The Oslo conference on humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons detonation

Dr. Patricia Lewis from Chatham House (and former UNIDIR Director) addresses the Oslo Conference explaining how nuclear weapon detonations work.

Earlier this month North Korea carried out its third underground nuclear weapon test. Beyond questions about the secretive North Korean leadership's rationale or the geopolitical equation to respond to this latest crisis, the bomb test underlined something else. The world is more interdependent and crowded than when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. What would be the humanitarian consequences be today of the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a populated area like a mega-city? And could the international community respond effectively to help those affected if it happened?

In 1987, the World Health Organization concluded that the “only approach to the treatment of health effects of nuclear warfare is primary prevention, that is, the prevention of nuclear war.” Since then, these questions have received little in the way of studied attention at the global level.

Existential dread about a civilization-ending nuclear war between the United States and the-then Soviet Union has receded. Instead, when considered at all, the risk of a nuclear weapons detonation is most often seen today through the prism of terrorism. Yet there are a number of other ways in which detonation of nuclear weapons could occur.

One risk is sheer mishap. The litany of accidents, near misses and incidents involving nuclear weapons safety and security is extensive, even based on what the world knows from declassified US military records. And those are only the ones we know of. The actual number is almost certainly higher, and in all the nuclear-armed states.

That large numbers of nuclear weapons are still kept ready to launch on hair-trigger alert more than two decades after the Cold War ended invites the prospect of accidental launch. As an influential 2008 study by the nuclear scholars George Perkovich and James Acton observed, “so long as large ready-to-launch nuclear arsenals exist (and especially if more states acquire nuclear weapons), the risk that these weapons will one day be detonated is not negligible”.

Combined with misperception between nuclear-armed powers during crises, this could result in nuclear weapons detonation. Fatigue, bias and straight-up errors have their parts to play. After the Cold War ended, new information came to light indicating that the world came even closer to nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis than previously thought. In one instance, the exhausted commander of a Soviet submarine surrounded by US warships and running out of air ordered a 15-kiloton nuclear torpedo to be made combat-ready. As Brookings Institution scholar Michael O’Hanlon put it, “restraint is not a pre-determined outcome because one cannot predict how human beings will perform in various hypothetical circumstances.”

North Korea's secretiveness and unpredictability springs to mind here. But there are other situations of concern. For instance, India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals. The proximity of their armed forces along disputed lines of control means there might be little scope next time a rapidly escalating crisis occurs for political leaders to contain escalation to regional nuclear conflict.

Recently, Alan Robock and other scientists studied a scenario involving India and Pakistan each attacking each other’s cities with 50 Hiroshima bomb-sized nuclear weapons. Using climate change and other models, some of the human and environmental consequences were estimated. It turns out that this “limited” exchange would be on a par with predictions for death, disruption and nuclear winter predicted during the Cold War for a full-scale nuclear conflict between the two superpowers. These scientists concluded that even if one side’s attack did not meet with nuclear retaliation, radioactive fall-out and other forms of blowback would constitute “self-assured destruction”.

The direct death and destruction of nuclear weapons detonations would be horrific. People would be killed or horribly injured in large numbers. And the destruction of population centers due to the indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons within their very large zones of effect would extend to obliteration of hospitals, clinics, transportation and other infrastructure necessary to treat and care for the many injured or dying and traumatized victims.

Nuclear weapon detonations would also cast radioactive materials into the high atmosphere, with implications for public health outside the bombed zone. Nuclear attacks on urban areas would create huge amounts of airborne soot, blocking sunlight and significantly reducing global crop production for up to a decade. On top of the millions of refugees and internally displaced people possibly created by the bombing, the world could have to contend with mass starvation.

Then there are the challenges of restoring global economic and technological infrastructure. The 2011 Japan earthquake-tsunami-Fukushima reactor disaster offered a foretaste of the problems caused by any kind of sudden global supply chain disruption. Detonation of nuclear weapons would create a situation dwarfing this, with knock-on effects on trade and the livelihoods of people all over the world.

It means that the consequences of a nuclear weapons detonation are a global concern. With this in mind, the Norwegian government decided to convene an international conference in Oslo to begin to discuss how well the international community is prepared (or not). Norway invited all governments, UN humanitarian agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and selected civil society experts, making this a truly global event. 132 governments have confirmed their participation.

The Conference began today, and I blog this from the meeting room itself. It follows a lively civil society forum held this last weekend in Oslo, organized by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Although not connected to the Oslo Conference, that forum underlined the high degree of civil society interest in how the inter-governmental conference gets on.

