"The acceptance of a core of universal, human values
does not mean a submission to the consumerism of any empire."
- Prime Minister Ralph E. Gonsalves, Saint Vincent and
the Grenadines, General Assembly General Debate, 28 September
2007
The holiday season is upon us, the season supposedly of peace
and "goodwill toward man" [SIC!] - and for some,
gifts.
However, as reported in the 1998 UNDP Human Development Report,
"Today's consumption is undermining the environmental
resource base. It is exacerbating inequalities. And the dynamics
of the consumption-poverty-inequality-environment nexus are
accelerating. If the trends continue without change—not
redistributing from high-income to low-income consumers, not
shifting from polluting to cleaner goods and production technologies,
not promoting goods that empower poor producers, not shifting
priority from consumption for conspicuous display to meeting
basic needs—today's problems of consumption and human
development will worsen."
Instead of engaging in what the Prime Minister Gonsalves
"a shallow consumer ethic driven by multinational
corporations whose sole interest is to create a standardised
population of global purchasers," why not contribute
to one of the most instrumental projects working for the abolition
of nuclear weapons, complete and general disarmament, and
the reduction of militarism and military spending? There is
still time - always time - for you to give a much-needed,
immeasurably appreciated, tax-free (in the US) donation to
Reaching Critical Will.
WILPF created the Reaching Critical Will project to serve
YOU - the global community of disarmament experts, analysts,
and activists, and members of the general public who want
to know what goes on inside the UN and other multilateral
fora on matters of disarmament. You understand how crucial
the RCW project is to our community; it is up to you to help
ensure RCW's ability to continue providing the services we
do, especially as we gear up for the next NPT
PrepCom.
Consider giving yourself, your family, or your friends a
holiday gift by donating to Reaching Critical Will. A gift
in the amount of $100, $500, or $1000 will help RCW follow
through with our NPT plans, which include:
- publishing an updated and more comprehensive edition of
the Model Nuclear Inventory;
- daily reporting in the News
in Review;
- coordinating and publishing the NGO presentations;
- facilitating side events at the PrepCom;
- organizing an NGO orientation session at the start of the
PrepCom;
- holding daily briefings between NGOs and government delegations;
and much, much more.
RCW is also going to be active in the upcoming , in February-March 2008. We are
teaming up with WILPF's
project to produce a variety of materials about military spending
in comparison to spending on gender equality and the advancement
of women. We also intend to continue updating and improving
our resources on critical issues such as Iran, outer space
security, the military-industrial complex, disarmament and
development, and more.
But we need your help. A donation to Reaching Critical Will
is an easy, powerful way to give support to the entire international
disarmament community.
Jane Addams Peace Association
777 UN Plaza, 6th floor
New York, NY 10017
(Be sure to put RCW in the memo line.)
Happy holidays to RCW - and to the planet.
In peace,
Ray Acheson, Project Associate
1) General Assembly votes on First
Committee resolutions
On 5 December 2007, the General Assembly took action on First
Committee resolutions. The results have been posted on the
RCW First Committee resolutions page, at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com07/res/resindex.html.
In addition, the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security
teamed up with RCW intern Anna Walther to update the Voting
Results Charts, which are available as follows:
2) International Women's Day Disarmament
Seminar 2008
On 5-6 March 2008 in Geneva, the and the are co-sponsoring
the International Women's Day Disarmament Seminar: At What
Cost? Wars, Weapons, and Conflict Prevention.
WILPF and the Geneva Forum are working together in 2008 to
mark International Women's Day and the 30th anniversary of
the First
Special Session on Disarmament of the UN General Assembly,
which in 1978 produced a visionary document at a high point
of international consensus and alarm around the dangerous
waste of human and economic resources on armaments.
A panel discussion will take place on 6 March 2008 at UN
Headquarters in Geneva, during which experts and prominent
persons will provide new analysis and shocking facts on the
financial, political, environmental, and opportunity costs
of military security versus human security. In addition, WILPF,
as a vibrant member of the Geneva NGO Working Group on Peace
and NGO Committee for Disarmament will organize a day of information,
training, and lobbying on 5 March 2008.
