Conference would agree on the direction of its work for the annual session, scheduling (or timetabling) the activities in such a way as to assist delegations to plan ahead.

What would be included in such a programme? Under rule 28 of the CD’s rules of procedure, the Conference would want to reflect its activities in a manner consistent with its agenda, and would need to take into account any recommendations, proposals and decisions that had been made to it by the UN General Assembly as well as decisions of the CD itself and proposals of its Members.

In the 1990s, the agenda and the programme of work were sometimes embodied in a single document, for ease of allocating blocks of time to respective agenda items. But if the work programme is treated in a manner separate from (but related to) the agenda, it would serve the same purpose. The programme would set out specific periods of time and the relevant dates for taking up specific agenda items. It would also list other organizational matters that it wanted to address.

For instance, in CD/963 of 7 February 1990 and CD/1119 of 22 January 1992, the Conference projected the need to convene subsidiary bodies “according to the circumstances and needs” of those bodies. It also agreed dates for the meeting of the Ad Hoc Group of Scientific Experts on seismic events (see also a previous post I wrote on this topic last November).

The first step, thus, is to agree on the organizational framework for the year ahead, including the allocation of time or space for subsidiary bodies. No mention of actual mandates.

The second step is to settle upon mandates for the subsidiary bodies that Members agree to establish. Obviously, at its broadest abstraction, the UN General Assembly’s mandate for the CD is that it must operate as a negotiating body. Hence, it would be logical that at least one of the mandates for subsidiary bodies would be a negotiating mandate or would foreshadow one. The CD is not compelled to establish subsidiary bodies, but would do so “when it appears that there is a basis to negotiate a draft treaty” (rule 23).

Having come to the view that it should take an issue forward in a subsidiary body, the CD would need to reach agreement on the mandate for such a body (rule 23). This immediately raises the question whether, in terms of the current impasse, the idea of simplifying the work programme by separating out the four mandates will serve the cause of progress. Will it not simply postpone the inevitable discord over the terms of the mandates?

Certainly, the act of separating mandates from the programme of work will not automatically overcome the issue of linkages. For so long as there is more than one mandate, the risk of linkages will persist. Nonetheless, in 1998 the Conference agreed separate – unlinked - mandates on fissile materials and negative security assurances (see paragraph 9 of this UNIDIR paper on fissile material negotiations in the CD for more detail).

Moreover, if Members really want to preserve the CD and help it to get to first base, a solution is at hand through taking a less complicated approach to the contents of the work programme. Getting to second base then becomes the challenge, but the tempo of action will have been raised and the unseemly situation of being unable even to get off home plate and agree formally on the annual sequence of its activities would have been laid at last to rest.

But, as already acknowledged, the question of linkages still lingers. How can the CD avoid the self-cancelling situation that paralyses it through these linkages? What incentives can ever be devised to prevent the tit-for-tat approach of “I will not agree to the mandate on topic A until you stop blocking the mandate on topic B”? There may not be easy answers to these questions, but that is not the end of the story. Second base can still be reached.

Once the simplified work programme is adopted and the focus of attention moves to mandates for subsidiary bodies, it will be essential for the CD to deal with mandates one by one. Succumbing to the temptation to lump mandates together will ensure deadlock in the same way as currently exists with the overloaded programme of work.

How will dealing with mandates separately help advance the runner to second base? In treating each mandate individually (as in 1998), the concerns of delegations with the terms of that particular mandate can be brought out into the open and treated specifically rather than generally, as is now the case. For example, can Member State X explain more precisely why mandate A does not meet its needs? Will Member State Y clarify why it is unable to accept a negotiating mandate on issue B? No more hiding behind the programme of work…. Without honest engagement at this level in which hold-out Members are placed on the spot, issue by issue, the prospects of breaking the deadlock are negligible.

This year’s plenary debates have served their purpose of putting the focus on substance rather than letting matters of procedure (especially the work programme) dominate activities. To get answers to the questions just raised, it would be necessary to do so off the official records of the CD, that is, in informal meetings of the Conference. The readiness of Members to provide answers to such questions in a constructive vein will demonstrate whether the CD is capable of moving to first and second bases or whether it prefers to remain rooted still to home base.

This is a guest post by Tim Caughley. Tim is a Resident Senior Fellow at UNIDIR.

Also see this collection of discussion pieces by Tim Caughley on the disarmament machinery, and in particular, the CD. These pieces were first published on this blog.

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

CCW: The wailing wall

In the preceding post on this blog on Wednesday, I observed that the Chair of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)'s determined efforts to achieve agreement on a cluster munitions protocol based on his own text this week was not without risk - that trying to force an agreement (or, as importantly, being perceived to be doing so) could see work fail.

