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

Back to Basics in the Conference on Disarmament

The website for the Conference on Disarmament lists a dozen draft programmes of work proposed during the CD’s long fallow period since the CTBT was negotiated in that body. All of those work programmes have been supported by an overwhelming number of member states, but to no avail. That planning tool by which the 65 members try to prioritise and provide order for each year’s work has either fallen foul of the consensus rule or been immediately undermined after adoption.

In the face of these frustrations, there has been speculation on reforming the rules of procedure of the Conference particularly to facilitate decision-making. But the chances of opening up, let alone amending, these rules are negligible.  Better then to focus on how to apply them more imaginatively. Failing that, looking for other ways to do business...

There is certainly scope for reappraising the CD’s approach to formulating its annual programme of work.  There is a discernible pattern to the last nine of the twelve proposals just mentioned.  All ambitiously seek to set up at least three subsidiary committees or working groups of the CD as well as specifying mandates for those bodies.

The manifold layers of that approach are staggering in terms of their complexity and intensity.  They involve:

 - agreeing the precise terms for tackling more or less simultaneously four major issues affecting international security (noted below),

 - establishing three or four forums to operate concurrently for the purposes of deepening discussion on each of the four issues to the point of negotiating binding agreements on one or more of them,

 - programming the means of dealing with all four issues in a single document, and

 - requiring that the decision to undertake such complex and demanding streams of work as set out in that document be taken without a single, formal objection.

Is it any wonder that the CD remains rooted to the spot? One country blocking, say, the mandate on nuclear disarmament, ensures that no progress is made on any of the other three core issues – i.e., a ban on fissile material, preventing an arms race in outer space or securing legally binding security assurances. Paralysis is total.  Worse, it is self-inflicted.

Would it make a difference if the treatment of these issues in the work programme were to be de-linked?  That is, if the CD returned to its practice of developing separate mandates for each issue, might it be possible to make progress on at least one of them?

We know from recent decisions that no progress is currently possible on banning the production of fissile material. But, what if the CD isolated the remaining three issues and took decisions on each of them one by one?  Unfortunately, it is known also that at least one member state is opposed to progress on each of the remaining issues, although in the absence of individual decisions on mandates taken one-by-one, this state of affairs has not been formally tested in recent years.

This suggests that whether the mandates are linked or separated the result would be the same: the CD would remain in deadlock.  If this were so, the main options are to:

 - adjourn the work of the Conference, convening it only when circumstances require (e.g., for a periodic gauging of new prospects for progress),

 - take up discussions of a lesser issue or an emerging one, or

 - try a new approach to developing a programme of work – a “low-key”, groundwork approach unencumbered by substantive mandates.

The low-key option would be predicated on recognition that the mandates for the four issues covered by the recent series of work programmes are too ambitious, individually and collectively.  Instead, the focus would be less on the end product of the CD’s work on a given subject and more on the groundwork and confidence-building steps needed to underpin concrete progress. Attention would be placed on identifying and laying the foundations for such progress – defining key terms, filling gaps in knowledge on technical and scientific capacity for verification or other mechanisms, forming groups of experts, etc.

These confidence-building discussions would be scheduled on a rolling basis, initially allocating equal time to each of the four core issues.  When interest in an issue began to wane, the time originally allocated to it could be respread across the other issues. The absence of sustained, lively engagement in an issue would be as telling as the reverse.  But if none of the issues was able to secure sustained, intensifying commitment, then that would tell an even more serious story - the future of the CD, or at least the future of dealing with these issues in the Conference, would be confirmed to be in real doubt.  
At that point, the integrity of the CD would best be served by conceding defeat for the meantime and adjourning it sine die.  Taking up a lesser issue would smack of desperation. Agreeing to deal with an emerging issue would require consensus, a hurdle at which the Conference on Disarmament so often baulks.  Having already failed last week to adopt its work programme for 2013, the CD could do worse than experiment with a new approach to agreeing its annual plan of work.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

(with acknowledgement to ClipArt for the symbol for meeting points)

Civil Society and Humanitarian Issues

 In Japanese tradition, fireworks are flowers offered to the sky, converting gunpowder from a weapon of war to a prayer for peace.  “Creating a Peaceful and Safe Future: Pressing Issues and Potential Solutions” was the theme of a conference held recently in Japan.  Organized by the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, through its Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific in cooperation with the government of Japan, the meeting was hosted by the city of Shizuoka beneath the inspiring presence of Mt Fuji.

