The CD: trying to square a circle

The Conference on Disarmament (CD), now into the second month of its annual session, remains frozen to the spot.  No sign of a thaw has emerged, but there has, at least, been a mood-change – the sword of Damocles hanging over the Conference is being taken more seriously now.  In the sombre words of the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Representative to the CD, the current situation has created “a serious credibility and legitimacy deficit. The future of the Conference is at stake”.

Mr Tokayev placed his comments not only in the context of “the existential threat” posed by nuclear weapons but also against the stark backdrop of “budgetary austerity”, reminding the 65 member states that the work of the CD is funded by the entire membership of the United Nations through the UN’s regular budget. He also offered some concrete ideas for ending the CD’s barren streak of 15 successive years in which the CD has produced dividends neither for international security nor for long-suffering global taxpayers.

Another trend this year is a growing readiness amongst Conference members – and observer states – to offer constructive ideas for possible ways forward.  Members are less and less attributing the impasse in the Conference simply to a “lack of political will”.  Increasingly, the problems in the CD are being seen for what they are – a clash, not a lack, of political wills and tyranny by a minority. Divergent priorities – compounded by continuous misuse of the rules on the programme of work and consensus - are thus cancelled out.  Gridlock reigns.

The Geneva Forum recently held an orientation programme for new disarmament diplomats. A young delegate from a non-member state wondered aloud how a body with the international standing of the CD could allow itself to become hidebound by a matter as mundane as agreeing an annual work programme.  How, he asked, could this situation be explained to his government which was considering seeking observer status?  Good question.

The answer lies at two levels. There is a deep-seated aversion among some members towards issues which they regard as contrary to their national interests but which are being pursued by others in their own national interest. This is the clash of positions mentioned earlier, but it is magnified because it applies across four distinct issues, not just one, and allows a tiny minority to impose its will.  And, secondly, there is the unfortunate spider web that has been woven round these four “core” issues, wrapping them together in one toxic package.

For example, some states want to negotiate a ban on the future production of fissile material while others will only enter into to such an exercise if existing stocks of fissile material are included in the negotiating mandate. Many states want to negotiate or at least get down to pre-negotiations on an agreement on nuclear disarmament while others are content in the knowledge that no progress will be made on this issue for so long as there’s a standoff on fissile material negotiations, or outer space, or security assurances.

Why, the young delegate might have wondered, can’t the four core issues be dealt with separately?  The answer is that they can.  But those few members that prefer the status quo – no multilateral nuclear disarmament, no curbs on the production of fissile material, no action to prevent an arms race in outer space, no multilateral regime to provide security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states – have no incentive to de-link the four issues. Ever since the CD took the fatal plunge in 1999 of trying to incorporate negotiating and other mandates into its annual work programme, the Conference has been in the grip of the naysayers.

If the impasse is intentional, what incentives can be used to get the web untangled?  Or to be more precise, how can the nuclear weapons-possessing states be persuaded that it is in their best interests to unblock the CD? Judging from this year’s debate on the future of the Conference, these questions pose a real dilemma. Saving the institution is one thing: making progress on an issue vital to international security is another matter altogether.  Many non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) are asserting that their priority in the CD is nuclear disarmament.  In the face of speculation that negotiations on fissile material might be pursued outside the CD, some NNWS are also saying that they are opposed to issues being hived off for less-inclusive treatment elsewhere.

Those states are going to have to make a difficult choice.  Nuclear disarmament, their main priority, is trapped in the CD – at least for so long as the Conference chooses to overload its draft work programme and tolerate irresponsible use of the consensus rule.  What will be the position of those states when their top priority becomes the subject of such irresistible pressure that negotiations on nuclear disarmament get underway outside the blocked CD?  Could the fear of this eventuality be the incentive to impel the nuclear weapon states to revive the CD?   After all, the CD offers them a comfort that is available nowhere else, not even in the NPT – the comfort that decisions can be taken only by consensus.

