Disarmament Insight

Creative Options for the CD Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:09:00 +0000

This is the second of two postings drawn from comments made on 15 May during a seminar organised by Indonesia and UNIDIR. The first post offered creative options for breaking the longstanding impasse in the Conference on Disarmament (CD). This posting considers briefly the need for creative options to the CD itself. It begins by asking whether the relevance of the CD has diminished since its Cold War heyday? As in the first post, it ponders the puzzling lack of initiatives by members to supplement dutiful efforts of successive presidents to find a way through the longstanding impasse.

Is it beyond the CD’s three regional groups to play a more active role in augmenting or reinforcing the president’s efforts to broker compromise? They could depute several members – say a troika of present, past and future chairs – to meet their counterparts in other groups plus China (which forms a group of one) actively to explore ways forward instead of caucusing only in their opwn blocs . The absence of any initiative of this or any other cross-regional kind is revealing in itself. In the post-Cold War era, has the CD lost a sense of purpose? Attention, in any event, has begun to turn elsewhere.

Many of those states that have experienced success this decade in the CCW on Protocol V, in the General Assembly on the ATT, and in the diplomatic conferences on anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions, have begun to challenge the status quo. They know that, while the CD may be a “single” multinational negotiating body dealing with a whole range of issues under the one roof as envisaged by UNSSOD-1, it is by no means the sole negotiating forum.

In the arms control and disarmament sphere, the dynamic of like-mindedness has offered a new way forward. Action, not passivity, is the byword of groups of states that work together in common cause with civil society and international organizations notably to secure humanitarian objectives such as the stigmatisation landmines and cluster munitions and other egregious armaments.

The CD’s lengthy impasse has been the catalyst for new initiatives. The setting up by the General Assembly of the OEWG on nuclear disarmament and the GGE on fissile material surely reflects a simple message. If the CD has the capacity to be at all responsive to the post-Cold War security environment it needs first to confront head-on its deadlock on these two core issues of substance now assigned to parallel forums.

Second, in reaching compromise on substance, the CD needs to apply its rules of procedure in a constructive, enlightened manner rather than as the kiss of death. The path to effective multilateralism in the Conference depends on moving from a passive to an active culture with a focus on how to begin things, not how to stop them.

The responsiveness of the CD to these challenges - if not to its very existence then certainly as to its effectiveness - is on the line. Those clinging to the status quo in the Conference might do well to heed a development at the recent preparatory meeting of the NPT: - the sense of empowerment engendered by the statement of 80 like-minded states on the issue of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons was palpable.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

Creative Options for the CD Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:52:00 +0000

This posting is drawn from comments made on 15 May during a seminar organised by Indonesia and UNIDIR.

In looking at the impasse in the Conference, it is necessary first to acknowledge the complicated international security backdrop to the CD. How much does the security climate impact on the effectiveness of the Conference? How can it be measured? In practical terms, however, the UN General Assembly appears to believe that any such impacts are manageable. Why else would it continue to agree in these times of budgetary constraint to convene the CD for 24 weeks a year, year in, year out for such a modest return?

That question is not intended to downplay the symbolic importance of the CD. The Conference was established as a multilateral negotiating forum by the General Assembly at its special session on disarmament (UNSSOD-1) in 1978 at a time when arms control and disarmament had been treated as the preserve of a dozen or so powerful military nations. The quid pro quo was the emphasis placed by the General Assembly on participation of nuclear-weapons-possessing states on the basis of consensus.

The fact is, though, that recently the General Assembly has become less unquestioning about the stalemate in the CD. The CD itself has yet to take the hint. Its seeming lack of capacity to challenge the status quo is worrying. Or at least it is to those members whose security is patently not well served by the status quo.

Some of these habits may be changing. The General Assembly recently agreed to various initiatives for new subsidiary organs on nuclear disarmament and fissile material, two core issues of the CD. It also decided to convene a High Level Meeting (HLM) on nuclear disarmament. These developments are not mere coincidence.

Key questions being asked by UN members states about the CD are:

Why does misuse of the rule on the programme of work persist?
Why is the consensus rule applied as though it were a crude right to veto?
Why is annual report to the General Assembly (the CD’s constituting body) more revealing for what it doesn’t say than for what can be found in the actual text itself?
Why is the Conference so extraordinarily conservative over its membership and the involvement of civil society?

Those who profess to be satisfied by the status quo solemnly champion the CD’s continued existence but in a curiously passive manner. There are not only few signs of self-driven change but even fewer signs of serious efforts to promote change.

Here briefly is what significant groups of states say about resolving the CD’s impasse.

* At the 2010 HLM on revitalizing the CD, the NAM – when stressing the priority attached to nuclear disarmament by UNSSOD-1 - said this: “… it is counter-productive to ascribe the lack of concrete results in the CD to its rules of procedure, as such an approach could conceal the true obstacle faced by the CD, which is lack of political will”.

* In its most recent statement, the P5 “ … expressed their shared disappointment that the Conference on Disarmament continues to be prevented from agreeing on a comprehensive program of work, including work on a … ban on the production of fissile material … and discussed efforts to find a way forward in the Conference … including by continuing their efforts with other relevant partners to promote such negotiations within the CD”.

The P5 did not spell out the extent of its efforts to find a way forward. And the NAM did not say exactly how a lack of political will could be remedied. But it is clear that any creative option for resolving the CD’s impasse must first recognize, then deal squarely with, the reality that it is the stand-off over fissile material and nuclear disarmament, the issues alluded to by the P5 and NAM respectively, that is casting the darkest cloud in the Council Chamber.

The ostensible obstacle – and manifestation of the stand-off on substance - is how to achieve agreement on a programme of work. But the rule requiring agreement on a programme of work is only an obstacle if the CD treats it as one. If, however, the Conference is ready to begin serious work, it will simplify its approach to the work programme, de-emphasise the inherent linkages among all four core issues and treat the programme as no more than the organizational tool that it is. All that the rule requires in terms of content is that the programme include a schedule of activities – that is, a timetable.

The characteristic of a healthy body that wanted to get down to work would be a readiness to caucus informally to explore solutions. Yet when did we last see groups of member states actively organizing meetings with one another to seek a break-through?

Revitalisation of the CD requires less introspection and more action. The Conference should first recognise that a line needs to be drawn under its efforts to produce a multi-mandated work programme. These steps might then follow:

* The CD would concentrate for the rest of the current session on agreeing in principle on a schedule or timetable of activities for 2014.

* This year’s annual report to the General Assembly would incorporate that draft schedule.

* The schedule would allocate equal time for discussion to each of the four core issues with a lesser amount of time to other agenda items.

* It would be adopted along with the agenda when the CD reconvenes next January.

* For each of the four issues, the only point for discussion under the time allocated would be this: under rule 23 of the Rules of Procedure is there a need to establish a subsidiary body? That is, does a basis exist for the negotiation of “a draft treaty or other draft texts”?

* Where those questions are answered in the affirmative, mandates for the required subsidiary body or bodies would be negotiated.

* Mandates would evolve independently of each other. They would not be aggregated in future work programmes which would be confined essentially to allocating time to subsidiary bodies for pursuing agreed mandates.