That afternoon in CCW session, Costa Rica read out a statement on its behalf and that of Austria, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Chile, Croatia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Holy See, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Uganda, Uruguay and Venezuela. Senegal also subsequently associated itself with the statement, which said:

"We have been encouraged to see the growing recognition of the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions within CCW since 2006. We have constructively engaged in working towards a credible outcome that would effectively address the grave humanitarian problems caused by the use of cluster munitions.

"The Chair's text as it stands does not, however, meet that standard. Instead, by allowing states to choose from a menu of vaguely-worded options, we do not see how it would provide sufficient added value over the current situation, and it could be used as a justification for the continued use of cluster munitions that have already proven over the past decades to cause exactly the humanitarian consequences that we are trying to address.

"For these reasons, the Chair's text as it stand is not acceptable to our delegations.

"The credibility is measured by its substantive outcomes, and whether they make a contribution to the strengthening of IHL [International Humanitarian Law]. This protocol could set a dangerous precedent in allowing the CCW to fall behind stronger existing standards [i.e. the Convention on Cluster Munitions]. To ensure a strong and credible CCW any outcome must represent a significant development of IHL, rather than affecting its clarity and coherence. We are prepared to work constructively towards this end."

There were some strong reactions in response, including from India, the Czech Republic and Russia, against attempts - as Russia saw it - to carry over the logic of one process (the CCM) to another (the CCW). For its part, the Cluster Munition Coalition told the meeting that, in its view, "we believe that the text as drafted will not enhance the CCW's reputation or credibility. Instead, it will hurt the CCW's reputation and credibility because it is fundamentally flawed".

The Chair, Ambassador Bent Wigotski of Denmark - clearly one very unhappy man - said he would hold private consultations on Thursday morning to try to sort out the situation. But these did not appear to make much head-way. That afternoon, he told another meeting of the CCW group of experts in plenary that, as a result of his intensive consultations, he didn't see any possibility of arriving at an agreed Chair's text, and that he did not plan any more initiatives from the Chair. Moreover, Wigotski said he had become a "mobile wailing wall" for delegations.

This morning, the last allotted day of 2008 expert work on cluster munitions under the current CCW mandate, the plenary convened again for general statements. Most in the room were bracing themselves for the almost inevitable commencement of the blame-game. And so some of the statements proved to be. Countries which had earlier in the week criticized a Chair's text that they claimed violated their national red-lines on multiple, substantive points such as Pakistan, Brazil, China, Russia, Israel and India could now be heard praising it as the basis for agreement and bemoaning attempts to exert the influence on the CCW of standards set elsewhere (that is, in Dublin in May) - and thus now the national red-lines of many others present - as a sort of fifth column. The U.S. said it was unrealistic to expect it to adhere to any kind of prohibition related to cluster munitions: they remained lawful weapons, in its view, and critical to its national security interests.

Another target for their ire were the re-issued amendment proposals of some of the Costa Rican group as well as a Mexico-New Zealand-Norway proposal for an alternative protocol text containing only the CCM definition of a cluster munition and provision for a complete transfer ban on the weapon. That proposal aside, the amendments had largely been re-issued existing proposals (done so at the Chair's request) because one reason for the joint-statement on Wednesday had been growing frustration that the views of these countries were not being reflected in any of the Chair's series of texts. This allowed the Chair to say he hadn't heeded them because he didn't think they would fly, which to this observer seemed to be at odds with the earlier surprise he had expressed that such views still existed. For good measure some of these re-issued proposals were attacked as "unrealistic" by certain cluster munition possessor states in the CCW although, of course, most were less ambitious than provisions agreed by 107 states at the CCM negotiations earlier this year.

On the whole, those countries associating themselves with Wednesday's statement read by Costa Rica kept their powder dry and their microphones switched off today, although Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras and Croatia did speak. Croatia argued, in particular, that the CCW needed to get beyond the orthodox national security mindset so dominant, and think more deeply about the human consequences of what it did or didn't do in terms of the difference it would make to people on the ground.

So where does that leave things? Consultations continue in the margins, but there is little time left. The procedural report and meeting wrap-up session is due to commence at five o'clock this afternoon (CET). The tone of many of those who spoke today, both among the 25 and their critics, was that work needs to continue to achieve a consensus on a CCW protocol. Although there are persistent rumours of textual compromise proposals in certain back-pockets, it's unlikely the gulf in views can be bridged between now and next Friday, when the CCW's annual general meeting wraps up. But that conference may well agree on a mandate extension for cluster munitions for one more year (the ninth that the CCW has been working to 'urgently' address humanitarian problems related to cluster munitions in one form or another). Or, as Canada suggested, a couple more weeks in spring 2009 might be sufficient.