In the meantime, as Mr Tokayev put it, the CD is “trying to square a circle”.  For the young participant in the Geneva Forum orientation, the message to his government, in these circumstances, might best be to raise questions like his in the UN General Assembly where the views of the broadest constituency of nations can be brought to bear on the Conference on Disarmament whose future lies so delicately in the balance.

This is a guest post by Tim Caughley. Tim is a Resident Senior Fellow at UNIDIR – for other comments on the CD see also here.

The diagram is a file adapted from the Wikimedia Commons.

Prospects for the Conference on Disarmament in 2012

Prospects for the Conference on Disarmament in 2012

Some random thoughts on the Conference on Disarmament (CD) as delegations begin to write their speeches for the opening of the 2012 session of the Conference on 24 January:-

1 The last occasion on which the CD fulfilled the negotiating role given to it by the UN General Assembly was in 1996 when the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) emerged from an intensive three-year process. That was 16 years ago.

2 Leaving aside the unconsummated agreement of 29 May 2009, the last time that the CD was able to reach consensus on initiating its next negotiation was in August 1998 when it agreed to a mandate for a fissile material production ban. Those negotiations lasted less than a month. That was 14 years ago.

3 Since then the Conference has not been able to agree (except fleetingly in 2009) to get down to negotiations either on a fissile material production ban or on mandates for any of the other core items on its agenda – nuclear disarmament, security assurances, or preventing an arms race in outer space, or on anything else of substance.

4 How can this barren state of affairs be allowed to exist? How can the resources consumed by the 24-week annual sessions of the CD be put to better use? To whom should the CD be held accountable for those resources?

5 In 1978 the UN General Assembly’s first Special Session on Disarmament (UNSSOD I), when mandating the body that is known today as the CD, instructed the Conference to report to the Assembly annually. The CD duly does so. But given the continuing inability of the CD to be able to report the commencement of any negotiations, is the UNGA simply turning a blind eye to the situation?

6 Yes and no. The annual report to the UNGA is merely a procedural one. This is because the CD is unable to agree to spell out clearly why it is failing to carry out the negotiating role that the General Assembly expects of it. Notwithstanding the rules of procedure that stipulate that “reports must reflect faithfully the positions of all the members” (rule 25) , the Conference’s annual reports are of the lowest common denominator variety that are so often the consequence of decision-making not by voting but by consensus as is the case in the CD (rule 18).

7 But the UNGA can read between the lines of the CD’s report. This is because, of course, the CD’s 65 members are also members of the General Assembly. So too are the 40 or more observers of the CD. In any event, such is the level of concern of UN member states about the paralysis of the Conference, shared by the UN Secretary-General himself, that the Assembly has begun to put the CD on notice.

8 As noted earlier on this website , separate resolutions tabled during the most recent session of UNGA by Austria, Mexico and Norway (though not pressed to the vote) and by Canada have clearly sensitized the broader international community to a role for the Assembly this coming October if the CD remains deadlocked at that point.

9 And significantly the UNGA agreed without dissent on a resolution tabled by the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland that did two things. The resolution urged the CD to adopt and implement a programme of work to enable it to resume substantive work on its agenda early in its 2012 session, and it decided that at its next annual session it would “review progress made in the implementation of the present resolution and, if necessary, to further explore options for taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations”. The parent body (UNGA), thus, is well seized of the situation surrounding its offspring (the CD).

10 What then are the options for the Conference, assuming that the status quo is without viability? One idea that has been pursued by Russia is to reprise the short-lived work programme of May 2009 with a small twist to get work underway on analysing the main elements of a fissile material treaty without actually branding that work as negotiations, while continuing substantive discussions on the three other key issues. The point at which “discussions” morph into “negotiations” is not, after all, some kind of confidence trick but an evolution in trust – a growing acceptance that the parameters in which compromise can be brokered have begun to emerge. This is in stark contrast to the current situation where, far from charting the way forward, the would-be participants are blocked even from any form of substantive engagement be it described as “discussions” or “negotiations”.