The Oslo conference is a first step. All governments, including President Obama’s administration, should welcome it as a means to focus minds on the practical risks nuclear weapons pose, and what is required to address these dangers. As Obama himself said in Prague in April 2009,  “One nuclear weapon exploded in one city—be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague—could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be—for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.”

However, the US government - along with China, France, Russia and the UK - has shunned the Conference. They claim it is a distraction.

This looks weak to many. Other nuclear weapon-possessing states (India and Pakistan) are attending the Oslo Conference. And it has handed activists a small victory: they ask why nuclear weapon states claiming to adhere to international rules including humanitarian law don't want to talk about the consequences. It is a good question, indeed, in view of these massively destructive weapons.

John Borrie and Tim Caughley

Viewing nuclear weapons through a humanitarian lens

The Hiroshima explosion recorded at 8.15 a.m. 6 August 1945 on the remains of a wrist watch found in the ruins. UN Photo/Yuichiro Sasaki.

Multilateral practitioners working in the field of nuclear disarmament are apt to complain that since the end of the Cold War, public concern and corresponding pressure on governments to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons has faded away. Other issues have come to the fore, and younger people haven’t directly experienced the existential dread of superpower nuclear confrontation and war. Grainy black and white images of the human costs of the aftermath of the 1945 atomic bombings in Japan seem a world away from today’s high resolution and the internet.

Although the detonation of even one weapon would most likely have terrible humanitarian consequences, policy focus has moved to other issues. A case of out of sight, out of mind, perhaps. If there is a global issue that has claimed centre-stage, it’s climate change, which has effects we are already witnessing and must adapt to living with.

Unlike climate change, nuclear weapons detonations are catastrophes still within human wit to prevent entirely - if the commitment and imagination to do so can be catalyzed. 

In this respect, it’s significant that the notion of examining the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons is regaining renewed attention. In its agreed outcome document, the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s Review Conference expressed “deep concern at the continued risk for humanity represented by the possibility that these weapons could be used and the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from the use of nuclear weapons.”

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement recently emphasized the immense suffering that would result from any detonation of nuclear weapons, as well as the lack of any adequate international response capacity to assist the victims. It recalled the 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, which expressed the Court’s view that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the principles and rules of international humanitarian law. The Movement all called on all state to ensure that nuclear weapons are never again used and to pursue treaty negotiations to prohibit and eliminate them.

Switzerland delivered a statement on behalf of 34 nations at the UN General Assembly’s 2012 First Committee session expressing their concern about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. It noted with approval that “consideration of this issue has garnered greater prominence in a number of General Assembly resolutions and in other fora since 2010.”

At the same First Committee session, Norway announced its intention to host an international conference in Oslo in March 2013 “on the impact of nuclear detonations, whatever their cause”. Norway’s subsequently indicated that the conference’s focus will be on the humanitarian consequences of a nuclear weapons detonation, and will involve “all interested states, as well as UN organisations, representatives of civil society and other relevant stakeholders.”

It’s also noteworthy that civil society organizations recently proclaimed their common commitment to a humanitarian framing of disarmament-related problems, in activities encompassing campaigning for nuclear weapons elimination. In October 2012, more than 30 non-governmental organizations and campaigns (including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons or ICAN) joined forces for a Humanitarian Disarmament Campaigns Summit in New York. The event’s Communiqué called for “strong disarmament initiatives driven by humanitarian imperatives to strengthen international law and protect civilians.” ICAN plans to convene a large-scale civil society forum in Oslo the weekend before Norway’s inter-state conference.

All of this could conceivably contribute to widening the current prevailing inter-state discourse about nuclear weapons. To contribute to the unfolding policy debate, UNIDIR has commenced a new project on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. It follows on in part from our prior work over a number of years on ‘disarmament as humanitarian action’ - the initial rationale for setting up this Disarmament Insight blog.

The first of the project’s papers, authored by Tim Caughley, traces the notion of catastrophic humanitarian consequences in law and policy in the domain of weapons restrictions. The second paper, my own, examines the contemporary context and potential implications of viewing nuclear weapons through a humanitarian lens. Over the next several months we'll add to this analysis, while continuing to follow international developments in this area closely. Keep checking back for updates: it’s going to be an eventful year.

John Borrie

Dr. John Borrie is a senior researcher and policy advisor at UNIDIR.