If linkages among mandates crept back into the CD’s modus operandi, the necessary spirit of compromise to keep the Conference functioning would patently be lacking. The General Assembly would draw its own conclusions. In respect of the new OEWG on nuclear disarmament and the GGE on fissile material, perhaps it has already shown its hand.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

ATT Consensus: Voting – what if...?

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:38:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

Humanitarian Success

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:59:00 +0000

Interest in learning more about the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons drew almost 130 states to a meeting in Oslo recently. Given the high consequences for humanity of any detonation of a nuclear weapon, such a large turnout is hardly surprising.

Notably, however, the 5 permanent members of the Security Council - all possessors of nuclear arsenals and all subject to NPT obligations to disarm - declined their invitations to attend. Their reasons for staying away warrant examination.

But first some facts. The Oslo event was simply an evidence-assessing opportunity - no negotiating, no decisions, no lofty declarations. Rather, the conference offered an arena for a fact-based discussion of the humanitarian and developmental consequences associated with a nuclear weapon detonation. The meeting drew on inputs from a wide-range of scientific, medical, and other experts including disaster-preparedness specialists from the Red Cross Movement and UN agencies.

Nonetheless, the 5 NPT nuclear weapon states (P5) collectively took the view that the 2-day Oslo meeting would divert discussion and energy from a practical step-by-step approach towards nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Given the current paralysis in nuclear disarmament negotiating fora - a state of affairs that played a part in inspiring the new approach represented by the Oslo meeting - this is a curious argument. What are the practical steps to which the nuclear weapon states might be referring?

Apart from ongoing US-Russian bilateral steps and some inconclusive P5 caucusing, there’s not much evidence of activities of any progressive kind.

- For instance, the practical steps agreed by the nuclear weapon states as part of the NPT parties’ consensus in 2000 were honoured in the breach, if not undermined by some of the P5, until belatedly re-affirmed in the 2010 Review Conference action plan.

- No practical steps are possible in the Conference on Disarmament which has long been blocked by a succession of nuclear weapons-possessing states.

- Progress on even the most basic opening up of transparency via agreement amongst the P5 on a reporting format for the NPT’s repository of information on nuclear weapons’ holdings is glacial.

- Any further relaxation of the cold war levels of alert of nuclear weapons is sternly opposed by 4 of the 5 permanent Security Council members when the issue comes before the UN General Assembly from time to time.

- Fulfillment by the nuclear weapon states of the NPT article VI obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament” is unconsummated. Worse, attempts by other states to offer a focus on nuclear weapons - such as at the Oslo event and the forthcoming UN Open-ended Work Group on nuclear disarmament (OEWG) - have been spurned.

- The most that can be said about possible practical steps currently in train is to hope that the P5 are making steady progress, along with all other NPT parties, in implementing the 2010 action plan.

The 5 nuclear weapon states opted not to be represented in Oslo even by a junior note-taker. This leaves them open to criticism of seeming insensitivity to the argument of the vast majority of states that issues affecting nuclear weapons are of consequence and concern to all nations, not just the possessing countries. This they may deny. But in the absence of any sustained progress on possible steps towards nuclear disarmament in which they are collectively involved, there will inevitably be speculation on the real reason for the 5 NPT nuclear weapon states to shun the Oslo meeting.

What can be said, however, is that the Oslo event, the OEWG in mid-year, the UN High Level Meeting on 26 September, and the Mexico-hosted follow-up to the Oslo meeting are bringing heightened new focus to nuclear weapons’ issues this year. Equally, these meetings offer opportunities for the P5 to outline progress on the practical steps to which they attach so much importance including those on which they have undertaken to report to the NPT PrepCom in 2014. Taking up these opportunities would be rather more consistent with the spirit of the NPT especially article VI than being absent. Let’s hope that they will reconsider their approach.
Tim Caughley and John Borrie

The Oslo conference on humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons detonation

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:25:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:07:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:26:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:32:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:52:00 +0000

“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

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:03:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:22:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:42:00 +0000

“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

Political will/Political won’t. Compromise?

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 09:41:00 +0000

Apart from the ritualistic and sometimes ironic “congratulations” that are offered each month to the incoming president of the deadlocked Conference on Disarmament, the most common expression heard in the Council Chamber is “political will”.

Or more accurately, “the lack of political will”.

I was asked by one of this year’s UN Disarmament Fellows what “political will” means. My response was to duck the question by saying that what was lacking in the CD was “compromise”, not political will.

- Compromise between those states that don’t want a ban on the production of fissile material to cover existing stocks of such material, and those that do

- Compromise between those that want a binding agreement to prevent an arms race in outer space, and those that don’t

- Compromise between those that don’t want negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons, and those that do

- Compromise between those on the one hand that want the nuclear weapon states to provide legally binding assurances that nuclear weapons will not be used against non-nuclear weapon states, and on the other hand those that believe existing assurances are sufficient

- Compromise amongst those championing negotiations on any one or more of those activities

- Compromise between those that see the CD’s rules of procedure as a constraint, and those that see their national sovereignty as diminished by such constraint...

But to return to the question. “Political will” was described by the previous High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Sergio Duarte as the source of energy that allows for movement past agreed milestones. A former Director of UNIDIR Patricia Lewis defined political will as “the sustained determination to advance a public interest, even in the face of strong resistance”. Both recognised that the current problem in the disarmament arena is not so much a lack of political will but a clash of political wills.

As has been apparent in the CD’s thematic debate on revitalising the Conference, views on how to overcome this clash of wills remain far apart. Indeed, some doubt whether the political will to forge compromises and negotiate broadly acceptable outcomes is even possible in a more complicated post-Cold War security environment. If this is so, sustaining the CD in its current mode will be harder to justify, spawning perhaps ad hoc processes driven by like-minded states, but open to all, where political energy is more readily harnessed to achieve a public interest. Those states that choose to stand aside from such processes deny themselves the ability to influence the outcome, outcomes that strive for consensus but which allow recourse to voting to prevent endless deadlock.

In the meantime, it would be nice to hear and see more use of the word “compromise” in the Conference on Disarmament in a practical effort by its members to give meaning to "political will" as the CD finalises its annual report to the UN General Assembly and completes its otherwise barren 2012 session.

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

For brief background material on the CD see the publication “The Conference on Disarmament Issues and Insights”

Consensus in the CD and multilateralism

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:16:00 +0000

Despite the committed efforts of its six chairs, the 2012 session of the Conference on Disarmament had few highlights. The closest it came was the readiness of all but one Member State not to oppose the Egyptian president’s recipe – the mandates for work set out in CD/1933/Rev.1 - for reviving the CD’s negotiating mode after a 16-year hiatus. The Conference’s annual report to the UN General Assembly will thus be bereft of good news. It may even be bereft of any real news.

Earlier this year when the president (Ambassador Badr, Egypt) tabled his carefully nuanced proposal for decision, Pakistan was unable to join the consensus, and the measure thereby failed. The Pakistani Ambassador (Zamir Akram) explained on 15 March that the (deliberate) ambiguity over the inclusion of existing fissile material in the scope of the proposed negotiation of a fissile material production ban would compromise that nation’s security – the stakes were described as being of an “existential” nature for Pakistan. Italy’s rejoinder, that conceivably only the outcome of such negotiations, rather than the negotiations themselves, could compromise a state’s security, cut no ice.

