Creative Options for the CD Part 2

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

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...?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie and Tim Caughley

Back to Basics in the Conference on Disarmament

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

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

Civil Society and Humanitarian Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

Viewing nuclear weapons through a humanitarian lens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Borrie

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

Conference on Disarmament (CD) - Echoes of the Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

List of relevant links:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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