Warfare: the victims’ perspective

Solferino, 24 June, 1859 : A tiny village in undulating countryside, just south of Lake Garda. Close by, a swirling, intense territorial battle involving troops from Piedmont, Sardinia and France confronting Austria’s army. Ten hours of volleys of cannon fire, cavalry charges and hand-to-hand fighting among almost 250,000 soldiers. The aftermath – more than one-tenth of them dead or wounded.

This bloody event one hundred and fifty years ago has had many consequences. In territorial terms, the Franco-Sardinian victory paved the way for Italian unity and for defining Italy’s northern frontiers from east to west.

In humanitarian terms, the conflict has similarly had a profound and enduring impact. A witness to the distress of the wounded arriving in great numbers in the neighboring village of Castiglione delle Stiviere, was Henry Dunant. Appalled by the lack of medical facilities and relief for the wounded, this Swiss entrepreneur (who was in the area on business) rallied support for them irrespective of their military allegiances. Soon, he was to be instrumental in founding the Red Cross.

Dunant, in effect, drew attention away from a popular perspective of the ‘glory’ of war to a down-to earth viewpoint of the victim. In the words of ICRC historian François Bugnion: ‘But what was important was not his [Dunant’s] personal role in Castiglione, but rather the two ideas he drew from this experience: the creation of voluntary relief societies – the birth of the Red Cross – and a treaty protecting medical staff on the battlefield – the start of the Geneva Conventions’. These treaties also embody Dunant’s spirit of neutrality and impartiality in tending to victims of war.

Red Cross/Red Crescent volunteers from all round the globe gathered in Solferino last week to mark the 150th anniversary of the battle. An estimated thirteen thousand of them, red candles in their hands, symbolically traced steps that the victims had followed in desperate search for medical attention – medical attention that had been both inadequate and unprotected on the battleground on that horrific day in June 1859.

It may be an exaggeration to say that the surge of 13,000 volunteers thronging through the archways of Solferino’s Piazza Castello last Saturday night evoked scenes in that same square a century and a half ago. But it was impossible not to be moved by the commemoration. The terrors and consequences of face-to-face, soldier-to-soldier warfare exhibited in Solferino’s small museum and ossuary – the bayonets, the swords, the chilling array of skulls and bones – speak silently and grimly to us still about mortal combat as they have done in other parts of the world.

And the other victims of conflict: the civilians? The Battle of Solferino, by some accounts, produced a single civilian death. Modern conflicts, however, fought so often in densely populated urban rather than rural areas, take a high toll on civilians. In a survey of people affected by current conflicts published by the ICRC to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Solferino, 44% of the respondents said they had personally experienced armed conflict. Almost 30% of those directly affected by fighting said a close family member had been killed during fighting. 56% of the people directly affected by conflicts had been displaced, over half had lost contact with a family member and one in five had lost their livelihood. These figures are dramatically higher in some countries!

There are many victims of warfare, whether they are civilians or military or the dependents of those killed, maimed or traumatized in battle. Solferino – through Dunant – has been salutary in engendering an approach that views armed conflict through the prism of humanity.

But the humanitarian approach is not only about the promotion of the principles of the Red Cross or international humanitarian law. It is also about the promotion of international norms in support of humanitarian objectives more broadly. This includes prohibitions on the use and production of weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or, like landmines and cluster munitions, affect civilians and combatants without distinction, and that have wrought so much misery and deprivation on civilians. It means seeing disarmament as humanitarian action and bringing human security perspectives to bear in moving the disarmament agenda forward.

The enthusiasm for the cause of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement that marked the celebrations in Solferino, and its undertone of empathy with the victims of warfare, shows that the lessons of the past are not always forgotten. This is truly an example of Kipling’s ‘Lest we forget’ , in a practical, not a glorifying sense.

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

Photo Credit: ‘Perspectives at Piazza Castello, Solferino, 150 years apart’ by Jill Caughley.

References:
- Henry Dunant, ‘A Memory of Solferino’, ICRC, 1986.
- ICRC, ‘Our World: Views from the Field’, Summary Report, Opinion Survey, 2009.

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.

CCM: humanitarian or disarmament treaty?

At a pre-briefing meeting in Geneva on 8 May for the Dublin conference on cluster munitions, the President-Designate of the Conference, Ambassador Dáithí O’Ceallaigh of Ireland, said that the Conference would not be a disarmament conference but a humanitarian one with a humanitarian purpose.

Throughout the Dublin negotiations, a number of states echoed this view in their statements. And many States and civil society representatives said that the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) was a milestone of humanitarian law (IHL) after the treaty text’s adoption and during the closing ceremony. A few States, such as Indonesia, also mentioned that the Convention contained important disarmament provisions.