The point at issue here is whether the CD’s sole manner of decision-taking should be used somewhat more sparingly, say, at an advanced stage of the negotiations and certainly when a fully-fledged treaty text is tabled for adoption. Pakistan’s diplomats are widely admired as skilful negotiators and are highly adept at multilateral negotiations, but even if their nation failed to secure an outcome that met its needs it could block consensus at the point of adoption of the resulting treaty.

And, of course, no state can be bound by treaty obligations unless it has ratified or otherwise formally signified its acceptance of them. Pakistan’s stance in the Conference is therefore a puzzling one, the more so because of its strong attachment to multilateralism. During the recent Arms Trade Treaty Conference in New York, Pakistan’s delegate Ambassador Raza Bashir Tarar said this:

“We hope all of us can marshal the true spirit of multilateralism which necessitates flexibility, compromise, consensus and a balance of interests of all States. Such a spirit is not without precedent within the UN context.” The Ambassador went on to give some examples drawn from the disarmament arena, such as the “unanimous adoption of UNDC guidelines on international arms transfers, the successful conclusion of UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and the UN Fire Arms Protocol, along with voluntary transparency mechanisms of [the] UN Arms Register and the UN Report on military expenditures, [which] together represent a firm foundation for the structure of an Arms Trade Treaty”.

Fast-forward to the final presidency of this year, that of Germany. Ambassador Hellmut Hoffman’s main task in the chair is to secure agreement to the CD’s annual report to the UN General Assembly. Again, such agreement must be by consensus, that is, the absence of any formal objection by a Member State. What Ambassador Hoffman said about multilateralism and consensus warrants repeating here:

“Since the question of the rule of consensus continues to be a matter of much debate in this Chamber - which is not surprising given the role it has played in making things possible or not possible in our work in the last decade or so - let me quite emphatically say at this point that in my book of multilateralism working towards consensus is a goal of great importance. At the same time it has to be said as well that for multilateralism to be effective, achieving consensus must not be misunderstood as a licence to force vast majorities to settle for outcomes at the very lowest common and at times banal denominator”. Somewhat more pointedly, the chair continued: “If achieving consensus is misunderstood as a free ticket to veto whatever one does not like, even if entirely isolated on an issue which is not involving one's fundamental interests, multilateralism cannot achieve any substantive results at all. If and when this happens multilateralism starts to exist for its own sake as a more or less empty process. The CD represents a good example of this danger”.

What is inherent in the president’s words is that the exercise of the right to withhold consensus carries with it certain responsibilities. As the CD’s rules of procedure allow no other means of decision-making, there is an unwritten duty in situations where a Member State is isolated to withhold consensus only in extremis. This is why Ambassador Akram described the situation confronting Pakistan as “existential”, albeit in relation to the adoption of negotiating mandates rather than a painstakingly negotiated treaty. Curiously, however, Pakistan’s deputy representative took the floor immediately after the chair had made the remarks just quoted to voice what seemed like - but may not have intended to be - a less nuanced approach. Expressing the need to make his views clear “on the record” of the CD, Pakistan’s delegate described the president’s interpretation of the rule of consensus as “rather innovative”.

Whatever was the intention of Pakistan’s recent remarks, it would be unfortunate if they were construed as taking issue with Ambassador Hoffman’s central point that multilateralism will not be well served by treating the consensus rule as a right to “veto” in every instance. In prescribing the “requirement for a single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum … taking decisions on the basis of consensus”, the UN General Assembly’s first special session on disarmament was very conscious of the security considerations that might influence a State’s position. UNSSOD-1 specifically recognized that the “adoption of disarmament measures should take place in such an equitable and balanced manner as to ensure the right of each State to security and to ensure that no individual State or group of States may obtain advantages over others at any stage”. In the context of the broader objectives of operating at the multilateral level, it cannot be supposed, however, that the General Assembly would have regarded “measures” (e.g., treaties) as encompassing mere working mandates such as those in CD/1933/Rev.1.

Where are these comments leading? The exchange between the president and Pakistan was in the context of agreeing the CD’s annual report to the UN General Assembly. Traditionally this involves a rather animated but hollow exercise in which a small minority prevents the Conference from including anything in the report that would, for example, inform the UNGA of the divergence of views in the CD on the nature and causes of its longstanding deadlock. Logic dictates that with the future of this forum under such a dark cloud, the patience of the General Assembly would be tested less, if not improved, if the consensus rule were used more sparingly and the Conference could thus volunteer a formal insight into the current state of affairs. In these worrying times for multilateralism, not to mention the viability of the CD, let’s hope that common sense prevails on this occasion.
This is a guest post by Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow at UNIDIR. See also earlier comments on the CD.

Transparency in Armaments

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 12:13:00 +0000

These historical insights on the treatment in the CD of agenda item 7, Transparency in Armaments, were offered by UNIDIR as background to the debate on that issue in the Conference on 14 August 2012 under the presidency of Ambassador Jean-Hughes Simon-Michel (France).

During the 1991 session of UNGA the EU and Japan sponsored a resolution on transparency (46/36L). Recalling the 1990 Gulf War, the resolution asserted that no single state especially in areas of tension should be able to strive for levels of armaments that did not bear any relationship to its self-defence needs. The CD was requested to address the question of the excessive and destabilizing accumulation of arms and to elaborate universal and non-discriminatory practical means to increase openness and transparency in this field.

Initially, there was no consensus in the CD on inscribing this issue as an agenda item. However, agreement was eventually reached to hold informal meetings chaired by a Special Coordinator. In 1993 the CD established an Ad Hoc Committee on Transparency in Armaments. Disagreement soon emerged over whether resolution 46/36L did or did not limit the mandate just to the UN Register of Conventional Arms. Some members took the view that the subsidiary body should focus on the gradual expansion of the Register to include all categories and types of arms including WMD. Other states, however, opposed inclusion of WMD in the Register because to do so would imply international acceptance of transfers of such weapons.

Work in the Ad Hoc Committee came to an end in 1995 when members were unable to reach agreement on its re-establishment. Since then, CD delegations, as with agenda items 5 and 6, have not envisaged re-convening a subsidiary body, preferring instead the appointment of a Special Coordinator to seek the views of members on the most appropriate way to deal with this issue. The item has become a place of convenience for raising issues about conventional weapons rather than for seeking new agenda items to cover those issues.

This posting was published for UNIDIR by Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow

Comprehensive programme on disarmament

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 12:02:00 +0000

These historical insights on the treatment in the CD of agenda item 6, “Comprehensive Programme of Disarmament”, were offered by UNIDIR as background to the debate on that issue in the Conference on 14 August 2012 under the presidency of Ambassador Jean-Hughes Simon-Michel (France).

The comprehensive programme of disarmament (CPD) has its origins in article 11 of the UN Charter. Under that article UNGA is mandated to consider and make recommendations on “principles governing disarmament and the regulation of armaments”. Then in 1969 when declaring the 1970s as a Disarmament Decade, UNGA requested the CD to elaborate a comprehensive programme on all aspects of the cessation of the arms race and general and complete disarmament under effective international control. UNSSOD-I did likewise.

As an instance of the relationship envisaged for the three standing disarmament forums, interestingly UNSSOD-I also requested the Disarmament Commission (UNDC) to consider the elements of the CPD and submit its recommendations to UNGA and, through it, to the CD. UNDC duly elaborated the “Elements of a comprehensive programme of disarmament” and submitted them to the CD.