These events will honour the late Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg,
a woman who left a remarkable legacy to those working for
peace, disarmament, and conflict prevention. She studied and
made known global military policies, arms holdings, production
and trade, and arms control and peace-building efforts. Randy
combined expertise, passion, and action, the very elements
required today to prevent conflicts, to freeze and reverse
the wasting of human and economic resources on weapons that
kill and mutilate in wars that pollute and destroy.
Please mark these dates in your calendar and start planning
your participation. For more information, contact the Geneva
Forum at mccarthy@hei.unige.ch
or WILPF at inforequest@wilpf.ch.
3) Iran news and analysis
On 3 December 2007, a new , representing the consensus view
of all 16 US spy agencies, said that Iran is not currently
seeking nuclear weapons, nor will it be capable of producing
enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon until
at least 2010. The report concludes that Iran halted its nuclear
weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold,
contradicting an assessment two years ago that Tehran was
working "inexorably" toward building a bomb.
Mainstream media has either presented this report as undermining
neoconservative arguments for war with Iran, or, as justifying
sanctions against Iran and as evidence that Iran has a "latent"
intention to develop nuclear weapons. US President Bush
the report was a "warning signal" and his view that
a nuclear Iran would be a danger "hasn't changed,"
adding "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran
will be dangerous if they have the know-how to make a nuclear
weapon." Meanwhile, in remarks to reporters outside the
Security Council, US Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad, said, "the NIE says that there was
a covert military dedicated nuclear weapons program."
However, as Michael Spies of the points out, "Scant evidence
exists in the public domain to back up the administration's
assertion that Iran had engaged in the determined pursuit
to acquire a credible nuclear arsenal. It is crucial to also
note in this context that the IAEA has affirmed that the NIE
account corroborates with their dramatically less alarmist
understanding of Iran's nuclear capacity and past program."
Spies further argues, "The important question that
doesn't get asked isn't so much whether Iran had a nuclear
weapon program but what does the NIE mean by Iran had a nuclear
weapons program. Obviously we aren't taking about the Manhattan
project here. In this context, it is equally important to
emphasize what we haven't seen in Iran, which are signs of
a large-scale military-industrial effort to weaponize nuclear
materials. The bottom line is that there's little evidence
to suggest much beyond paper studies and laboratory scale
experiments in Iran related to possible nuclear weapons.
Moreover, far short of the NIE's triumphalist conclusion that
any change in Iranian policy is attributable to an aggressive
US posture -- pressure tactics and the threat of sanctions
and force -- a more honest narrative of Iran's nuclear program
would note that Iran originated its clandestine nuclear fuel
cycle program at the height of its war with Iraq (a country
that was pursuing nuclear weapons and had been using chemical
weapons against Iran) and that Iran ended its alleged weapons
work subsequent to the US invasion of Iraq."
Furthermore, sanctions were not applied against Iran in 2003.
Three EU states - France, Germany, and the UK - offered Iran
technical cooperation with its nuclear program in exchange
for full transparency. Talks between Iran and the EU3 and
the IAEA continued on-and-off August 2005; the matter was
not referred to the Security Council until February 2006.
4) Updated RCW resource on missiles
RCW has updated its online resources about missiles to include
information on the Third Panel of Government Experts and recent
debate over missiles in the General Assembly First Committee.
The pages also offer a history of missile control regimes,
an overview of export controls, the Missile Technology Control
Regime, and the Hague Code of Conduct, and links to further
reading. If you or your organization would like their work
on missiles posted, please send links to ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org.
5) NGO activism on the US-India deal
The Arms Control Association, the Abolition 2000 Secretariat,
and the US-India Working Group of Abolition 2000 are circulating
a letter to Nuclear Supplier Group governments and governments
represented on the IAEA Board of Directors about the US-India
Deal, and have asked for organizations to sign-on:
Crunch time is approaching for the US-India nuclear deal.