11 Another option is to simplify the programme of work, perhaps along the lines suggested recently on this website. This would involve returning to the successful formula of the distant past when the work programme served the purpose originally intended by the rules of procedure (rule 27) of being essentially procedural rather than substantive. That is, it would incorporate a schedule of its activities for that session, without trying also to specify mandates or other matters of substance.

12 Each of these options has the merit of breaking the ice that encases the CD, paving the way for re-building a measure of trust amongst members, trust that is a vital precondition to serious negotiations and thus to meeting the original expectations of the CD as spelled out by UNSSOD I. If that degree of trust is currently unobtainable, the CD may need to explore longer term options such as laying the foundations for an eventual negotiation by setting up an open-ended experts group of the kind that created the right conditions for the CTBT, discussed in an earlier posting on this site.

13 Whatever the way forward, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that in 2012 the future of the CD will be under the spotlight as never before. Clearly it will not be sufficient to continue merely to lament the constraints of the rules of procedure or the “absence of political will”. The rules can and must be used to facilitate rather than frustrate progress. It is essential to overcome not the absence of political will but the clash of wills that exists between those for whom the CD offers a channel for progress on issues of high international security and those for whom it has become a convenient parking place for those same issues. Will the destiny of the Conference be determined by its members or by its creator, the UN General Assembly? Time will tell soon enough.

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

(The symbol is drawn from the Microsoft Clip Art Gallery)

CCW cluster munitions: work without end ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

CCW: Still searching in the undergrowth

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie.

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

CCW: The Sounds of Science...

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

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

- Beastie Boys, Sounds of Science"

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

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

CCW: From pause to play?

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

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

In sum:

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

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

The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

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

References

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

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

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

Missing a trick: expertise in mediation and negotiations

UNIDIR’s ‘Disarmament as Humanitarian Action’ project has examined how process in multilateral arms control negotiation matters. Arms control is but one area in which issues of human security are subject to complex negotiation. In my research field – analyzing the roles of international organizations in peacebuilding – I believe that, similarly, many international organizations pay insufficient attention to the institutional machinery and expertise required for managing negotiations to end high intensity conflict.

Laurie Nathan has presented a strong and eloquent argument for increasing institutional support for mediation in a concept paper called ‘Deficiencies in African Mediation’ prepared for the Organ Directorate of the South African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat. His argument rests on the premise that mediation is a specialist endeavour ‘not reducible to common sense or power-based diplomacy’ and that the quality of mediation matters; ‘depending on their proficiency, mediators can either heighten or reduce the prospect of a positive outcome’ [1].

Nathan noted that the evolution of mediation skills to facilitate dialogue and co-operative problem solving between individuals and groups has taken place primarily in domestic contexts, where in many cases it’s regarded as a professional discipline. Examples of relevant skills and techniques include: conflict analysis, shuttle diplomacy, designing and convening mediation processes, preparing agendas, conducting meetings, managing media relations, paraphrasing or re-framing positions, identifying common ground between the parties, and generating options for resolving deadlocks.

Recently, the Economist newspaper ran a double feature highlighting the increasingly important role of secular (such as the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD)) and faith-based (such as the Sant’Egidio community) organisations in mediating intra-state conflict. In addition to the essential pre-requisite of impartiality, it noted the value of ‘discretion, secrecy and flexibility’ that such small organizations can bring, and also stressed the importance of their experience and specialist mediation skills. For example, the Economist suggested that the technical support of a back-up team of mediators from the CHD was critical to avoiding deadlock and maintaining momentum in recent post-election mediation between the ruling party and opposition in Kenya, led by Kofi Annan. It concluded that ‘the betting is now on Mr. Annan and his team trying to repeat their Kenya trick in beleaguered Zimbabwe’.