The item “Comprehensive programme of disarmament” has been on the CD’s agenda since 1980. That year a subsidiary body adopted an outline of the CPD. While there was a measure of agreement on several elements of the outline, fundamental divergences of views emerged on actual measures and stages of implementation and their time frames. Many CD members argued that the CPD should include a firm commitment to its implementation but there was disagreement over whether that commitment should be expressed in legally binding terms.

Since 1989, the item has not been considered as requiring a subsidiary body although over the years Special Coordinators have been appointed to consult members on its future. In recent years, Coordinators appointed by the Presidents of the Conference have chaired informal plenaries during which delegations raised a broad range of issues, both on conventional armaments and nuclear weapons. While some members saw value in resuming consideration of the CPD under the original mandate, others argued for reviewing what they saw as a predominantly nuclear agenda of the CD and updating it with items on conventional weapons.

This posting was published for UNIDIR by Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow

New types of WMD and new systems of such weapons; radiological weapons

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:32:00 +0000

NEW

WMD
These historical insights on the treatment in the CD of agenda item 5, "New Types of WMD and New Systems of such Weapons; Radiological Weapons", were offered by UNIDIR as background to the debate on that issue in the Conference on 14 August 2012 under the presidency of Ambassador Jean-Hughes Simon-Michel (France).

This issue was first presented to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 1969 by Malta, and the CD in turn was tasked with considering the implications of possible military applications of laser technology. Early conclusions of the CD were that (a) laser technology applied to weapons did not warrant consideration at that time, and (b) the possibilities of radiological warfare were of limited significance for arms control.

In 1975, however, the then Soviet Union, tabled a draft international agreement in UNGA on the prohibition of the development and manufacture of new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons. When discussion of the item resumed in the CD, the USSR indicated that its purpose was to cover “ray” (i.e., radiological) weapons affecting human organs and behaviour as well as genetic weapons affecting heredity. But Western states, while supporting efforts to ban particular weapons of mass destruction, objected to the conclusion of a comprehensive convention banning unspecified future weapons.

This issue also arose at the First Special Session of the General Assembly devoted to Disarmament (UNSSOD-I). The final document included a compromise between a general prohibition approach and the idea of specific agreements and stated that, “a convention should be concluded prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling and use of radiological weapons”.

During the 1980s a subsidiary body on radiological weapons considered a number of working papers but no consensus emerged. Since 1993 no subsidiary body has been re-established. In 2002, Germany tabled a discussion paper for revisiting the issue in light of new threats. The item was also discussed in 2006 in plenary, and from 2007 onwards in informal settings. Discussions remained inconclusive.

As with agenda items 6 and 7, CD delegations have not in recent years envisaged re-convening a subsidiary body, preferring instead the appointment of a Special Coordinator to seek the views of members on the most appropriate way to deal with this issue.

This posting was published for UNIDIR by Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow

CD 2012: the endgame

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 12:48:00 +0000

At the end of an item posted on this site on 30 May this year, the comment was made that the adoption by the Conference on Disarmament (CD) of a schedule of activities was a step in the right direction. It would have been more momentous if this schedule had been recognised for what it is, in practice – the essence of the elusive “programme of work” required by the rules of procedure. With its priorities adequately reflected in the schedule of activities, the CD could then have turned its energies to negotiating the necessary mandates for dealing with the chosen subjects.

Such a return to keeping mandates separate from the programme of work might have been viewed by the UN General Assembly during its scrutiny of the CD later this year as a positive sign that the Conference was capable of responding to deep concerns about its effectiveness. The Gordian knot tying the main priorities inextricably together would have been cut. But, on the contrary, it was made clear by some CD members that the schedule of activities was not to be a Trojan horse for the programme of work. The schedule, they stated, was to be no more than a timetable for the formal thematic debates that followed.

So, can signs of progress be gleaned from the debates themselves? Possibly. Lines perhaps have become a little more clearly drawn on the ranking of the four core issues. A fissile material ban and nuclear disarmament are neck-and-neck, with negative security assurances and preventing an arms race in outer space both following behind – running strongly in the race though not in first or second place but seen by some as possible compromise candidates for future focus if the deadlock on fissile material and nuclear disarmament persists.

This state of affairs had been recognised in the work programme proposed by the President (Egypt) on 14 March, albeit in a document including both a schedule of activities and mandates for working groups and special coordinators. The mandates for the working groups on nuclear disarmament and fissile material would require the latter to “deal with elements” of a treaty banning fissile material production for use in weapons (FMT) while the former would simply “deal with nuclear disarmament”. This distinction softened the earlier disparity between “negotiate” a FMT and “exchange views and information on practical steps for" nuclear disarmament (see CD/1864).

The divergence of views over which of these two topics is the “riper” for treatment continues, but it sounds increasingly ritualistic. The respective champions of these subjects know that the endgame entails either broadening out the mandate on a FMT to cover existing fissile material thereby expanding the nuclear disarmament value of the exercise, or launching parallel working groups dealing separately with a FMT and nuclear disarmament either contemporaneously or (more workably) in sequence.

Are the signs of entering the endgame sufficient to warrant a sympathetic consideration by members of the UNGA when they “review progress made in the implementation of [last year’s resolution A/66/420] and, if necessary, to further explore options for taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations”?

Many members made it clear during the thematic debate on revitalising the CD that their patience is wearing very thin. The debate was marked by urgings for members to show more “political will”, a thoroughly hollow imprecation as pointed out by the US Disarmament Ambassador who noted that the problem was not an absence, but a clash, of political will. As an aside, perhaps it will be a measure of progress of sorts when members, instead of lamenting the lack of political will, spell it out more clearly in terms of an absence of willingness to compromise.

After its current recess the CD will have seven weeks in which to satisfy the doubters that it is responsive to concerns about its viability. It may choose to do so either by seeking the solution for the disagreement over its priorities by developing a less complicated programme of work shorn of its linkages. Or it may take some overt step such as appointing a friend of the President to explore the scope for compromise on the mandates for nuclear disarmament and a FMT without discounting the validity of other core issues.

Whether such steps would be sufficient to re-engage disaffected members remains to be seen. But in light of the current impasse it is unsurprising that alternatives to the CD are being voiced in the margins of the Conference, albeit without any option emerging yet as the most favoured. Meanwhile to help breathe life into these issues Germany and the Netherlands have initiated meetings of scientific experts on fissile material, and, on nuclear disarmament, Norway will host a meeting in Oslo early next year on the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.

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.

Revitalisation of the Conference on Disarmament III

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:23:00 +0000

CD III

These additional insights on current practices and procedures of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) are the final of a three part posting of what was offered by UNIDIR as an abbreviated backgrounder to the current thematic debate in the CD on ways to revitalize the Conference. Participants in that debate on 14 June will have heard the CD’s president, Ambassador Kahiluotu (Finland), draw on some of the following points.

1. Self-review:

There is no mechanism in the CD’s rules for self-review. Reform of the Conference might include provision for a 5-yearly review of the kind familiar to parties to many disarmament treaties.