What difference does it make, whether an instrument of public international law is described as a humanitarian or disarmament treaty?

Scholarly opinions diverge over how to categorise treaties like the CCM, which contain elements typically associated with both IHL and arms control/disarmament law. These categories can be seen as mere manifestations of functional specialization among diplomats and academic experts. But the significance of this is that special rules of interpretation and practices may have more or less relevance depending on how the problem at issue is described, reflecting the object and purpose of the respective regime (for more details, see the ILC’s Fragmentation of International Law Report: details at the foot of this post). Repeated affirmation that the CCM is an instrument of IHL therefore affects the future interpretation of its provisions.

Under general rules of international law, a treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to its terms in their context and in the light of its object and purpose. The CCM’s preamble clearly supports interpreting the treaty text in conformity with principles of IHL – and even human rights law. Future State practice in the application of the treaty will play an important role. But where practice leaves the meaning of a provision ambiguous or obscure – as may be the case of Article 21 on “interoperability” – recourse may be had to the preparatory work and the circumstances of the treaty’s conclusion (sometimes known as the 'diplomatic' or 'negotiating 'record). State’s emphasis on the CCM’s humanitarian objective will be a factor to take into consideration here.

The characterisation of the CCM as a humanitarian instrument also has a bearing on the consequences of a material breach of the treaty. Normally (and particularly for arms control agreements), such as situation would entitle all or some state parties to suspend or terminate the treaty. However, suspension or termination as a reaction to a violation of the CCM will not be allowed regarding “provisions relating to the protection of the human person contained in treaties of a humanitarian character” (cf. 60 (5) Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties).

Finally, international law recognises certain situations in which the non-performance of a state’s obligations may be justified and so – in legal parlance – not engage its responsibility. However, in IHL states are typically not allowed to invoke such “circumstances precluding wrongfulness”. With regard to the CCM, this is evidenced in the formulation of its Article 1, which obliges state parties “never under any circumstances” to engage in prohibited activities. In keeping with the humanitarian object and purpose of the CCM, states parties may not use cluster munitions either in self-defence or as a means of belligerent reprisal.

Designating treaties as humanitarian or disarmament ones may seem to be an academic exercise, but establishing and reaffirming their object and purpose through State practice does have a real effect on a treaty’s interpretation, and eventually its impact on peoples’ lives. And, stepping back from matters of legal understanding for a moment, it’s clear that - in political terms - the CCM outcome is both humanitarian and disarmament.

Maya Brehm


Reference

Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law, Report of the Study Group of the International Law Commission, Finalized by Martti Koskenniemi, (UN document A/CN.4/L.682, 13 April 2006, available online at: http://www.un.org/law/ilc/).

Photo credit: Kees de Vos, from Flickr.

Cluster munition resources online

2008 is shaping up to be the international year of the cluster munition. There are not one but two multilateral process underway to try to address the weapon's humanitarian effects. There is work to "negotiate a proposal" on cluster munitions in the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). And there is a free-standing "Oslo Process" that emerged early in 2007 following the Norwegian Foreign Minister's decision to host an international conference in Norway's capital to kick-start efforts to ban cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

Over the past year, Disarmament Insight has provided commentary on both processes, and will continue to do so in 2008. Many people have inquired with us about online resources on cluster munitions, and so we offer some suggestions below.

To search our blog for commentary on cluster munitions, the easiest method is to use the search box at right, or click on a relevant word in the word cloud below it. Useful key words or phrases include "cluster munition", "CCW", "Oslo Process" and "humanitarian impacts". UNIDIR's website also has a lot of information on cluster munitions, both in French and English.

For basic information about the Oslo Process, there is clusterprocess.org. For information about the CCW, visit the webpages of the Geneva Branch of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs and follow the links. This is a useful source for CCW-related official documents, and there are also resources for other disarmament-related issues such as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. The next meeting of governmental experts in the CCW's calendar is from 7 to 11 April.

Before then, there will be a one-week meeting as part of the Oslo Process in Wellington, New Zealand. Official information, including on participation and logistics, is available here. Copies of the Wellington text, its draft declaration and explanatory notes are also available from the same source. For information about civil society activities connected with the Wellington Conference, check out the Aotearoa New Zealand Cluster Munition Coalition's website. The CMC's video press release for the Wellington Conference is worth watching.

There is no 'one-stop shop' on cluster munitions on the web, but there are a number of useful sites - most of them, not coincidentally, facilitated by civil society organizations keen to see cluster munitions restricted or banned.