Recognizing that they only have a small window of opportunity
to finalize the deal before the US Presidential election
gets in the way, the governments of both countries are mounting
a last ditch effort to clinch a safeguards agreement with
the IAEA and gain a special India-specific exemption from
the guidelines of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group
(NSG). The IAEA safeguards agreement and the NSG exemption
are required before the US Congress can approve the bi-lateral
agreement.
We have launched this international sign-on letter, because
we are gravely concerned about the implications of the US-India
nuclear deal for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
Reports suggest that the deal could be pushed through the
IAEA and NSG as early as January 2008, so we are aiming
to collect as many organizational sign-ons as possible by
20 December and to send the letter to governments
at the beginning of January 2008.
The letter is written in a way that presents some basic
facts about why the deal is problematic, raises key issues
for the recipient governments to consider, and makes a number
of recommendations about what should/should not be done.
It attempts to stake out the "maximalist" position
while also trying to address the specific legal and policy
questions that might resonate with the broadest range of
NSG governments.
Signed:
Daryl Kimball,
Executive Director, Arms Control Association, USA
Stephen Staples,
Global Secretariat, Abolition 2000
(Director, Rideau Institute on International Affairs, Canada)
Philip White,
Coordinator, Abolition 2000 US-India Deal Working Group
(International Liaison Officer, Citizens' Nuclear Information
Center,
Japan)
6) Disarmament Calendar 2008
RCW has created a new Disarmament Calendar, which keeps track
of significant events related to disarmament, including meetings
of international multilateral fora and intergovernmental organizations,
as well as grassroots actions and civil society conferences.
Check it out at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/disarmcal08.html
- and please submit any events you would like advertised to
ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org.
7) Good news: Ireland bans uranium
exploration
Using New Zealand as an example, the Irish government has
not to allow uranium mining in Ireland. Natural Resources
Minister Eamon Ryan said, "It would be hypocritical to
permit the extraction of uranium for use in nuclear reactors
in other countries, while the nuclear generation of electricity
is not allowed in Ireland, and particularly while the Irish
government continues to object to the operation of nuclear
power generation at Sellafield (on the north-west coast of
England) and other locations." He also pointed to the
significant environmental and public health concerns surrounding
uranium mining, including contamination of ground and surface
water supplies and radiation levels, and explained the decision
not to grant a licence followed "the example set by other
countries who remain opposed to the nuclear generation of
electricity, such as New Zealand."
November 30
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
After First Committee finished its sixty-second session,
the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom engaged
with the issue of cluster munitions, by monitoring and reporting
on the meetings of the States Parties to the Convention on
Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), collecting all documents
and statements, and creating an to help other members of civil society get involved.
In addition to assisting with these reports, RCW has been
completing the First Committee voting results chart, keeping
up to date with news and analysis of Iran's nuclear programme,
and updating or creating a variety of informative fact sheets
and backgrounders, available on the RCW website. Stay tuned
in the coming weeks for new releases and exciting project
updates.
In peace,
Ray Acheson, Project Associate
1) Reports from the CCW meetings:
Getting rid of cluster munitions
Immediately after the First Committee finished its sixty-second
session, most disarmament ambassadors returned to Geneva to
participate in a series of meetings on the Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons (CCW), held from 5-13 November 2007.
The central issue of the Meeting of High Contracting Parties
to the CCW was whether the CCW will be able to adopt a negotiation
mandate on cluster munitions. The CCW also held the First
Conference of the High Contracting Parties to Protocol V of
the CCW, on Explosive Remnants of War, and the First Conference
of the High Contracting Parties to Amended Protocol II of
the CCW, on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines,
Booby-Traps and Other Devices. Both of these meetings also
addressed the issue of cluster munitions.
Information on cluster munitions
Cluster munitions are weapons that consist of one carrier
container filled with separate bomblets. A cluster bomb can
contain anywhere from 9 to several hundred bomblets. When
dropped, the bomb is designed to open mid-air and distribute
the bomblets so that they will explode on impact, affecting
an area that can be as wide as several football fields. Cluster
munitions are neither accurate nor reliable. Bomblets often
malfunction, and fail to explode on impact, laying in wait
until some unsuspecting person disturbs it. Unexploded cluster
munitions continue to kill for decades after conflicts are
over. 98% of their victims are civilians.