Chance would be a fine thing. After the (un)contested Zimbabwe election the African Union reiterated its support for SADC’s mediation effort led by President Thabo Mbeki. Yet, there are critical weaknesses in this mediation effort. The most obvious and well-documented is mediation bias. As Nathan has shown, there is abundant historical evidence that a mediator who displays bias ‘will lose the trust of the disfavoured parties, become less effective if not ineffectual as a result and complicate or even heighten the conflict’ [2]. Since 2005, Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party - the Movement for Democratic Change - has repeatedly objected to President Mbeki as a mediator because he was perceived to be biased. Unsurprisingly therefore the post-election ‘talks about talks’ focused on the issue of the mediator(s) with the MDC insisting on a permanent African Union (AU) envoy to join the talks alongside Mbeki. In the deal that enabled the current negotiations, Mbeki remains the main mediator, but is crucially assisted by a ‘reference group’ composed of AU head Jean Ping, the UN’s Zimbabwe envoy Haile Menkerios, and the SADC official George Chikoti.

Over and above the issue of finding mediator(s) that are acceptable to the parties, it is unclear as to whether the proposed reference group will be able to deliver the requisite specialist expertise. Both the AU and SADC lack institutional knowledge and specialist expertise to support mediation efforts. For example, in the case of the Darfur peace process in 2006, the head of the AU team, Ambassador Sam Ibok, recognized this handicap but couldn’t find suitably experienced mediators to join the process at short notice. This, Nathan said, contributed to

‘a deeply flawed approach of deadline diplomacy emanating from AU headquarters and the international funders and partners of the peace process. It inhibited effective mediation, produced a peace agreement that did not achieve peace, and sowed divisions that exacerbated the conflict’.

[This is a quote from 1. Argument elaborated in 3.]

Nathan has identified various categories of expertise required for supporting mediation processes. These include mediation, country, thematic, intelligence, communications and management and administrative expertise. Specialist expertise could be located within expert mediation units, while organizations might also consider decentralized ways to harness mediation talent through roster mechanisms and cooperation with specialist non-governmental groups.

Other international organizations and donor states are themselves not particularly well endowed with much of this expertise. (For example, although the UN has traditionally provided the forum for the resolution of international disputes, it has only recently invested in building up its mediation capacity. This followed recommendations from the 2004 High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change which led to the establishment of a Mediation Support Unit and website in the Department of Political Affairs. Tellingly, the Panel stressed that in appointing envoys, mediators and special representatives, high-level competence should be placed above all other criteria.) This perhaps explains why mediation support has received little attention in on-going efforts to strengthen peace and security capacities of the AU and African regional organisations.

We’re missing a trick here. Building institutional expertise in mediation is arguably one of the most over-looked and cost-effective ways to promote the efficacy of international organizations in preventing and ending violence.


This is a guest blog by Catriona Gourlay. Catriona is a Marie Curie Fellow at UNIDIR, currently working on a project on EU-UN cooperation in peacebuilding.

References

1. Laurie Nathan, ‘Concept Paper: Deficiencies in African Mediation’, Prepared for the Organ Directorate of the SADC Secretariat, 13 December 2007.

2. Laurie Nathan, ‘Deficiencies of African Mediation’ and ‘A Case of Undue Pressure: International Mediation in African Civil Wars’, 1998.

3. Laurie Nathan, ‘No Ownership, No Peace: The Darfur Peace Agreement’ Working Paper, series 2, no. 5, Crisis States Research Centre, September 2006.

Picture downloaded from Flickr.

CCW: No rest for ...

It's July, summer has finally come to Geneva and, under normal circumstances, the thoughts of disarmament diplomats would now be turning to a few weeks of holidays before the Conference on Disarmament resumes again on July 28. This year, though, any such vacation plans have been dashed by three weeks of work to "negotiate a proposal" on cluster munitions, which began on Monday in Geneva, and one week of talks on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, which begin on Monday in New York.