The agenda covered a wide range of arms control and security issues but featured nuclear disarmament, beginning with an examination of “humanitarian issues and nuclear weapons”.  This was an understandable focus given Japan’s experience of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it gave rise to an intriguing dynamic. 

Of course, Japan was part of the consensus adoption by the 2010 NPT Review Conference of the action plan in which deep concern was expressed by the NPT parties of the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”.  And in a joint public statement in September 2010, the foreign ministers of the NPT lobby group of 10 states known as the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI), which includes Japan, publicly echoed the Review Conference’s concern about humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons’ use.

Japan has not, however, subscribed to the efforts of a larger, Swiss-led group to amplify this expression of concern. At the first preparatory committee meeting in the current review cycle of the NPT last May in Vienna, Switzerland delivered a statement on behalf of 16 states parties. Barely 6 months later a similar statement was delivered in the name of 34 states and the Holy See during the most recent session of the UN General Assembly.

That statement concludes with these words: “The only way to guarantee [that nuclear weapons are never used again] is the total, irreversible and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons, under effective international control, including through the full implementation of Article VI of the NPT (see further below). All States must intensify their efforts to outlaw nuclear weapons and achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. Civil society plays a crucial role in raising the awareness about the devastating humanitarian consequences as well as the critical IHL implications of nuclear weapons”.

Japan, though sympathetic to this message, seems concerned that that over-emphasizing a humanitarian approach and a “rapid push for a ban” on nuclear weapons might invite staunch opposition from states possessing nuclear arsenals and thus prove counter-productive.  Japanese officials prefer for the meantime to approach the goal of nuclear disarmament in a manner it characterizes as “realistic”, “practical and gradual”, or “step-by-step”. Its view that the negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) should be the first such step is well known.

Whether concern about the humanitarian consequences of the detonation of a nuclear weapon will eventually inspire the successful push needed to ban those armaments remains to be seen.  Indeed, how best to make progress on nuclear disarmament is itself an open question, when existing forums hold so little promise.  The Conference on Disarmament (CD) – a body in which all nine of the nuclear weapons-possessing states are represented – is still chronically unable to reach the necessary consensus for a mandate for negotiations on nuclear disarmament (or on FMCT or anything else for that matter). 

Even embracing the word “negotiations” in relation to a mandate for progress on nuclear disarmament is a step too far for nuclear-armed states in the CD.  And in the NPT, the negotiations envisaged by Article VI of that treaty are not in prospect.  In the NPT, as in the CD, nuclear weapons states essentially control the agenda, relying on the consensus rule (or practice) to do so. 

Some civil society representatives at the Shizuoka meeting seemed skeptical of a step-by-step approach, at least in part because of the obstacles in the way of taking the first step. They are aware that Japanese delegates are very active in the UN General Assembly, NPT, CD as well as in the NPDI group where Japan, with Australia, has been pressing the nuclear weapon states for more reporting on nuclear weapons’ holdings and doctrines.  But they are equally aware that those states have not yet been responsive to these calls for transparency. 

Civil society in Japan holds the key to influencing their government, in order to help it to recognize the potential for the humanitarian approach for re-energizing the nuclear disarmament debate, and refocusing discourse on the effects of the use of those weapons rather than on their strategic and military purposes. 