A new year, and with it a new mandate and Chair (Ambassador Wigotski is no doubt sick to the back teeth by now of anything to do with cluster munitions), may well change the tense atmospherics that have developed this year in the CCW. Maya, Virgil and I will provide further thoughts in the course of next week, once we've had a chance to reflect on what has been a turbulent few days.

John Borrie


Picture of the CCW conference room by John Borrie.

CCW: Update on 5th cluster munition GGE

Half-way through the latest and last week of the 2008 work of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)'s group of experts, how are things shaping up in light of a new Chair's text released last Friday? (See our preceding blog post.)

Frankly, it is too soon to say. Reaction has been mixed. While welcoming Ambassador Bent Wigotski of Denmark's paper, some delegations complained on Monday that they had only just received it, and then only in English and not all of the official UN languages - too soon to have properly considered it and have received instructions from authorities in their home countries.

Delegations also pointed to a range of specific problems the contents in the paper pose for them, especially concerning the scope and strength of its core obligations, how cluster munitions are defined, on transfer restrictions, transition periods and the deferral of its obligations. These concerns have been expressed from both ends of the political continuum - not only from those states concerned that a protocol may conflict or undermine the Convention on Cluster Munitions agreed in Dublin in May, but from some cluster munition users and producers who shunned the Oslo Process. The U.S. delegation has said clearly that it wants a protocol achieved this session, or it would seem to some before the next administration formally takes over in Washington D.C. in January (for current U.S. policy see the Pentagon's June cluster munition news release). But Russia, Israel and Brazil have questioned several parts of the Chair's paper on the conference floor, echoed on some points by others such as China and India.

After a languid summer session in July, in which many expert sessions finished early as delegations could not seem to fill the time, and an, at times, testy further week of talks in September, the Chair is now cracking the whip: there is only the rest of this week left to stand a hope of achieving agreement on his take on a protocol in 2008. Consequently, he has been consulting furiously by means of bilaterals to try to establish whether a consensus actually exists, and whether and how these differ from the signals that delegations are sending on the conference floor. (We don't know what he is being told in those private meetings, and how much this differs from what is being said in the big room.) Meanwhile, Ambassador Wigotski's Friends of the Chair are taking the expert group through issues such as definitions in the hope of whittling away differences, but this is slow and so far with mixed results.

Going into this meeting, I thought the most likely outcome for the CCW expert group's talks on cluster munitions this year would be a continuation of the mandate to work to 'negotiate a proposal' in 2009 in view of the differences of opinion apparent on many substantive issues and the amount of convergence still needed. Even if not having achieved a protocol per se, the Chair could then justifiably claim to have advanced the CCW's work in this area.

The Chair, however, signaled very directly this week that he wants a protocol based on his text to be agreed, if not by the end of this week, then in time for the CCW's annual meeting of states in the second half of next week. His single-minded determination is not without risk - trying to force an agreement could, of course, see the work fail.

But he might also succeed. In any case, I would agree with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which observed this week that the basic criterion for an agreement of value is not, as a few states have argued, primarily whether it has all of the big users and producers of cluster munitions involved. (Comment: the structure of the CCW framework convention means such states could agree to a protocol without any intention of joining anyway, and its transition period and deferral obligation options as drafted are extremely generous, to the point where most of its obligations don't have to be implemented for years or even decades.) The value of any agreement is rather in terms of what difference it makes on the ground in reducing the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions. Otherwise, a CCW protocol on cluster munitions could simply act as a fig leaf for business as usual concerning use of a weapon of particular and proven hazard to civilians. What will transpire remains to be seen.

Watch this space for further updates.


John Borrie

The Essence of Agreement

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

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

An anonymous reader of our blog added,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrick Mc Carthy


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

Gut Feelings

On the long flight back from New Zealand last week following the Wellington Conference on cluster munitions, I read Gerd Gigerenzer's recent book, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious.

The popular science and pop psychology shelves of book shops are packed with titles purporting to explain the mysteries of decision making, or how to get a leg up in business, love or just making friends and influencing people. Gigerenzer is notable, though, in the sense that he's Director of the Centre for Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and was formerly a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. He has academic credibility on these issues and, rather than offering advice, his book seeks to explain how human gut feeling operates and also describes some recent empirical research into how the human mind actually solves problems.

Gigerenzer has a knack (no doubt thanks in part to a good editor) for explaining constraints on how human beings see the world in cognitive terms in a way that's easy to follow and punctuated by entertaining examples.