2. Regional meetings:

Members may wish to bear in mind that originally regional meetings had the purpose of streamlining the president’s consultations on matters of basic procedure and timetabling of meetings. There is no rule governing the role of regional groups. Nor are regional groups required to agree on matters of substance, although if no agreement exists within a regional group – whether on a matter of substance or procedure - it can usually be assumed that there will not be a consensus in the Conference as a whole. Sometimes, however, when it comes to the crunch in the Plenary, and on the record, members may not pursue their objection to the point of breaking a consensus.

3. Rotating presidencies:

The extremely short time frame for the rotating presidencies is often cited as a serious CD inefficiency. However, if and when negotiations get underway, continuity of those negotiations will be at least yearly, rather than monthly, because they will be presided over by an elected chair separate from the role of president. (Rule 9.)

4. Agreeing the programme of work annually:

More problematic is the rule that requires the work programme to be agreed annually. However, again, if the programme of work were to be seen in its original form as a schedule of activities, the CD should be able to rise above this obstacle especially if substantive negotiations had developed a momentum of their own. (Rule 28.)

5. Agenda:

A comprehensive review of the CD would include a review of its agenda to update it to reflect modern realities. (Rules 27 and 31.)

6. Expansion of the membership:

Pressure is building for an expansion of the membership of the CD. It is anomalous that all UN members contribute to the costs of this body whether or not they are members of it. (Rule 2, Rules 32–36, Annex 1.)

7. NGOs:

Pressure for improved rules for access by NGOs to the work of the CD, comparable to that in other disarmament processes, also continues to build. NGOs enjoy no greater access to the Conference than members of the public in general. Unfortunately, the decision in 2004 to enhance the level of access is dependent first on agreement by the CD of its programme of work. (Rule 42.) (see also CD/PV.946).

8. UN specialized agencies:

The rule for access by UN specialized agencies and other relevant organs has not been updated to reflect the growth in disarmament bodies and processes that could help advance the work of the CD. (Rule 41.)

9. CD as “a single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum”

The notion of the CD as a single negotiating forum is much misunderstood and misquoted. Even the CD’s own annual resolution and report to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) gets it wrong. The most recent CD resolution (A/C.1/66/L.13/Rev.1) tabled in the First Committee at UNGA66 mistakenly refers to the CD as “the sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum” (emphasis added). What is the difference between “single” and “sole”? “Sole” has come to be used in some quarters as though the CD were the only legitimate multilateral disarmament negotiating forum. The use of the words “a single” was intended by the UN General Assembly at its first Special Session on Disarmament (UNSSODI) in 1978 to mean something else. What the General Assembly had in mind was that the CD would be a single (as opposed to the sole) forum. That is, it would provide a single edifice within which key disarmament issues would be negotiated by key states as needs arose (assuming the necessary consensus). It was seen as more effective and efficient to support a single institution and maintain a single repository of knowledge and expertise than to take up disarmament issues, one by one, in an ad hoc manner. Not an exclusive forum for disarmament negotiations, but a convenient one.

10. Relationship of the CD to UNGA/SSOD I:

There is no authoritative statement of this relationship to UNIDIR’s knowledge. Analysts most commonly describe the CD as an “autonomous body” but that word does not appear in the Final Document of UNSSOD-I or anywhere else. Nor, given the CD’s close relationship with the United Nations, does that forum have all the qualities of autonomy. It is not fully independent. For instance, the CD meets on UN premises, is serviced by UN personnel, its Secretary-General is appointed directly by the UN Secretary-General and acts as his Personal Representative, its rules require it to take into account UNGA resolutions on disarmament (although it is not obliged to act on them), it is required to send its reports to the UN, and it has become the practice for the Conference to transmit the texts of any treaties or agreements to the GA to be formally adopted and then opened for signature. Nor – crucially - is it self-sufficient: its budget is included in the UN budget, and the UNGA has the capacity to withhold funding in total or in part.

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

Revitalisation of the Conference on Disarmament II

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:11:00 +0000

CD II

These insights on current practices and procedures of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) are the second of a three part posting of what was offered by UNIDIR as an abbreviated backgrounder to the current thematic debate in the CD on ways to revitalize the Conference. Participants in that debate on 14 June will have heard the CD’s president, Ambassador Kahiluotu (Finland), draw on some of the following points.

1. Simplifying the “programme of work”, confining it largely to a schedule of activities, shorn of negotiating mandates:

Until 1992 the programme of work (rule 28) consisted mainly of a schedule of activities of the Conference and the agenda (rule 27), adopted together in a single document. However, after the conclusion of negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1992, the presidency of the Conference began consultations on reviewing both the agenda and the membership of the Conference. This separate focus on the agenda led to it being treated as separate from the programme of work thereafter.

2. De-linking mandates from the programme of work:

The reason why the agenda and the programme of work were once embodied in a single document was for ease of allocating blocks of time to respective agenda items. But if the work programme is treated in a manner separate from (but related to) the agenda, it can still serve the same purpose. The programme would set out specific periods of time and the relevant dates for taking up specific agenda items. It would also list other organizational matters that it wanted to address. For instance, in CD/963 of 7 February 1990 and CD/1119 of 22 January 1992, the Conference projected the need to convene subsidiary bodies “according to the circumstances and needs” of those bodies. It also agreed dates for the meeting of the Ad Hoc Group of Scientific Experts on seismic events (pre-CTBT).

In the past, the first step of the CD each year was to agree on the organizational framework for the session ahead, including the allocation of time or space for subsidiary bodies. No mention was made of actual mandates. The second step was to settle on mandates for the subsidiary bodies that members agreed to establish. At its broadest abstraction, the UN General Assembly’s mandate for the CD is that it must operate as a negotiating body. Hence, it was seen as logical that at least one of the mandates for subsidiary bodies would be a negotiating mandate or would foreshadow one. In any event, the CD is not compelled to establish subsidiary bodies, but can do so “when it appears that there is a basis to negotiate a draft treaty” (rule 23).

Incidentally, “Comprehensive and balanced”, the qualifying words used frequently in references to the work programme, carry no weight in terms of the CD’s rules, but are political interpolations used to perpetuate linkages. The CD’s rules of procedure require that a programme of work must be established each annual session as the basis for the CD’s efforts for that year. But the rules do not require that that programme be “comprehensive and balanced” in those specific terms. There is no procedural requirement for the programme to be comprehensive, although it would need to be perceived to be balanced as a practical element of the consensus necessary for concerted implementation of it.

3. Consensus rule:

In the absence of any likelihood of obtaining agreement to replace the consensus rule, there is a case for developing an understanding amongst CD members of the responsibilities attached to invoking the consensus rule. Such an understanding might situate the rule in the context of actual substantive negotiations and decisions on the mandate for those negotiations, leaving decisions setting the procedural parameters for those negotiations to a more relaxed “general agreement” approach – that is, the absence of any persistent objection. (Rule 18.)

4. Adoption of reports by consensus:

There also needs to be a better understanding about the rule on adoption of reports by consensus. That rule makes it clear that the approval by consensus of Conference reports such as the annual report to the General Assembly requires the faithful reflection of the positions of all the members. This rule underpins the furnishing of substantive reports rather than minimalistic ones by making it clear that a member cannot object to the inclusion in a draft report of a viewpoint with which it disagrees as long as that viewpoint faithfully reflects the position of its proponent(s). (Rule 25.)