In this connection, the words of the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs delivered at another recent event in Japan are instructive.  On 2 February, during her keynote address to "The Second World Citizen Forum" commemorating the 125th anniversary of the Kwansei Gakuin University, Angela Kane made these observations: “Given the horrible humanitarian and environmental consequences from any war involving the use of nuclear weapons—consequences that would not only cross national borders but affect the entire planet—citizens everywhere are quite justified in raising their voices on behalf of progress in nuclear disarmament. There is enormous potential for progress in this great collective effort, provided the people are willing to pursue this goal, willing to encourage diverse organized groups throughout society to work for its achievement, and willing to extend this cooperation to the peoples of other nations”.

Measuring the potential for progress to which the High Representative refers will be the subject of further analysis in Disarmament Insight. The forthcoming events in Oslo on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons – the Civil Society Forum on 2-3 March and the international conference on 4-5 March - will be important pointers in this regard. Indeed, the fact that these events are taking place at all – and that they are currently the subject of widespread reflection in many states at present – is testimony to the value of bringing fresh humanitarian perspectives to bear on a problem of global significance that, in disarmament and non-proliferation terms, has become a Gordian knot.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

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.

Conference on Disarmament (CD) - Echoes of the Past

“My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.

Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.”

In his recent monograph of war poet TE Hulme, David Worthington remarked that Hulme’s poem ‘Trenches: St Eloi” (from which the quote above is drawn) has obvious contemporary resonance.  In so saying, Worthington may not have had the desperately bogged-down Conference of Disarmament  (CD) specifically in mind, but an analogy with the CD is not far-fetched.

As the Conference prepares for its 2013 session (to run from 21 January to 13 September), its 65 member states will be acutely aware that their current paralysis is entering its 16^th successive year.
This is not any normal disagreement over the precise wording of a disarmament treaty.  If only it were. Rather, the CD is deadlocked simply over how to get the negotiation of a treaty underway. No lasting blueprint for negotiating a new treaty has emerged in 15 annual 24-week long sessions. The trenches have been dug so deeply that the warring parties hunkered down within them seem either entirely disoriented or immune from growing international pressure for an end to the hostilities. 

Whether or not the minds of CD member states resemble corridors, there is a strong sense amongst them of the futility - echoing Hulme - in having nothing to do but, in the face of continuous stalling by the nuclear powers, keep on enduring seemingly endless repulsion in the quest for an acceptable formula for a blueprint or mandate that will trigger a new negotiation.

Alternative ways forward within the Conference – including successful recipes of the past - have been regularly suggested on this site (see links below) and are not repeated now.  But concrete alternatives outside the CD have recently emerged at least in respect of two of the possible subjects for treaties on disarmament issues.

The decisions of the UN General Assembly to establish forums on nuclear disarmament  and on a ban on the production of fissile material for explosive purposes  may not challenge the actual legitimacy (as opposed to the effectiveness) of the CD.  But at the least they amount to an incentive to its members to rethink the repressive way in which  the rules of procedure of the Conference are applied particularly to the laying of foundations for launching treaty negotiations.  

More importantly, these developments should offer encouragement to members that the issues in which they are most interested do not have to be eternally trapped within the Conference.  It will be intriguing to assess at the end of this year’s 6 month session of the CD where the balance of effort of disarmament diplomats was expended – on revitalizing the CD or in pursuing fresh new ground beyond the current trenches. ... Any bets?

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

List of relevant links:

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2010/02/shannon-mandate-aged-15.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2011/03/cd-getting-to-first-base-on-simplified.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2011/07/last-throw-of-dice-for-cd.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2011/11/v-behaviorurldefaultvml-o.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/01/prospects-for-conference-on-disarmament.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/05/conference-on-disarmament-lifeline.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/06/revitalisation-of-conference-on_27.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/06/revitalisation-of-conference-on_4768.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/07/cd-2012-endgame.html

Photograph of a field gun at St. Eloi courtesy World War I Battlefields (http://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/flanders/south.html)

The Elusive Consensus

There are good reasons for the inclusion of the consensus rule in the Conference of Disarmament’s Rules of Procedure.  These are discussed below.  But the consensus rule is being eroded tacitly or directly by those who are most keen to preserve it.