Some of my colleagues - particularly social scientists for some reason - sniff at 'popular' science books or lectures. This mystifies me. Of course, one can't expect a book aimed at a general audience to always be as precise or technically nuanced as a scientific journal article or a volume of research - although the best writers often manage it. But in an increasingly specialised age, in which knowledge is often highly compartmentalized, it's unreasonable to expect readers to have a deep background or advanced education in all domains of research. As long as the writing is accurate, and not just interesting, books like Gigerenzer's are a means for literate people to keep themselves abreast of developments outside their domains of expertise in more depth than can be achieved by a newspaper article or television documentary. Otherwise, we end up as people knowing a lot about very little.

And good popular writing on scientific research often encourages useful cross-fertilization of ideas, even among so-called experts. Many developments have occurred as serendipitous connections in the web of knowledge. Cross-fertilization of ideas is so important we made it a mantra of our Disarmament Insight workshops in 2007, bringing in outside experts from fields like economics and economic modelling, physics and even primatology to work with disarmament diplomats and prompt them to make new connections.

Gigerenzer's book is a neat introduction to a field of research that strongly suggests we need a new way of seeing the way the mind works that recognizes we are often not rational optimizers. As he said in a recent interview for Edge (The Third Culture):

"Human rationality cannot be understood, I argue, by the ideals of omniscience and optimization. In an uncertain world, there is no optimal solution known for most interesting and urgent problems. When human behavior fails to meet these Olympian expectations, many psychologists conclude that the mind is doomed to irrationality. These are the two dominant views today, and neither extreme of hyper-rationality or irrationality captures the essence of human reasoning. My aim is not so much to criticize the status quo, but rather to provide a viable alternative."

Gigerenzer's book should be of interest to multilateral disarmament practitioners because it's a light introduction to problems of intuition and decision-making they face in the complex environments in which they operate.

For instance, many of the heuristics or cognitive rules-of-thumb we use in everyday life are "fast-and-frugal" - depending on very simple unconscious rules that are often products of our adapted minds. We use these in the way we frame problems (and their solutions) and in our social interactions, usually without thinking about it.

Acknowledging and mapping these rules-of-thumb has led, for example, to improvements in medical diagnostics for coronary care unit allocation - by devising protocols that leverage the intuition of doctors and specialist nurses, rather than baffling them with complex calculations that, empirically, are no more effective.

Gigerenzer also notes that in some institutional settings, when our intuitive rules-of-thumb are at cross-purposes with due process (he draws on various studies to look at magistrates' rulings in the English legal bail system as an example) a gap can emerge between what practitioners do, and what they think they're doing.

Similar arguments could be made in looking at some multilateral disarmament and arms control processes - something we described as "cognitive ergonomics" in our third volume of research. It's hard to achieve good outcomes in dysfunctional environments, especially if those working in such environments don't know any different. Which just proves the value of cross-fertilization of the kind Gigerenzer's short book offers.

John Borrie

Photo of Gerd Gigerenzer courtesy of Edge.org.

See Gerd Gigerenzer, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, London: Allen Lane: 2007.

Shall the geeks inherit the earth?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie


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

Fooled by randomness?

One interesting and useful aspect of working in a think-tank like UNIDIR is that I often get the opportunity to talk with diplomats about their work and can sometimes observe them doing it. In return, diplomats can - and do - give feedback on the sorts of ideas and suggestions we can offer as researchers on the Disarmament as Humanitarian Action (DHA) project.

In multilateral diplomacy, like many other walks of life, there seems to be a bit of a generation gap or, perhaps more accurately, a "rank" gap. Younger, less-senior diplomats are fascinating to listen to in this regard, as their collective sense of the weaknesses of their institutional structures and ways of working, and problems with collective approaches is sometimes much more acute than the ambassadors. I imagine it may be because ambassadors are more sheltered from some of the less sexy drudgery of multilateral meetings and perhaps even feel they have more a stake in the traditions that characterize their "community of practice".

Whatever the reason, I had a productive time today talking with young officials on the United Nations Disarmament Fellows programme. (Well, young is relative - many are older than me.) These junior to mid-level diplomats come from a wide variety of countries from Pakistan to Switzerland to Fiji and bring with them a diverse range of outlooks.

Conscious that they've been lectured to a lot in recent weeks about the nuts-and-bolts of "disarmament machinery", I thought I'd take a different tack. Recently I began reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's remarkable book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, which I think should be required reading for every policy maker. (Taleb is also author of an earlier book, Fooled by Randomness.)

There's an old saying that what you don't know can't hurt you. It's quite a stupid expression really, since the things we don't know really can hurt us (think about the 1929 and 1987 stock-market crashes, which hurt plenty of people. Or the 2004 Asian tsunami).