5. Annual reports to the UN General Assembly (UNGA):

It is arguable that in the current circumstances of deadlock, the CD’s annual report to the UNGA should reflect substantive positions on issues of both substance and procedure, rather than the customary, anodyne procedural reports. (See also the note on rule 25 above.)

6. Conduct of work in Plenary Meetings:

Better understanding is needed of the rule that the work of the Conference shall be conducted in plenary meetings—the default option. It is open, of course, for the CD to agree on any additional arrangements, such as informal meetings with or without experts. There is a mistaken view that negotiations can only be carried on in subsidiary bodies. This is not the case. Subsidiary bodies are to be convened only on a discretionary basis whenever the Conference deems it advisable for the effective performance of its functions, including when it appears that there is a basis to negotiate a draft treaty or other draft texts. (Rules 19, 22 and 23.) In practice, however, negotiations of a draft treaty lend themselves to the greater informality - off the record - offered by subsidiary bodies compared to formal plenaries.

A further posting will cover additional possible areas for reform within the CD’s practices and rules of procedure.

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

Revitalisation of the Conference on Disarmament I

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 11:57:00 +0000

CD I

These insights are part of what was offered by UNIDIR as an abbreviated backgrounder to the current thematic debate in the Conference on Disarmament (CD) on ways to revitalize the Conference. Participants in that debate on 14 June will have heard the CD’s president, Ambassador Kahiluotu (Finland), draw on some of the following points.

1. On 24 September 2010, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, noting that “Moving forward on multilateral disarmament negotiations requires political courage, creativity, flexibility and leadership”, convened and opened the High-Level Meeting on Revitalizing the Work of the Conference on Disarmament and taking forward Multilateral Disarmament Negotiations (HLM). The UN General Assembly held a follow-up meeting on the HLM on 27 July 2011 chaired by GA President Deiss (Switzerland). And in the Conference itself, CD Secretary-General Tokayev made a statement on 14 February this year drawing the attention of members to Mr Ban Ki-moon’s “persistent calls for serious decisions to be taken with regard to the future of the Conference on Disarmament”, and made a number of suggestions for moving forward.

2. “Revitalizing the Work of the Conference on Disarmament and taking forward Multilateral Disarmament Negotiations” has become an agenda item of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Separate resolutions under that item were tabled during the most recent session of UNGA by Austria, Mexico and Norway (though not pressed to a vote) and by the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland (A.66/66). The latter resolution, adopted by the UNGA without dissent, 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”.

3. In his summing up of the HLM, UN Secretary-General asked his Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters to undertake a thorough review of the issues raised at the meeting, including the possible establishment of a high-level panel of eminent persons with special focus on the functioning of the Conference on Disarmament. In its report of 11 July 2011 (A/66/125), the Advisory Board expressed differing views on such a panel as well as on its possible composition. Further steps towards setting up an eminent person panel have yet to be taken.

4. The CD’s Rules of Procedure (CD/8/Rev.9) have not been substantively revised since the origin of the Conference post UNSSOD I except to reflect changes in membership and to give effect to a decision in 1990 on the “Improved and Effective Functioning” of the CD (CD/1036). As well as amending rules 7, 9 and 28, that decision included a direction to the Secretariat to simplify the programme of work, that is, to construct it as a schedule of activities giving indications of the weeks in which those activities would occur.

5. “Improved and Effective Functioning” of the CD was last taken up by the CD in 2002 under a Special Co-ordinator who reported that his consultations had not led to a consensus (CD/PV.911, pp 14-19). Two subsequent postings will cover issues on which the Special Co-ordinator consulted, together with additional possible areas within the CD’s practices and rules of procedure that may warrant revitalisation.

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

Conference on Disarmament: Nuclear Disarmament

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:03:00 +0000

These insights on the treatment in the CD of the core issue, nuclear disarmament, were offered by UNIDIR as background to the current thematic debate on that issue in the Conference.

Participants in that debate on 19 June will have heard the CD’s president, Ambassador Kahiluotu (Finland), draw on some of these points.

1. Nuclear disarmament was the subject of the first resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1946. The first special session of the General Assembly on disarmament (UNSSOD I) made clear in its consensus resolution that the accumulation of weapons, particularly nuclear weapons, constituted much more a threat than a protection for mankind. At its initial session in 1979, the Committee on Disarmament (pre-cursor of the CD) which was established by UNSSOD I, agreed a list of issues for its future work on the cessation of the arms race and disarmament. Top of this list of ten subjects, often referred to as the “Decalogue”, was nuclear weapons in all its aspects.

2. The more detailed agenda for 1979 (CD/12) contained six items, three of which related to nuclear disarmament: (1) a nuclear test ban; (2) cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament; and (3) effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.

3. The first proposal on the issue of “cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament” was submitted by the Group of Eastern European States in 1979. It envisaged negotiations on the cessation of the production of all types of nuclear weapons and the gradual reduction of their stockpiles until their complete destruction.

4. That document was followed by a number of working papers submitted by the Group of 21 (members of the Non-Aligned Movement) proposing that the CD should begin informal consultations on the elements for negotiations on nuclear disarmament and subsequently establish a working group for negotiations of agreements and concrete measures on nuclear disarmament. No consensus emerged on any of these early proposals or on other proposed mandates for nuclear disarmament tabled in the 1980s.

5. As of 1994, under the item “cessation of nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament” the Conference began closer consideration of the prohibition of the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. Proposals to list fissile material as a separate agenda item from nuclear disarmament did not acquire consensus but ultimately, in order to ensure that fissile material would continue to be addressed, the CD agreed that the President would make a statement following the adoption of the agenda that this issue could be dealt with under the nuclear disarmament item.

6. From the beginning of the 1995 session the atmosphere in the CD was influenced by uncertainties surrounding preparations for the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference and its outcome. It was expected by many non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) that reciprocation for their agreement to the indefinite extension of the NPT would generate momentum for dealing with nuclear disarmament in the Conference.

7. When this did not eventuate the G21 called for the immediate establishment of an Ad Hoc Committee to negotiate after the conclusion of the CTBT negotiations on a phased programme of nuclear disarmament and for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework. Although this proposal did not command consensus, a number of members of the G21 submitted a three-phase “programme of action for the elimination of nuclear weapons”, as a basis for work of an Ad Hoc Committee. The first phase (1996–2000) envisaged measures aimed at reducing the nuclear threat and measures of nuclear disarmament, the second phase (2000–2010) included measures to reduce nuclear arsenals and to promote confidence between states, and the third phase (2010–2020) was planned for “Consolidation of a Nuclear Weapon Free World”.

8. In the aftermath of the CTBT negotiations a range of other proposals emerged, amongst them one by Japan to appoint a Special Coordinator on nuclear disarmament charged with identifying issues in the field of nuclear disarmament that could be negotiated in the Conference. South Africa submitted a draft decision and mandate for the establishment of an Ad Hoc Committee on nuclear disarmament “to deliberate upon practical steps for systematic and progressive efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons as well as to identify if and when one or more such steps should be the subject of negotiations in the Conference”. And Algeria submitted a dual proposal on nuclear disarmament and fissile material.

9. The first President of the 1998 session, mindful of the growing interest of members in addressing nuclear disarmament, conducted a series of consultations and issued a statement in which he acknowledged the “extremely high priority of the agenda item ‘Cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament’”. Later that year, the CD established subsidiary bodies on fissile material and NSAs but not on nuclear disarmament per se, prompting the G21 to state that a “satisfactory solution to the issue of nuclear disarmament will have a direct bearing on the work of the CD in the future”.