Something has to give.  Unless a more enlightened approach is taken to the use of consensus in the CD, the utility if not the integrity of that institution will be further debased. Recent decisions of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly in agreeing three initiatives for dealing with issues from the CD’s agenda in forums outside the Conference are no coincidence.

Sound advice on consensus was recently offered by the current President of the Conference. Introducing the CD’s annual report in the First Committee on 1 November 2012, Ambassador Hellmut Hoffman (Germany) reminded delegates that “consensus is not identical with unanimity”. He explained that consensus is the result of a “fair and honest effort” to arrive at an outcome which reflects a view “vastly prevailing” among member States and is one which those members whose interests are not fully met by it can nonetheless tolerate.  In other words, where voting is not an option, a decision is able to be taken without any member feeling obliged to voice a formal objection to it and thereby block it.

As the CD’s rules of procedure allow no other means of decision-making, there is an unwritten duty in situations where a member is isolated not to block consensus except in extremis.  The consensus rule does not confer an unfettered veto on each member.  Rather it protects a member from the imposition of an outcome by the “vastly prevailing” majority that would demonstrably jeopardise its supreme interests, i.e. its national security.

The prime purpose of the consensus rule in the CD is to assure members that decision-making on a multilateral negotiation of a treaty will not be dominated by the numerical superiority of any group of nations. The rule is also intended to facilitate the achievement of an agreement without the need for a vote and its “inevitable divisiveness”.

In addition, working by way of consensus can help facilitate the emergence of balanced texts that attract wider support, foster concerted uptake and implementation and prove to be longer lasting. The emergence of a dissatisfied minority, out-numbered under a voting procedure, is obviated.

In a body whose mandate is to negotiate matters affecting the security of all nations, those attributes of the rule surely amount to a sound basis for taking decisions only by consensus.  So, what is the problem?  The problem is that the impasse in the Conference does not reflect disagreement over anything as vital as the contents of a legally-binding treaty but simply over the basis on which treaty negotiations might be conducted.  There is no shortage of mandates that could ultimately lead to treaty negotiations – indeed there are four of them, but they have been unhelpfully fused together so that nothing constructive happens on any of them. For as long as agreement to a mandate on one core issue is held hostage to securing agreement to mandates on the other three core issues, the CD will remain rooted to the spot.

Boiled right down to just two central issues, some members who would like negotiations to begin on banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons aren’t yet prepared to concede that concrete efforts should also get underway on nuclear disarmament.  And vice-versa.  Perpetuation of the status quo serves no-one’s interests except those that, despite protestations to the contrary, wish to retain their nuclear arsenals or augment their stocks of fissile material.

But to return to the point.  The mere couching of mandates and prioritising of issues for the commencement of work in the CD can scarcely be characterized as constituting a threat to national security.  Therefore, “consensus” should be interpreted in its normal manner. That is, the decision should be taken by general agreement where no member believes that its security is so prejudiced by that decision as to impel it to voice its objection, thereby blocking it.

A member might object to a decision to adopt a draft treaty where it believed that the outcome, despite intensive negotiations in which it had participated, would prejudice its national security. A member might object to a decision to adopt a mandate which specifically precluded a particular outcome thereby demonstrably compromising that member's national security ab initio - an unlikely situation given the sensitivity traditionally shown by CD presidents in tabling only those mandates that have been the subject of exhaustive consultations. But a member would not normally object to a decision to adopt, for example, a document setting out the parameters and timetable for the CD's annual session even if that member’s preferred position was not fully met.

The regional groups of the CD, whose consultations are not covered by the consensus rule but have nonetheless fallen prey to it, might weigh the desirability of moving away from lowest common denominator outcomes and developing a habit of reaching more nuanced ones. For example, a group position that reflected a "vastly prevailing" viewpoint but that noted a different, minority approach albeit one that was not being insisted upon, or on which, perhaps in face-saving terms, instructions were being sought ... an outcome, in other words, that respected a minority position but that wasn't stalled by it.