Taleb argued in his book that the things that can hurt us most are the things we think we do know, but actually don't. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, if there are "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns", the problem is that some of the latter are unknown precisely because we think we know them but don't. Taleb noted that nobody, for instance, predicted the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union's empire in 1989. Soviet-watchers were convinced the communist regime would remain in power for years longer, if not decades. The fall of the Berlin Wall surprised everyone.

Taleb's book was a useful entry point for exploring with these 20 or so younger diplomats two broad themes, drawing from a wide range of literature, the DHA project's research and this blog (type 'Thornton' into the search-box for some entries):

- Cognitive features hardwired into all human beings constrain the way in which we can perceive the world, and thus affect our decision making.

- A second problem is that the world isn't a smooth, linear narrative. That is, the world doesn't conform with our expectations, although we may fool ourselves into thinking so. That's because, as human beings, we have brains that are very good at re-shaping our expectations in hindsight without even realizing it, of confirming our beliefs without evidence, and intuitively leading us to the wrong answers when careful thought would serve us much better. We're not well-adapted to cope with complexity, which can be counter-intuitive.

It resulted in an interesting discussion and a good level of engagement. Perhaps the diplomats were just being polite, but I got the impression they regard these issues as real, and worthy of more attention in multilateral diplomacy than they currently get. They seem concerned that "business as usual" isn't working, and we need better ways of cooperating in the face of international uncertainty. I suspect Nassim Nicholas Taleb would agree.


John Borrie


References

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's web page is here.

Photo courtesy of Thomas Nash.

The Power of Priming

The human subconscious, it turns out, is more active than we think. And it can be primed in remarkable ways by seemingly mundane objects, smells and sounds, as a recent New York Times article outlined.

The article reported, for instance, one recent study by Yale psychologists, which revealed that college students handed either a cup of hot or iced coffee on the way to class were influenced by the temperature of the beverage: when later asked to judge a person from a written description, those handed iced coffee rated them “much colder, less social and more selfish” than those handed hot coffee.

In another study, students were asked to play an investment game with an unseen player. The students were placed at either a long table with a black briefcase and leather folder or a backpack left at the end of the table. The results revealed that students played differently when the briefcase and folder as opposed to the backpack were on the table. According to the researchers, the briefcase and leather folder primed the students to be stingier with their money, drawing on unconscious associations with “business-related associations and expectations.”

In yet another experiment, students were placed in a cubicle in one of two rooms and asked to fill out a questionnaire. After filling in the questionnaire, the students were given a crumbly snack. Unbeknownst to them, the researchers had placed a bucket of water with a hint of citrus cleaner in one room but not the other. Sure enough, the students in the room with the faint odor of cleaning solution cleaned up the remnants of their snack three times more than the control students.

The moral of the story, for me, is that we’re always trying to determine how we should behave in any given situation. But we may not be cognizant of all the factors influencing our perceptions, with the “conscious” brain taking directions from our subconscious that we didn’t even realize were issued.

It begs an interesting question for me, working in the 80 year old splendour of the UN Palais des Nations (formerly the seat of the defunct inter-war League of Nations). How might a room like the Council Chamber in Geneva, the scene of over a decade of floundering Conference on Disarmament (CD) meetings, prime diplomats for a new session of work? As you can see from the photo I’ve included with this posting, the Council Chamber’s drab green and gold murals tell the tale of human suffering and toil. Heavy green curtains make sure not a sliver of daylight peeks through and the Chamber’s walls bring to life murals like “The Conquerors,” “The Conquered” and “The Death of Freedom” (which themselves are a little on the surreal side). And the Council Chamber sometimes feels more like a museum than a working disarmament body, such is the reverential hush of CD meetings there, as interventions are delivered and translated through elderly surgical plastic wired earpieces to formally attired diplomats.

A legacy of deadlock sends one message to disarmament diplomats. But perhaps murals that portray human struggle, in the drabbest of drab colors with no natural light, send another. It just might put diplomats in the wrong frame of mind. Of course, I’m not making the claim that simply changing the room would be the difference between success and failure in the CD. But it might be a start.


Ashley Thornton


References

Benedict Carey, Who’s Minding the Mind, The New York Times, 31 July 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.
html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=8a58897f89c79289&ex=118620000
0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1186053879-G5OMwHDV76z/9oDeP7jvGA

This photo is part of a mural, “The Solidarity of Peoples (The Lesson at Salamanca),” by José María Sert in the Conference on Disarmament chamber, Geneva. Taken by Mel and John Kots, retrieved from flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melanieandjohn/127443220/