Banning cluster munitions
There has been great interest in creating a legally-binding
prohibition on the production, stockpiling, and use of cluster
munitions, from both governments and civil society. However,
there are a few states who are less enthusiastic about such
a ban; and even among states who support a ban, disagreement
over the negotiation mandate and forum abounds. Some argue
a protocol within the CCW should be negotiated, others believe
a separate process, such as the Oslo Process, would result
in a more robust treaty that emphasizes victim assistance.
The Oslo Process was initiated by Norway after the failure
of the Third Review Conference of the CCW to adopt a negotiation
mandate on cluster munitions. At a Conference in Oslo in February
2007, 46 States signed a Declaration pledging to conclude
in 2008 an international treaty prohibiting cluster munitions
that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. Now more than 80
countries are participating in the Process and will meet in
Vienna in December 2007 to begin negotiations on the text
of a treaty.
For more information, please see WILPF's cluster munitions
resources:
Reports from the CCW meetings
WILPF's disarmament intern Katherine Harrison dutifully covered
all three meetings, with an emphasis on their impact on the
cluster munition debate. Her reports, along with government
statements and official documents, are all available online:
Protocol V (Explosive Remnants of War):
Amended Protocol II (Prohibitions or Restrictions on the
Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices):
Meeting of High Contracting Parties to the CCW:
Materials for civil society
Katherine has also prepared several resources for members
of civil society to become involved with the process to ban
the production and use of cluster munitions, including:
2) Voting Results Chart from First
Committee now available
The Reaching Critical Will team compiled an online database
of voting results from the 5 permanent members of the Security
Council, and the 65 members of the Conference on Disarmament.
Use this chart to see how your government voted in comparison
with others - direct links to voting results and explanations
of vote are included. When the General Assembly votes on these
resolutions again in early December, we will update the chart
accordingly.
3) Update on Iran: IAEA Report
The IAEA Director General released a new report
on the implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and
relevant Security Council provisions in Iran. Media spin on
the issue undermines several key points of the report, including,
as noted by Michael Spies of the the expanded chronology of
Iran's acquisition of nuclear fuel cycle technology, placing
the development of Iran's nuclear program in the context of
the program started by the Shah, and, more importantly, the
revised history of the 1987 offer from the Khan network and
the civilian origin of the decision to pursue uranium enrichment
in paragraphs 10 and 11. Also important is Iran's explanation
for the development (or lack thereof) of the P-2 centrifuge,
which seems to check out, and as always, the IAEA has been
able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material
in Iran.
Despite all of this, the US is intent on imposing stricter
sanctions, arguing "only a strong resolution with new
and biting sanctions will give diplomacy a chance to succeed."
Furthermore, the US, the UK, France, and Germany
the IAEA Board of Governors that "a wait-and-see approach
is not an option," arguing that Iran has not done enough
to win their trust, and that the UN should now consider tougher
sanctions: "We recognize Iran has taken some steps in
the right direction but we are disappointed that cooperation
is of a partial and reactive nature ... all in all, the results
are not encouraging."
4) 2008 NPT Preparatory Committee:
Preliminary information for NGOs
The Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Review Conference of
nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will hold its second session
from 28 April to 9 May 2007 in Geneva. RCW has posted some
preliminary information for participation of NGOs on the website,
including information on scheduling side events, calls for
submissions of feature articles and artwork for the daily
NGO newsletter, the News in Review, and information on advertising
in the News in Review. See http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/2008index.html
for this information, and check back regularly for updates.
NGO Side Events
NGOs will reserve one conference room for their use throughout
the Preparatory Committee. If your organization wishes to
organize an event, we encourage you to book your time slot
as soon as possible. Send an email
to the Project Associate with the title of your event, the
time and date, and contact information. Events will all be
posted on the Calendar
of Events on the Reaching Critical Will website as well
as in the daily News in Review.