In any event, as noted before in this column, indefinite blocking of decisions in the pre-negotiating stage of the CD’s work on a given topic serves only to reinforce doubts about the viability of the Conference.  There may not be a consensus that the CD’s days are numbered but the recent writings on the wall of the UN General Assembly are surely salutary nonetheless.

As Ray Acheson wrote in the final edition for 2012 of Reaching Critical Will’s excellent First Committee Monitor, “The important message coming from the majority of member states and civil society at this year’s First Committee is that a handful of countries must no longer be allowed to hold back the rest of the international community in tackling some of the most dramatic problems of our age.  Stalemates and watered-down outcomes must urgently be replaced by alternatives that can proudly be deemed “successful” for genuine human security and social and economic justice.  Governments and civil society alike should not settle for less.”

Posted by Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR, Geneva

Photographed is one of the Palais des Nations' beehives offered to the United Nations Office at Geneva by Switzerland on the occasion the 10th anniversary of Switzerland's membership of the UN.

First Committee: a weather report

The 2012 session of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly was notable not only for the disruption caused by super-storm Sandy but also for a stirring of the winds of change in multilateral disarmament machinery. Winds at the other end of the Beaufort scale to Sandy, admittedly, but discernible nonetheless...

The endless debate over the causes of deadlock in the Conference on Disarmament and of under-achievement in other disarmament forums has had its instructive moments, but it has not yet thrown up a game-breaker. We seem no closer to getting the CD re-started than to mothballing it.

Not surprisingly, therefore, attention has begun to turn away from the institutions and to concentrate instead on the issues that are trapped within them.  More particularly, on finding other ways of “taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations”, to use the terminology of the First Committee’s agenda...

This was certainly the case with three new (or revamped) resolutions tabled by the NAM, Canada, and a cross-regional group supporting an initiative by Austria, Mexico and Norway.  Canada’s (annual) proposal on fissile material took a different tack from previous years and included a request for the UN Secretary-General to establish a group of government experts (GGE) drawn from 25 states to meet in Geneva for 2 weeks in 2014 and 2015  to make recommendations (but "not negotiate") on possible aspects for a treaty banning the production of such material.

The other two proposals dealt with another core issue on the CD’s agenda, nuclear disarmament. Under the NAM resolution (adopted without opposing votes and with only 5 abstentions), this topic will be the subject of a high-level meeting of the UNGA on 26 September 2013 “to contribute to the goal of nuclear disarmament”. The remaining measure sought the setting up of an open-ended working group for up to fifteen working days in Geneva in 2013 “to take forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations for the achievement and maintenance of a world without nuclear weapons”.

The NAM resolution, although comparatively modest, is nonetheless significant in that it reflects dissatisfaction over the apparent unwillingness of some CD members to treat nuclear disarmament at least on parity with fissile material. Interestingly, Canada’s proposal - born of frustration with getting negotiations underway in the CD on a fissile material ban  – was adopted by the First Committee with only one negative vote (cast by Pakistan, although the idea of a GGE had, in an earlier, separate vote, been opposed also by Iran and Syria).  In the decision on the resolution as a whole there were 148 votes in favour of it and 20 abstentions (including those of China and a number of Middle East states).

This level of support for the Canadian proposal needs to be seen, though, in the context of its explicit readiness both to offer the CD a further year to resolve the deadlock before the GGE meets as well as to ensure that the Conference will overtake the latter as soon as the CD agrees to negotiate a ban on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

The last of the three proposals just mentioned takes a much more arms-length approach to the CD.  The open-ended working group (OEWG) would report primarily to the UN General Assembly, although its report would be copied to the CD as well as to the UN Disarmament Commission.

The significance of this distinction between the UNGA and the CD can best be illustrated by an extract from India’s explanation of vote. Explaining why it had abstained on the resolution, India said that “an OEWG established outside of the CD under GA rules of procedure may not lead to productive outcomes in taking forward the multilateral nuclear disarmament agenda with the participation of all relevant countries”.