Negotiations on cluster munitions? I hear you ask; "hasn't that all been taken care of by those Dublin negotiations Disarmament Insight wrote so much about in May?" Well, yes and no. The Dublin Conference on cluster munitions, which was part of the stand-alone "Oslo Process," did agree a treaty banning cluster munitions, which was adopted by 111 States and is due to be signed in Oslo on 3 December.

In parallel, however, States party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) - about two-thirds of which participated in the Dublin conference but which also includes some not in Dublin including the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel - are also engaged in an effort to negotiate a proposal on cluster munitions that would balance military with humanitarian concerns.

The big question before the CCW meeting began on Monday was: How would States that had adopted the new Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) approach the negotiations, bearing in mind that the CCW negotiations had virtually no chance of setting the same high standards of international humanitarian law (IHL) as had been achieved in Dublin? The answer now seems apparent. These States - most of them at any rate - do not want to end up in the CCW with a Protocol developed in the CCW that would, in effect, countenance the further use of cluster munitions rather than stigmatizing them.

Adopters of the new CCM want a CCW outcome on cluster munitions that complements their achievement in Dublin, not undermines it. Possible acceptable outcomes for these States could include a CCW Protocol that prohibits the transfer of all cluster munitions, or that prohibits the use of cluster munitions in or close to civilian areas.

And a number of States and organisations raised concerns this week that suggested language for a new CCW Protocol on cluster munitions, as had been outlined in a Chair's paper, ran a real risk of rolling back existing IHL rather than building on it. These concerns were first raised in April (see our blog on 'Cherry picking at the CCW' for background) and again at this CCW meeting, partly stemming from the fact that the proposed text reiterated (in some cases with modifications) selected existing rules and principles of IHL, while remaining silent on others.

There were tough discussions under the Japanese Friend of the Chair in the latter part of the week in a key suggested Article in the Chair's paper, on 'protection of civilians and civilian objects', with New Zealand, Austria, Mexico, Germany, Canada, the UK, US and India the most active in the debate. These differing views should have convinced Japan that its current tack of trying to get countries to accept reformulations of existing IHL rules they feel deeply uncomfortable about is unlikely to yield results. Of course, it would be good to see this approach abandoned in favour of one that focuses on elaborating new rules and principles, whatever these may be. But there remains fundamental opposition to that, as New Zealand found in defending the square-bracketed language in paragraph 3 of Article 3:

"It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians [or in areas normally inhabited by civilians] the object of attack using cluster munitions."

Overall, the third session of the CCW negotiations got off to a sluggish start this week, with most negotiating sessions running well under their allotted time. Perhaps it has something to do with the hot and heavy weather and thoughts of squandered vacation time. More likely, though, it can be put down to the unfamiliar and downright awkward situation of trying to do something that has already been done very well elsewhere. It's hard to draw motivation from that.

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: Geneva's Jet d'Eau by neurosis on Flickr.

Words of Wisdom

The United States took over as President of the Conference on Disarmament today. There was a lively debate with many statements lamenting the Conference's inability to break its more than decade-long deadlock and finally begin new negotiations on a treaty dealing with fissile material for nuclear weapons. One statement stood out from the others in terms of its clarity, insight and the fact that it addressed some of the themes that, on this blog, we think are important. Ambassador Glaudine J. Mtshali of South Africa delivered the statement and we reproduce it here, in its entirety, for your reading pleasure:

CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT
STATEMENT BY SOUTH AFRICA
24 JUNE 2008

Thank you, Madam President,

At the outset, please allow me to add my delegation 's congratulations on your assumption of the Presidency of the Conference on Disarmament and to express our appreciation for the efforts undertaken by the 2008 CD Presidents thus far to steer our discussions in this forum with a view to moving forward on a Programme of Work.

Since the tabling of document CD/1840 during March of this year, my delegation has closely followed the interventions of numerous delegations that have spoken about the CD's continued inability to agree on a Programme of Work. Many delegations have also lamented the stalemate or impasse that has existed in the Conference over the past number of years.