News in Review
The News in Review is a daily publication produced
during NPT Preparatory Committee and Review Conferences. It
features analysis of the day's events, feature articles from
NGOs around the world, interviews with diplomats and NGO representatives,
nuclear facts, announcements, cartoons, a calendar of events,
and more. You can access archived NIRs online.
We encourage you to submit to this year's News in Review.
The guidelines are as follows:
Feature articles: In addition to the daily analysis
of the proceedings of the PrepCom, the News in Review
also contains feature articles that cover a range of nuclear
disarmament issues. We welcome submissions from NGO experts
around the world, regardless of whether or not you will be
in Geneva. Articles should be between 500-1000 words. The
deadline for feature submissions is 18 April. Please submit
in .doc format and the body of the email. Articles will be
attributed to the author and may be edited for length.
Advertising space: You can use the News in Review
to publicize an important announcement, event, or project
hosted by your organization. NIRs are hand-distributed to
all of the delegates at the PrepCom, sent by email to more
than 2000 subscribers, and are archived on our website.
1/4 page ad: $35
1/2 page ad: $55
full page ad: $125
back page ad: $180
(Run your ad twice and get $10 off. Run your add three times
and get $20 off. Run your ad four times and get $30 off.)
Cartoons, photos, artwork, poetry: The News in Review
wouldn't be complete without its fill of poignant, satirical,
and beautiful artwork. We are accepting all forms of anti-nuclear
artwork, to be sent in either a .jpg, .gif, or .pdf file.
Photos, paintings, doodles, cartoons, collage, mixed media,
and drawings are all welcome.
Submit your ad, article, or artwork by sending:
* your organization's name;
* contact person;
* email address;
* phone number;
* type of submission (for ads, please specify the size of
the ad, dates for it to run, and payment method); and
* the submission
to the Project
Associate. The deadline for all submissions is 18 April.
5) Internship positions available
at RCW
RCW is seeking qualified interns for January - May 2008. We
are looking for responsible, experienced researchers to help
update Reaching Critical Will's Model
Nuclear Inventory, assist with administrative tasks, and
help prepare for the 2008 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Preparatory Committee.
Qualified applicants will have excellent writing and research
skills, knowledge of international relations, and be available
for at least 12 hours a week during normal business hours.
Those interested should email (no phone calls please) the
Project Associate at ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org
with:
- cover letter explaining interest in the project and the
organization; also indicate availability
- resume/CV
- 2 brief relevant writing samples (2000 words or less)
- two references
Please distribute this announcement widely to your networks
and friends!
6) New RCW resource on SSOD IV
In the brief gap between the end of First Committee and the
next stages of the Conference
on Disarmament, the UN
Disarmament Commission, and the NPT
review cycle, RCW has created an information resource
for the fourth special session on disarmament.
A special session on disarmament is a world summit, attended
by high level government officials of United Nations member
states, including heads of state, foreign ministers, and technical
advisors, who convene at the General Assembly to discuss and
decide upon the best ways to comprehensively and effectively
control, reduce, and eliminate global armaments.
A fourth special session of the General Assembly devoted
to disarmament (SSOD IV) is arguably the best chance for the
international community to break the current impasse in disarmament
and non-proliferation. SSOD
I, held in 1978, was the largest meeting of states ever
convened to consider the question of disarmament. For the
first time, consensus on a comprehensive disarmament strategy
was reached, which was embodied in the Final Document adopted
at the session. SSOD I eloquently registered the absurdity
of the arms race, and represented the height of envisioning
disarmament. However, the of SSOD I, and its , are yet to be implemented. Despite two more
special sessions, in 1982
and 1988,
disarmament is still an aspiration, not a reality.
7) Students for a Nuclear Weapons-Free
World
On United Nations Day, 24 October 2007, Dr. Hans Blix, President
of the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA),
launched Students for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World, to engage
young people from diverse academic disciplines in preparations
for the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty 2010 Review Conference. Students
for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World is a program of essay writing,
video interviews, and poster design, on the theme of nuclear
disarmament. It aims to "inspire students around the
world to do independent research and analyze the case for
nuclear disarmament, and to address the following question:
"What do you think can lead governments to stay away
from, or do away with, nuclear weapons?" The authors
of the best submissions in all three categories will be invited
to present their ideas at a conference at the Palais des Nations,
Geneva, in the summer of 2008.