10. Thereafter mandates for subsidiary bodies were fused into a single document – the so-called “comprehensive and balanced programme of work” - under which no progress has been made on any of the core issues including nuclear disarmament. None of the work programmes proposed during the current deadlock has entailed a negotiating mandate for nuclear disarmament, but CD/1933/Rev.1 sought to strengthen the relevant mandate through the term “deal with nuclear disarmament” in contrast to CD/1864’s notion of an exchange of views on this issue.

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

The artwork is by Ai Y,  of Hiroshima, Japan,  awarded Second Place in the Nature category, UN ART FOR PEACE 2012 ages 13-17, www.un.org/disarmament/

The Conference on Disarmament and Negative Security Assurances

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 08:07:00 +0000

N S As

These insights were offered by UNIDIR as an abbreviated backgrounder to the current thematic debate in the Conference on Disarmament (CD) on a core issue on the CD’s agenda, Negative Security Assurances. Participants in that debate on 12 June will have heard the CD’s president, Ambassador Kahiluotu (Finland), draw on many of the following points.

Since the negotiation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) during the late 1960s, many of the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS), especially those of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) who were not covered by any military alliance and were not in receipt of security guarantees under such alliance, expected that in return for agreeing to renounce nuclear weapons they should receive assurances that they would not be left vulnerable to attack by countries that still had them. That is, that they would receive legally binding “negative security assurances” (NSAs).

In 1978, the final document of the First Special Session of the General Assembly devoted to Disarmament asked nuclear-weapon states (NWS) to “pursue efforts to conclude, as appropriate, effective arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons”.

Since 1978 the Conference on Disarmament (CD) has included the topic of negative security assurances in its annual agenda. In 1979 an ad hoc working group was established chaired by Egypt. In its first report to the Conference, the group noted that there was wide (though not universal) recognition of the urgent need to reach agreement on effective international arrangements for NSAs, such as an international convention.

The following year the working group agreed that the object of the arrangements should be to effectively assure NNWS against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. But there were divergent views on whether there should be a blanket or qualified extension of NSAs to NNWS, and on the exceptions associated with the right to self-defence.

Ad hoc groups were reconvened every year until 1994, and in 1995, the NWS circulated renewed pledges on NSAs to the UN General Assembly and Security Council. These unilateral declarations from 1995 led to the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 984 to the effect that NNWS parties to the NPT would receive assurances that “the Security Council, and above all its nuclear-weapon State permanent members, will act immediately in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations” to protect non-nuclear-weapon states against attacks or threats of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.

These unilateral commitments were a part of efforts to obtain the indefinite extension of the NPT at the 1995 NPT Review Conference. The NWS, however, were unable to find common language for a similar clause in the final outcome document of the Review Conference. Instead, the Conference adopted a recommendation that “further steps should be considered to assure non-nuclear-weapon States party to the [NPT] against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. These steps could take the form of an internationally legally binding instrument”.

Aside from Security Council resolutions, NSAs are also included in additional protocols of the treaties establishing nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs). Although the NPT nuclear weapon states express their support of these the treaties, of the existing NWFZ treaties the Treaty of Tlatelolco is the only one which has had its protocols and ratified by all five NPT weapon states.

After several years of inability to continue work on NSAs, the CD reconvened the ad hoc committee on this topic in 1998. That body’s mandate was to negotiate “effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use on nuclear weapons”. The committee began work on 19 May, holding 9 meetings in all.

Incidentally, the mandates on Fissile Material and NSAs in 1998 were stand-alone ones, not intrinsically incorporated into a single programme of work. The committee has not since been reconvened, leaving NSAs to be addressed in thematic debates on this topic such as those now being conducted in the CD.

Despite the CD’s current longstanding deadlock over its programme of work and priorities, it is not thought that any state officially opposes the establishment of a working group on NSAs. Recent iterations of a mandate on NSAs (including CD/1864 and CD/1933/Rev.1) envisage that a subsidiary body dealing with NSAs would “discuss substantively, without limitation, with a view to elaborating recommendations dealing with all aspects of this agenda item, not excluding those related to an internationally legally binding instrument”. This is a far cry from the negotiating mandate agreed by the CD in 1998.

A comparatively recent development of relevance to the debate on NSAs is that in the United States Nuclear Posture Review, released in April 2010, it was stated that the US is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing “negative security assurance” by declaring that it will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations. This revised assurance is intended to underscore the security benefits of adhering to and fully complying with the NPT.

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

Conference on Disarmament: Outer Space

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:16:00 +0000

These insights - provided by Theresa Hitchens, Director, UNIDIR - were offered as an abbreviated backgrounder to the current thematic debate in the Conference on Disarmament (CD) on a core issue on the CD’s agenda, the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. Participants in that debate on 5 June will have heard the CD’s president, Ambassador Kahiluotu draw on many of the following points.

The Conference on Disarmament – then the Committee on Disarmament – began formal deliberations of the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) in 1985, with the establishment of an Ad Hoc Committee on PAROS. This followed from several earlier initiatives within the United Nations General Assembly – initiated by the then-Soviet Union in 1981.

The UNGA adopted two resolutions regarding arms control and outer space in 1981: A/RES/36/97, sponsored by the Western Europe and Others Group (WEOG) which asked the CD to negotiate a treaty to ban anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons; and A/RES/36/99, sponsored by the Eastern European states, which urged the Committee to negotiate a treaty banning the placement of weapons in outer space. In 1982, General Assembly resolution A/RES/37/83 called on the then-titled Committee on Disarmament to prioritize the issue of “the prevention of an arms race in outer space” and to establish an ad hoc committee during its 1983 session.

Thus the term PAROS was born as reflecting a compromise between the two earlier, more specific resolutions – which in turn represent long-standing differences that exist to some extent to this day about how to prioritize threats to space security.

The Ad Hoc Committee was tasked “to examine as a first step at this stage, through substantive and general consideration, issues relevant to the prevention of an arms race in outer space.” The programme of work was established as follows:

1. Examination and consideration of issues relevant to PAROS

2. Examination and consideration of existing agreements relevant to PAROS, and

3. Examination and consideration of existing proposals and future initiatives on PAROS.

Unfortunately, the fundamentally different perceptions of security threats, priorities and methods to address them ultimately doomed the Ad Hoc Committee’s efforts. The Committee met annually from 1985 to 1994, each year failing to result in any agreed pathway forward. Differences among states included the question of whether or not new legally binding measures were required, what threats (ASATs vs. weapons in space) were actually real and present dangers, and whether the Committee’s focus should be on substantive discussions or on developing a negotiating mandate. The Ad Hoc Committee’s work finished at the end of its session in 1994; it was not re-established in 1995 because some Member States wanted linkage between the continuation of the PAROS Committee and an Ad Hoc Committee on a Fissile Material Treaty. As such, neither Committee was re-established. Indeed, the linkage between PAROS and a Fissile Material Treaty was for many years the fundamental reason for the CD’s overall paralysis.