However, Madam President, if one looks at the Conference on Disarmament, one cannot claim that the structure of the Conference does not allow negotiations to take place. Indeed, if this were the case, then it would not have been possible for the CD to have negotiated any treaty to date. One cannot argue that if the CD's Secretariat had more staff, then negotiations will commence. One cannot say that a lack of funding prevents the CD from negotiating. Neither can one make the case that the Conference's agenda does not allow negotiations to take place.

Similarly, the Rules of Procedure are often said to be in need of a revision. But the Rules of Procedure do not prohibit negotiations. On the contrary, the Rules merely seek to structure, guide and expedite the work of the Conference on Disarmament. Nevertheless, there seems to be an abundance of experts on Rules of Procedure, just as there appears to be an abundance of interpretations of various Rules. An Ad Hoc Committee would sometimes appear to mean two different things to different delegations, whilst a Programme of Work can apparently even mean three different things to only two different delegations.

Madam President,

The consensus rule in the CD has often also been mentioned as the main reason why the Conference has not been able to negotiate anything in the last couple of years. But is it not perhaps the misuse of the consensus rule, rather than the rule itself, that has created the problem? The consensus rule does not apply itself; it is the Members of the CD that choose when and how to apply it. When it is used to block the commencement - not the finalization - of negotiations, one can perhaps understand why some refer to the "tyranny of consensus". We should therefore not forget that it is the Member States who decide whether or not to negotiate: not the "machinery", or the institution.

The lack of negotiations in the CD has been ascribed to a number of things, but many delegations and commentators often refer to the lack of political will as a cause - or perhaps the main cause - of the absence of progress in the Conference over the years. In this regard, we should not overlook the fact that we as representatives of our countries have an important role to play in recommending courses of action to our principals that may influence or shape the exercise of political will.

Madam President,

In his closing remarks as CD President last week, the Ambassador of the United Kingdom reminded delegations that the perfect should not become the enemy of the good. In fact, my delegation would go even further by saying that if we wait for the perfect Programme of Work to be adopted by the CD, we will probably wait for a very long time. None of the 2008 CD Presidents has claimed that CD/1840 is perfect: a fact that has been recognised by a number of delegations since the formal tabling of the document. My delegation certainly also does not believe that CD/1840 is perfect, much as document L.l also was not perfect in 2007. However, whilst not perfect, my delegation believes that CD/1840 represents that which is possible and practical under the present circumstances.

Madam President,

All Member States obviously have priorities, but different priorities need not necessarily be mutually exclusive. With a little ingenuity and a lot of flexibility and compromise it should be possible for us to work with - and not against - each other. My delegation therefore stands ready to join a consensus on document CD/1840.

I thank you, Madam President.

Photo Credit: Pearldirect retrieved from Flickr

Dublin: read all about it

This morning, the President of the Dublin Conference on cluster munitions, Ambassador, Dáithí O'Ceallaigh, distributed a new draft convention on cluster munitions as a presidency paper. This paper is available at the Dublin Conference website here.

O'Ceallaigh said that about two-thirds of the text of his paper is identical to papers already distributed during the Conference over the last week-and-a-half of work. The rest reflected the outcomes of various consultations - not least an intensive burst of activity during the course of yesterday when the President and his team met with dozens of delegations individually until late into the night.

The President told the Committee of the Whole this morning that his text represents his assessment of where the balance of interests lie, and would require compromise on all sides. (This is all boiler-plate language for multilateral negotiations.) Nevertheless, he felt the draft Convention text was extremely ambitious, especially in the scope of its prohibitions and its clearance, victim assistance and international assistance provisions, and would meet the objectives of the February 2007 Oslo Declaration.

We won't provide a comprehensive overview of the President's paper here. Briefly, on some major issues of interest:

Scope (Article 1): this now captures explosive bomblets, which are anomalous in that although they are, in effect, submunitions, they would otherwise not be captured because they're dispensed from an aircraft, rather than detaching from a parent munition.