WFUNA has also established an online forum, Global Disarmament
Hub ()
to engage young people in the discussion of disarmament issues.
Use this link to find out more information about the program
and for information on where to send submissions.
November 13
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
The sixty-second session of the General
Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International
Security closed on Friday, 2 November 2007. It was a rather
uneventful session, with a few key highlights (see below).
Most delegations continued to lament the lack of progress
in disarmament and non-proliferation, especially in the Conference
on Disarmament (CD). They called for the adoption of the comprehensive
programme of work in the CD at the beginning of 2008, and
expressed hope for success at the next nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty Preparatory Committee. It would be preferable if First
Committee itself was used more effectively to advance the
cause of disarmament and international security, rather than
as a stage from which to "urge" consensus in another
forum. In his remarks on 18 October, Ambassador
Landman of the Netherlands paraphrased Victor Hugo, announcing
that the time will come when the instruments of war, and in
particular weapons of mass destruction, "will be on show
in museums in the same way as today one can visit and inspect
instruments of torture, fashionable in the Middle Ages and
thereafter. And we would all be wondering that such weapons
have existed and their use ever contemplated." To reach
this point, governments, diplomats, and civil society need
to not just theorize about the new (collective) security environment
they envision, but to work towards it.
Best wishes,
Ray Acheson, Project Associate
1) First Committee closes
In his closing remarks on 2 November, First Committee Chairperson
Paul
Badji outlined the "productivity" of the 2007
session: more than 315 statements
delivered and 52 draft
texts adopted. If productivity can be measured by volume
of paper circulated, then First Committee was extremely successful.
If, however, we turn to Badji's question of whether or not
First Committee "advanced the cause of disarmament and
international security," the 2007 session could best
be characterized as underwhelming.
However, there were some bright spots that inspire us to
continue our work - draft resolutions on de-alerting nuclear
weapons and on depleted uranium in armour and ammunition were
introduced and adopted. Sierra Leone is pushing for human
security to be added as a topic for Thematic Debate next year.
And there were more panel discussions with experts than usual,
leading to very interesting, candid, informal debate between
delegates and panelists. For the second year in a row, civil
society was invited to deliver presentations to First Committee.
Five non-government organization representatives spoke about
nuclear weapons, outer space security, small arms, and the
Arms Trade Treaty. Read their statements online at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com07/statements/statements.html#ngo.
Reaching Critical Will maintains online archives of important
information from First Committee - please explore the following
resources:
Voting Results Chart
The Reaching Critical Will team is currently compiling an
online database of voting results from the 5 permanent members
of the Security Council, and the 65 members of the Conference
on Disarmament. The Security Council chart is online now at
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com07/res/voteindexSC.html.
The CD members chart will be available soon.
2) Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg,
leader of the Nuclear Freeze, passes away
Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg, executive director of the Institute
of Defense and Disarmament Studies, political science professor
at City College of New York, and instrumental figure in the
Nuclear Freeze movement, passed away on 19 October 2007.
Dr. Forsberg consistently argued for the complete abolition
of war as an aberration of humankind, and worked for a world
in which weapons and war would no longer be socially-sanctioned,
where they would be as obsolete and morally reprehensible
as slavery. While working as a typist for the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute in Sweden, she received "a paid
education in what countries were spending" on weapons
and what tools of warfare they were buying. Nearly a decade
after returning to the US, Dr. Forsberg launched the Nuclear
Freeze movement in 1980 when she wrote the "Call to Halt
the Nuclear Arms Race," a position paper that outlined
the devastating potential of the arsenals possessed by the
United States and the Soviet Union. Its message was to improve
national and international security by stopping the superpowers'
buildup of nuclear weapons, through a verifiable and mutual
freeze "on the testing, production and deployment of
nuclear weapons" and their delivery systems. She portrayed
the freeze as the first step in a broader agenda to eventually
abolish not only nuclear weapons but all national military
forces. The paper unified disparate peace groups and sparked
a nationwide grass-roots campaign.