In other words, the OEWG would proceed not under the CD’s sole decision-making rule – consensus – but under those of the General Assembly which, as laid down in Article 18 of the UN Charter, contemplate voting. As for the vote on the proposal itself, the measure easily carried in the First Committee with the support of 133 members. There were 4 against (France, Russia, UK and US) and 20 abstaining (including China, Pakistan, and Israel as well as India).

For those states that are ready to engage directly in the issues rather than merely in how to prioritise the treatment of them, new avenues have clearly opened up.  For nuclear disarmament, 2013 offers a packed programme with an OEWG, a high level meeting and a NPT PrepCom in the offing,  as well as a conference scheduled for March in Oslo on the humanitarian impact of a nuclear detonation.  Whether or not the CD – bending to the winds of change – manages to wrest back the initiative in 2013 and forestall the convening of the GGE on fissile material in 2014 remains to be seen.

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

Nuclear disarmament: Promises and hope

“There are plenty of promises and hope floating around you”.  This was the message inside a Chinese fortune cookie opened during a visit to New York last week for the annual UN General Assembly meeting on disarmament matters (First Committee). It is a message that bears closer analysis to the prospects for nuclear disarmament than first meet the eye…

“Plenty of promises” exist in terms of international commitments to nuclear disarmament as well as recent pronouncements of world leaders that the planet will be a safer place when nuclear weapons are eliminated.

Those self-same undertakings have given rise in turn to a degree of “hope”.  But, if this session of the General Assembly is any measure, that hope has a firmer grounding than in recent years.  What is the difference?  There are several answers, and strangely these expectations arise despite, or perhaps because of, the paralysis in the Conference on Disarmament (CD).

In the margins of the Assembly, there is growing recognition that at least one game-breaker, perhaps several, have emerged in the shape of a new focus on nuclear disarmament outside the CD:

--- There is the resolution promoted by Austria, Mexico and Norway proposing the setting up of a working group open to all states to “develop proposals to take forward multilateral negotiations for the achievement and maintenance of a world without nuclear weapons”. 

--- Another draft resolution in circulation is being promoted by Cuba. The aim of Cuba’s paper is to have the General Assembly agree to convene a one-day long High-level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament in September 2013.

--- And last but not least there is the Norwegian initiative to host a meeting in Oslo next March to bring a new focus to the humanitarian impacts that would result from the use of a nuclear weapon whether accidental or deliberate.

Although it doesn’t deal specifically with nuclear disarmament, mention should also be made of Canada’s annual General Assembly resolution on fissile materials, the latest version of which proposes the setting up by the UN Secretary-General of a group of government experts in Geneva until such time as the CD reaches agreement on a programme of work. The experts would be tasked with elaborating a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

At the time of writing it is difficult to predict the outcome on any of these initiatives, but in sum – and in terms of the fortune cookie - they offer “plenty of…hope” that a new departure towards nuclear disarmament will emerge. 

How or when will we know whether that hope is well founded? One measure will be whether members of the CD are ready to face facts and acknowledge that prospects for progress on nuclear disarmament in that forum are negligible no matter how much some of them would like to believe otherwise.  Even if the new developments just noted prompted the Conference to overcome its chronic inability to agree its priorities and to adopt without dissent its elusive annual “programme of work”, a more difficult barrier looms.

The 14-year standoff over the CD’s priorities has eroded the level of trust amongst members.  Restoring it will take time, perhaps further testing the patience of some members. An early sign of the existence of improved trust following a breakthrough on the CD’s priorities will be the absence of the gerrymandering that scuppered the 2009 work programme.  On that occasion certain procedural steps were unnecessarily put to the Conference for formal decision and fell just short of the necessary consensus.

Of course, several political factors of regional and international significance will come into play before the end of this year. Nonetheless it is tempting to conclude that, after a dearth of activity on nuclear disarmament in a multilateral context, 2013 holds the promise and hope of at least some progress of one kind or another.

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

The photograph of a fortune cookie is a file from the Wikimedia Commons