Definitions (Article 2): this provision has, if anything, become more robust. There are several criteria here. A munition must meet all of these criteria in order not to be captured by the definition of a cluster munition.

A cluster munition, in O'Ceallaigh's text, means a conventional munition designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions each weighing less than 20kg, and includes those explosive submunitions. However, it doesn't mean the following:

- A munition or submunition designed to dispense flares, smoke, pyrotechnics or chaff; or a munition designed exclusively for an air defence role (this new text on air defence is a bit softer than the formulation in last week's informal consultations).

- A munition or submunition designed to produce electrical or electronic effects.

- a munition, that in order to avoid indiscriminate area effects and the risks posed by unexploded submunitions, has all of the following characteristics:

(1) Each munition contains fewer than 10 explosive submunitions;

(2) Each explosive submunition weighs more than four kilograms;

(3) Each explosive submunition is designed to detect and engage a single target object;

(4) Each explosive submunition is equipped with an electronic self-destruction mechanism;

(5) Each explosive submunition is equipped with an electronic self-deactivating feature.

Therefore the weight formulation is back in - with a change from 5kg as originally proposed to 4kg. In layperson's terms it means all submunitions under 4kg are categorically banned. Submunitions between 4 and 20kg are allowed if they and the parent munition meet a number of stringent criteria as listed above. Any munition above 20kg is not covered by the treaty. In effect, this removes almost all weapons conventionally regarded as cluster munitions in use today, including the M85 used in the Southern Lebanon conflict in 2006. We understand that the SMART155 and BONUS sensor-fuzed munitions meet the exemption criteria and would therefore not be banned.

Clearance, destruction and risk education (Article 4): Ambassador O'Ceallaigh noted that consensus on this article hadn't been possible in consultations; the language here is his shot at a compromise.

International cooperation and assistance (Article 6): the President had directed Canada to carry out consultations to try to achieve consensus on what had been para 9/9 bis, efforts that had run into difficulty yesterday. Canada had another try, and O'Ceallaigh's text contains the outcome of those consultations in its para 10, which he told the CoW he hopes will achieve general agreement.

Entry into Force of the cluster munition convention (Article 17): the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) had an EIF threshold of 20 countries; the Mine Ban Treaty had 40. These two options dominated talks on this Article at the Dublin Conference, so the President told the CoW he had split the difference and chosen 30, to many chuckles around the room.

Reservations (Article 19): O'Ceallaigh has kept the text of the earlier draft Convention here, which does not allow reservations. As mentioned in a preceding post [link to Friday's post], this issue will be settled only as part of the final package agreed.

"Relations with States not Party to this Convention" a.k.a. interoperability (Article 21): see our preceding posts for background on this issue, especially our last one today. This text, O'Ceallaigh said, is based closely on yesterday's Swiss Friend of the President informal paper, seen by "almost all delegations as a very good basis for work." It is unclear how this will pan out. Watch this space.

There are no provisions for transition periods in the President's paper, which he said reflected the wishes of a large number of countries.

This afternoon, the CoW will resume at 15h after delegations have had a chance to reflect on the President's paper. We anticipate a long evening of meetings tonight.

John Borrie, Maya Brehm & Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo of Canadian Cluster Munition Coalition marchers on O'Connell Street, Dublin, last Saturday, by John Borrie.

Everything bad is good for you?

Last weekend I read Steven Johnson's latest book, Everything Bad is Good for You. I had begun reading it in the departure lounge at London City airport a few days earlier, but felt a bit put off by the looks the paperback's bright pink cover got from tanked-up City traders and stag party skiers: perhaps they figured I was tucking into Belle de Jour or a Mills & Boon pulp romance. (The UK version is pinker - much pinker - than the picture looks above. Bad Penguin!)

Johnson is a prominent American technology journalist. Publishers describe his books as "culture", but - like his contemporaries Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki and to some extent others like Timothy Ferris, Matt Ridley and Mark Kurlansky - Johnson really spans lots of different non-fiction genres including science, history and psychology. The title of his last (excellent) book, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software conveys a sense of his enthusiastic, entertaining and slightly breathless style of writing.