Though we note Dr. Forsberg's passing with great sorrow,
we are confident that her vision and work will be carried
on by those who share her belief that our better nature will
prevail, and that the abolition of nuclear and conventional
weapons is possible—and inevitable. A memorial for Dr.
Forsberg will be held in December at the City College of New
York, and a scholarship is being established in her name.
For more information, please email ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org.
3) Global Fissile Material Report
2007 released
The , an independent group
of arms-control and nonproliferation experts from both nuclear
weapon and non-nuclear weapon states, released its Global
Fissile Material Report 2007 on 9 October. The report is available
for download at .
An event to launch the report was held during First Committee,
which was covered in the First Committee Monitor (see
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/FCM07/week2.html#fissile).
The mission of the IPFM is to analyze the technical basis
for practical and achievable policy initiatives to secure,
consolidate, and reduce stockpiles of highly enriched uranium
and plutonium. The project is co-chaired by Dr. R. Rajaraman,
Professor Emeritus, of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,
India and Professor Frank von Hippel of Princeton University.
4) Scotland aims to keep nuclear
submarines out
As reported in the of the : "The involving politicians,
unions, environmentalists (including Acronym Institute's director,
Rebecca Johnson) and church leaders in Glasgow on October
22. The Scottish government has now set up a working group
to look at "the various devolved powers that could be
used to stop Trident's successor being brought to Scotland".
According to the Scotsman, the group will "look at international
law, transport, planning and the environment as possible obstacles
to the UK government's plans. The Scottish Government, for
example, could refuse planning permission for a dry dock to
service the nuclear submarines or use international law to
prevent 'war crimes' being committed in Scotland." Scottish
First Minister Alex Salmond has written to 122 NPT states
parties asking them to support a at future meetings
of the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)."
October 10
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
The UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and
International Security began on Monday, 8 October. After the
first few days of General Debate, most delegations appear
optimistic about the possibilities for progress before them,
and are eager for the momentum created in the Conference on
Disarmament this year to carry on throughout the First Committee.
Unfortunately, the usual signs of resistance from certain
delegations are already clear; however, as the representative
from Honduras said, peace is a "constant aspiration"
that should be a "permanent reality", and the First
Committee is another chance to take a few small steps in this
direction.
In peace,
Ray Acheson, Project Associate
1) First Committee begins
The First Committee is the UN committee of the General Assembly
that deals with issues of disarmament and international security.
All UN member states are welcome to attend, debate the issues,
and draft, negotiate, and vote on resolutions during this
4-5 week session every October. This year, the session will
run from Monday, 8 October to Friday, 2 November. Please see
the First Committee timetable
and schedule for thematic
debate for more information, and see RCW's Calendar
of Events for NGO and UN side events that will be going
on during the session.
Following the failure in the Conference
on Disarmament to agree to a program of work yet again,
there is hope that the First Committee will use this session
to urge progress on the impasse. The First Committee has the
procedural advantage of voting, giving it options unavailable
to the deadlocked Conference on Disarmament (CD), which operates
by consensus. While the resolutions adopted in the First Committee
and General Assembly are not legally-binding, they can be
normative—that is, they can indicate the establishment
of customs, standards, and guidelines for appropriate behavior.
In the past, disarmament and arms control treaties have also
been put forward to the First Committee. Resolutions adopted
by consensus also indicate substantive areas of agreement
that are ripe for negotiation and can enable the creation
of new treaties and the emergence of international legal norms.