In the years following the Ad Hoc Committee’s demise, interest in PAROS at the CD was kept alive essentially by three Member States: Canada, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. In January 1998, Canada proposed a new Ad Hoc Committee to negotiate the non-weaponization of outer space. In a February 2000 working paper, the People’s Republic of China proposed that the PAROS Ad Hoc Committee be revived with a mandate to negotiate a “new international legal instrument prohibiting the testing, deployment, and use of weapons, weapon systems and components in outer space.” In 2002, China and the Russian Federation put forward a working paper outlining possible elements of a future treaty to prevent the deployment of weapons in outer space; in 2008 the two states submitted a draft treaty – based on refinement of their initial proposal in response to comments and discussions over the intervening years – on the Prevention and Placement of Weapons in Outer Space (PPWT). Between 2006 and 2009, Canada submitted four working papers on various PAROS related issues, including verification of a treaty and transparency and confidence-building measures (TCBMs).

In 2009, with the adoption of resolution CD/1864, the long stalemate at the CD regarding its programme of work was broken – in part due to a compromise that de-linked negotiations on PAROS and Fissile Material; instead providing a negotiating mandate on the latter and a discussion mandate for the latter. On PAROS the programme of work would have created a working group to “discuss substantively, without limitation, all issues related to the prevention of an arms race in outer space.” Sadly, the agreement collapsed almost as soon as it was printed. PAROS, however, remains one of the “core” agenda items for the CD and an eventual programme of work.

As the CD continues its efforts to reach agreement on its future activities, Member States should be aware of several other ongoing efforts regarding space security that could impact future PAROS discussions:-

In 2010, the General Assembly established, under A/RES/65/68, a UN Group of Governmental Experts on Transparency and Confidence Building Measures for Outer Space Activities (GGE) to meet in 2012 and 2013. It should be remembered that a similar GGE -- on the “Study and on the application of confidence building measures in outer space” (A/48/305) – resulted in a study that was the subject of positive follow-up consideration by the CD’s Ad Hoc Committee in 1994. If the current GGE is able to reach agreement on a report in 2013, the CD potentially could again be in a position to take such work forward – although there continues to be some disagreement within the Conference between those Member States who see TCBMs as worth pursuit in and of themselves and those who see value in TCBMs only if they are linked to pursuit of a legally binding treaty.

The second on-going effort of note is the European Union’s initiative to develop an international code of conduct for space activities, which is essentially a macro-level norm setting approach. On 5 June 2012, the EU presented its latest draft text at an experts meeting in Vienna and will be launching a political process to refine the text and broaden support. The current draft text covers both military and non-military uses of space, and some TCBM-type elements that again would require consideration in any future PAROS discussions or negotiations within the CD.

Finally, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in Vienna is working to develop best-practice guidelines for space activities in order to promote the “long-term sustainability” of space. This is a largely technical undertaking and the Committee has no mandate to discuss military space operations. However, many of the foundational issues that are being discussed, such as exchange of data on orbital objects and notification of planned maneuvers, are also foundational aspects of any future TCBM or treaty regime. This work is set to conclude with a proposed list of voluntary best practices in 2014.

Thus, there is a vast and growing body of work on PAROS and related issues that the CD could draw upon in future discussions or negotiations. This, in and of itself, is a source for optimism that if the CD begins work on PAROS, progress toward multilateral solutions could be forthcoming relatively rapidly.

Conference on Disarmament: Fissile Material

noreply@blogger.com (Disarmament Insight) — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:09:00 +0000

These insights are offered as an abbreviated backgrounder to the current thematic debate in the Conference on Disarmament (CD) on a core issue on the CD’s agenda, a ban on the production of fissile material (FM), a central ingredient in nuclear weapons. Participants in that debate on 31 May will have heard the CD’s president, Ambassador Kahiluotu draw on some, but not all, of the following points.

There have been many working papers on FM submitted to the CD (or its precursors) culminating in CD/1910 tabled a year ago by eight members (Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey). The first occasion on which a firm focus was provided for fissile material was in June 1964 when the US submitted a working paper to the then Eighteen Nation body (ENCD) about "the inspection of nuclear powers under a cut-off of fissionable material for use in weapons."

Then in 1978, following a Canadian proposal to ban FM for use in weapons, the UN’s first Special Session on Disarmament (SSODI), in a consensus resolution (S-10/2), proclaimed that the achievement of nuclear disarmament would require “urgent negotiation of agreements … with adequate measures of verification … for: … (b) Cessation of the … production of fissionable material for weapons purposes”.

The Cold War and the CD’s pre-occupation with negotiating the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty dominated the scene until 24 March 1995 when Canadian Ambassador Shannon (the CD’s Special Coordinator on FM) produced a report known as the Shannon Mandate calling for an Ad Hoc Committee (AHC) within the CD to negotiate a FM treaty that would be “non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable”. This term was drawn from a UNGA Resolution adopted by consensus in 1993 following a proposal by US President Bill Clinton for negotiations on a treaty to ban the production of FM. It was intended to ensure that the outcome applied the same verification rules to all parties in contrast, for example, to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The Shannon Mandate did not explicitly describe the scope of the negotiations but Shannon made it clear that the establishment of an AHC did not preclude any delegation from raising for consideration in the subsidiary body any of the issues noted in his report including the highly contentious one of whether pre-existing stocks of FM would be covered by the eventual treaty.

Uptake of the Shannon Mandate was not immediate, and discussions on forming a subsidiary body to negotiate a FM Treaty (or Fissban) stalled. Non-aligned members of the CD (NAM) insisted that progress towards the negotiation of such an agreement should be linked to progress towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, another core issue on the CD’s agenda. The NAM called for a specific timetable for nuclear disarmament. The five NPT-recognised nuclear weapons states disagreed with this linkage but several subsequently made linkages of their own including to the negotiation of another core issue, the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space.

In 1998, in the wake of India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear tests, a breakthrough was achieved when the CD formally established an AHC to negotiate a treaty in accordance with the Shannon Mandate. But the Committee met for only 3 weeks. Despite many attempts to renew it, that mandate (CD/1299), remains unimplemented.

It has been blocked for various periods since 1998 by difficulties confronting just two delegations at separate times and has continued to be stymied also by linkages drawn with other core issues on the CD’s agenda including nuclear disarmament.

To sum up, the history of FM in the CD is inextricably linked in one way or another to progress on nuclear disarmament. The challenge facing the CD is not to determine whether one issue is riper than another but to deal with both issues in tandem or, more manageably, in sequence. To many states the obvious way forward – albeit highly controversial - is the inclusion of pre-existing FM stocks in the negotiation mandate, as Shannon sought to do, investing the process with joint non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament objectives.

This is not the same thing as inclusion of stocks in the eventual treaty. Compromise may lie, for example, in an outcome under which it would be agreed that existing stocks would not directly be dealt with in the treaty except as part of a broader framework. Such stocks could be covered by a separate protocol (as proposed by Algeria in 1998 (CD/1545), or be subject to a phased, multi-faceted approach entailing binding unilateral or plurilateral declarations or other binding commitments by the nuclear weapons-possessing states – see, for instance Brazil’s proposal in 2010 (CD/1888).

Shedding light on these or other variations and possibilities through the current formal discussions may, it is to be hoped, facilitate consensus on a FM mandate, and help the CD resolve its longstanding impasse over determining its negotiating priorities (also known as settling its Programme of Work).

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

The symbol is drawn from Microsoft Clip Art.