A key site is that of the international Cluster Munition Coalition, which is the nerve centre of civil society campaigning on the issue. Several of the CMC's members also post resources, including Handicap International, Human Rights Watch, Landmine Action UK, Mines Action Canada and Norwegian People's Aid. (Norwegian People's Aid has a great concrete-mixer destruction video.) There is also a new blog by the Ban Advocates project here. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines has also thrown its weight behind the effort.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is active on cluster munition issues and has useful online resources from a humanitarian law perspective. And, to find out what the United Nations is doing and saying on cluster munitions issues, go here.

Statements and national resources on cluster munitions can be harder to find. The United States government has a CCW delegation homepage, and its Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement features some national statements on unexploded ordnance-related issues. But with many other countries it is a case of combing through their foreign ministry websites. A good source of info about what delegations have said at Oslo and CCW meetings, however, is thanks to the hard-working Katie Harrison at the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom: WILPF's notes and reports on various cluster munition international meetings are perhaps the most comprehensive out there - if unofficial.

Lastly, a video by the photographer John Rodsted we embedded into a post last May and shown earlier during the Oslo Conference - "cluster bombs that shouldn't exist" - is a must-see. These are just some of the resources out there to keep yourself informed on international efforts to address the humanitarian effects of cluster munitions. If you can think of some we've missed (and there must be many), please use the comment function below to bring them to our attention.

I'll be in New Zealand at the Wellington Conference from 18-22 February. Tune in to the Disarmament Insight blog for some impressions of that meeting.


John Borrie

Photo of a Landmine Action UK public billboard at Westminster Underground Station in London, taken by author. Very subtle guys.

The ICRC and cluster munitions: Great Expectations

Yesterday, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Dr. Jakob Kellenberger, briefed Geneva-based diplomatic Missions and others on his humanitarian organisation's expectations for international efforts to tackle the effects of cluster munitions on civilians.

Briefly, by way of background, rumours are afoot that the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) may, after years of inertia, actually achieve a procedural negotiating mandate on cluster munitions at its next Meeting of States Parties this November. The catalyst for this has been the emergence of a new, free-standing international Oslo Process of at least 80 - perhaps by now 90 - states. The Oslo Process is avowedly ambitious in humanitarian terms. Miraculously, fears that small and medium-sized countries (many of them in the developing world) are "doing an Ottawa" - in reference to the achievement of the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention - have resulted in new flexibility among some big user and producer states in the CCW.

The ICRC was at the forefront of the Ottawa Process more than a decade ago. It has voiced its long-standing concerns about the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions in the CCW and elsewhere too, and did much initial legwork in the face of widespread state apathy and even resistance to putting cluster munitions squarely on the international agenda. But substantial progress in international campaigning on cluster munitions has recently been made. This, and an updated UN position has led some to wonder what it all means for the ICRC's well-established posture.

Hence Dr. Kellenberger's briefing, which - without changing the ICRC's position an iota - set out specific "parameters" it is looking for in any negotiation on cluster munitions. Kellenberger added:

"States now face an important choice. Those which have not already done so can commit themselves to the urgent negotiation of a legally binding instrument which will prevent the endless repetition of the familiar pattern of civilian casualties and the slow, dangerous and often under-funded clearance efforts which occurs when inaccurate and unreliable cluster munitions are used. The growing awareness of the urgency of this issue and the many new commitments made by States in this field over the past year provide hope that an increasingly severe humanitarian problem in the coming years and decades can be prevented. Such opportunities to prevent untold human suffering do not occur often. The ICRC calls on political leaders and decision makers in all States to make the choices which will provide the strongest possible protection to civilian populations."

John Borrie


References

ICRC President's statement at the briefing on cluster munitions.

Photo courtesy of the author. At left is Philip Spoerri (ICRC Director for International Law & Cooperation within the Movement), ICRC President Dr. Jakob Kellenberger is middle, and Peter Herby, head of the ICRC’s Arms Unit is right.

Announcement: New Oslo Process resource website

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

http://www.clusterprocess.org

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

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

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

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

I hope you find the site useful.


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

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".

Cluster munitions: "I feel a disturbance in the Force ... "

This week, experts from States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) - sometimes known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention - will meet in Geneva.

The Group of Government Experts, or GGE as it's usually known, was scheduled last November, at the CCW's Review Conference. That meeting decided:

"To convene, as a matter of urgency, an intersessional meeting of governmental experts:

To consider further the application and implementation of existing international humanitarian law to specific munitions that may cause explosive remnants of war, with particular focus on cluster munitions, including the factors affecting their reliability and their technical and design characteristics, with a view to minimizing the humanitarian impact of these munitions."