The basic gist of Everything Bad is Good for You, first published a couple of years ago, is a refutal of the culture vultures who insist that modern culture is going to the dogs - a downward spiral of dumbed-down TV programming, blandified music and repetitive and ultra-violent video games, about which the best to be said is that they improve hand-eye coordination of zombie-eyed teens with brains hollowed out of all moral sense.

Rubbish, says Johnson. And he sets out to show quite the opposite. Sure, there's plenty of crap out there he concedes, but the increasing sophistication of audiences for these things combined with enabling technologies like the Internet means that the best of what's produced today is much more complex and cognitively demanding that most of what we saw or heard 20 or 30 years ago. Video games are about developing and flexing heuristics for problem solving. The best TV dramas like The Sopranos or The Wire are more complex in character depth and multiple plot line than anything seen before, a genre that Johnson notes began with the cop drama Hill Street Blues less than 25 years ago. The best-selling series of games The Sims trumps Pacman and Pong. As a keen music fan, I can attest that for every Britney, it's now possible to find - courtesy of the iTunes Music store or podcasts like NPR All Songs Considered or KPunk (literally produced in some guy's bedroom) - plenty of good new tunes.

So what's this got to do with disarmament? Something of abiding interest to us is how multilateral practitioners do what they do. Reading some academic literature about negotiations one would think that all disarmament negotiators are cravat, tweed and monocle-wearing 19th century types operating in their own parallel bubble universe. There has been little real consideration of the impacts say of new technology on negotiation - and one only has to see the profusion of Blackberries and lately the proliferation of Apple iPhones, MacBooks and Sony Vaios in the conference room to appreciate that these people are deep in the currents of the contemporary age. Talking to them, it's clear they love these gadgets for the ways in which they empower their work - although, as French policy makers discovered last year, their IT security people aren't always impressed.

I wonder what the impact of all of this gush of information is going to have. Will it fertilize negotiating environments, or - like nitrate fertilizer run-off - gum things up and ultimately create sterility? It strikes me that multilateral practitioners don't necessarily need more information - their work is complex enough. Rather, they need better quality information, and better means to structure and manage it, in order to be more effective in their interactions. A key element of Johnson's argument is that with popular culture we can be more selective now: technology means we're not stuck with the crap - we can find and choose the good stuff. In theory. It remains to be seen whether we've gotten there yet on the informational side in diplomacy.

Something else Johnson wrote also struck a particular chord:

"The story of the last thirty years of popular culture is the story of rising complexity and increased cognitive demands .... Thanks to e-mail and the Web, we're reading text as much as ever, and we're writing more. But it is true that a specific, historically crucial kind of reading has grown less common in this society: sitting down with a three-hundred page book and following its argument or narrative without a great deal of distraction. We deal with text now in shorter bursts, following links across the Web, or sifting through a dozen e-mail messages. The breadth of information is wider in this world, and it is far more participatory.

"But there are certain types of experiences that cannot be readily conveyed in this more connective, abbreviated form. Complicated, sequential works of persuasion, where each premise builds on the previous one, and where an idea can take an entire chapter to develop, are not well suited to life on the computer screen... I can't imagine getting along without e-mail, and I derive great intellectual nourishment from posting to my weblog, but I would never attempt to convey the argument of this book in either of those forms."

Rising complexity and increased cognitive demands are also features of multilateral disarmament negotiation. And Johnson's point about the role of books is timely food for thought. A couple of colleagues and I are currently trying to complete a book looking at some aspects of negotiations building on work we've done on the Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project. It's not easy ... but who knows, perhaps that bad process is good for us. What's the old saying - "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"?


John Borrie

Reference

Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You. London: Penguin: 2006.

We've written some on technology in negotiations. For instance, see Patricia Lewis's DI blog post on mobile technology in the conference chamber here.