This may all sound a bit humdrum. But while it won't make any decisions (that's the job of a one-week Meeting of States Parties in November), this week's GGE meeting will be interesting for several reasons. For instance:

- The GGE comes less than a month after an international conference in Lima, Peru, as part of the so-called "Oslo Process" toward a treaty to prohibit cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians (see previous blogs on this site reporting on that meeting) and a Meeting of Experts organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Montreux in April;

- There is a new proposal from the European Union for a negotiating mandate on cluster munitions in the CCW, which the GGE meeting will no doubt discuss (see reference below);

- As such, all eyes are on the reactions of some of the big cluster munition user states like the United States, Russia and China.

Until now, these countries haven't been keen to negotiate new legal rules on cluster munitions in the CCW. But they can't have been blind to international political momentum that's developed since a Norwegian-sponsored conference in Oslo in February that committed 46 countries to negotiation of a treaty in the CCW or outside it - a group that continues to grow in number.

It's unlikely that many states previously opposed to a negotiating mandate in the CCW have had a sudden change of heart, at least not on a mandate as envisaged in the Oslo Declaration. But, tactically, should they resist agreement of a negotiating mandate in the CCW or go along with the EU's text? Or should they try to water down such proposals or/and present one of their own? This week we may see some indications of intent.

In late February, the new UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, described the CCW and work in Oslo as "complementary and mutually reinforcing". From a humanitarian point-of-view, it could be argued that this is already borne out by the disruptive effect that Oslo has had on the CCW's previous status quo in which the humanitarian effects of cluster munitions remained relatively peripheral. It remains to be seen how things play out though, and we'll try to bring you more updates in the course of this week.


John Borrie


References

Official documents and proposals in the CCW are accessible here.

Photo retrieved from Flickr.

Facing the facts on cluster munitions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Patrick Mc Carthy


References

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

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

The Best Club in Town?

Multilateral diplomacy is a cautious business in its working methods. Governments and their diplomats are usually reluctant to break with established precedent. This conservatism is now deeply ingrained. The UN’s committee-style negotiating structures operate pretty much now as they did 60 years ago when it had one-quarter of its current membership and international diplomacy was largely a gentleman’s club.

But the world has changed. These changes are more than rhetorical – they present new risks and opportunities for states people and diplomats, and most of all to the security of people and communities they are often psychologically distant from. The issues stemming from intuitions like Tit for Tat are still poorly understood, especially in very large group dynamics like UN negotiations. The brute reality is that if diplomats don’t consider the pros and cons of these types of intuitive strategy, they’ll be handicapped in dealing with problems of cooperation central to multilateral decision-making.

These are some of the things our project, entitled Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: Making Multilateral Negotiations Work, has been thinking about. The project examines how disarmament and arms control can be infused by humanitarian approaches, which (in contrast to orthodox arms control processes over the last decade) have encountered greater success. While one could quibble about the extent of these negotiating successes, they've nevertheless been real. Achievements include an international treaty to ban anti-personnel mines in 1997 and more recent efforts to reduce the post-conflict effects of abandoned or failed explosive munitions, as well as greater international efforts to curb the illicit trade of small arms and light weapons.

Just last month I was present in Oslo when 46 countries agreed to commit themselves to an international process to negotiate a treaty addressing the hazards of cluster munitions to civilians. Early days and still a long way from new global rules ... but it shows how the reshaping of perceptions through the infusion of humanitarian perspectives can help create traction on a hitherto intractable problem at the multilateral level.

That's because humanitarian approaches put greater stress, in practice, on the individual and local community as referent points for security than orthodox international security diplomacy. Another hallmark is that they harness the insights of many different disciplines to meet practical challenges and recognize that widespread phenomena often have local origins. For instance, situations of armed violence differ, as will potential solutions, because individual perceptions of insecurity (and resulting actions) vary between different locales.

It also pays, then, to ask what being human – being of humanity – actually means for multilateral negotiators. Many relevant insights from the natural sciences already exist and could be turned to use. By focusing on understanding and alleviating individual perceptions of insecurity that can lead to armed violence, responses to problems of insecurity of more practical use to multilateral negotiators can be framed.

And, by helping negotiators understand the role of intuitive constraints in their interactions (like Tit for Tat) and how these are affected by structure, negotiations might be improved in practical ways. The clock is ticking….


John Borrie