Furthermore, they demonstrate global governmental opinion,
showing which governments support, and which choose to remain
outside of or even impede, the development of international
cooperative security. (For more information, please see RCW's
General Assembly fact sheet: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/factsheets/ga.pdf)
Reaching Critical Will monitors the First Committee and catalogs
all statements, non-papers, and resolutions. We have already
started posting the statements
from the General Debate. RCW also coordinates NGO reporting
on the First Committee, and publishes issue-based summaries
in the weekly First Committee Monitor. The first edition
will be published Monday, 15 October. The HTML version
is chock-full of hyper-links to more information, treaty texts,
and organizations, and the PDF version prints into an accessible,
attractive newsletter. We encourage you to use this easy resource
to see what your government is saying and doing on disarmament
in the international arena. There is no other source following
these issues as closely. To receive this weekly newsletter
by email, send an email to ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org
with "subscribe First Committee Monitor" in the
subject line - and please indicate whether you prefer the
HTML or PDF version, or both.
Advertising space: You can use the First Committee
Monitor to publicize an important announcement, event, or
project hosted by your organization. Monitors are hand delivered
to all of the delegates at the First Committee every Monday,
distributed through a free email subscription list, and are
archived on our website. By placing an ad in the Monitor,
you will be able to get your message across to hundreds of
well-informed members of the disarmament community. Please
contact the Project
Associate for advertising rates and requirements.
2) Keep Space for Peace Week
WILPF is once again co-sponsoring Keep Space for Peace Week
(October 4-13) with . The
week will be full of events and protests, listed on the Global
Network website. The weaponization of space will lead to an
increase in geopolitical tensions, a decrease of transparency
and international security, and the proliferation of space
debris, which, after 50 years of space activity, already poses
a considerable hazard to spacecraft. For more information,
please see RCW's backgrounders on the Prevention
of an Arms Race in Outer Space and the Aerospace
Industry, Global Network's , and the .
3) Depleted Uranium conference closes
On 2-3 October 2007, the Fourth International Conference on
Depleted Uranium ( DU) Weapons was held in New York City.
This conference was hosted by the , and covered
a range of topics from scientific studies on the effects of
DU to legal perspectives on banning DU weapons and armour.
RCW drafted a report on the conference, which is available
online at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/factsheets/du.html#report.
4) UN Secretary-General Advisory
Board on Disarmament Matters releases report
The report
recommends the Secretary-General raise awareness on disarmament
and non-proliferation; suggests the establishment of a high-level
panel on the issue of outer space; discusses newly emerging
weapon technologies, regional approaches to disarmament, and
more. The report also references the NGO publications and .
September 20
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
Both the Conference on Disarmament and the CTBT Entry Into
Force Conference concluded in September, while the General
Assembly has just opened its 62nd session. As the General
Assembly begins its work, the challenges and issues are clearly
laid out. WILPF believes that through confidence-building
measures, the strengthening of verification systems and regimes,
and strict adherence to international law, nuclear disarmament
is possible. We do not have to reinvent the wheel—we
just have to support, use, and reinforce the existing viable
and effective tools we have already created through diplomacy
and multilateralism. It is imperative that the citizens of
the world continue monitoring, questioning, and pressuring
their governments to support the strengthening of international
treaties such as the CTBT and fora such as the CD, with faith
that international law will prevail over the absurdity of
nuclear militarism.
Best wishes,
Ray Acheson, Project Associate
1) CTBT Entry Into Force Conference
concludes
The fifth
Article XIV Conference was held 17-18 September 2007 in
Vienna, Austria. Member states adopted the on 18 September, in which states "affirmed
the importance and urgency of signatures and ratifications
without delay to achieve early entry into force of the Treaty
as one of the practical steps for the systematic and progressive
efforts towards nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation".
They also called upon all states to sustain the voluntary
moratorium on nuclear explosions, and to "refrain from
acts which would defeat the object and purpose of the Treaty.
In addition, the document outlines eleven practical measures
to promote the Treaty's entry into force.
Other key statements included those by CTBTO Executive Secretary
, Conference Presidents H.E. (Foreign Minister of Austria) and (Foreign Minister of Costa Rica),
and , Special Representative to promote the CTBT
ratification process. Many of the speakers emphasized the
universal importance of the entry into force of the CTBT as
a tool of international, regional, and national security and
of human security. H.E. Ugarte of Costa Rica noted that the
CTBT "also helps prevent further devastation of human
health and the global environment," and that it's entry
into force "would greatly reduce the climate of distrust
and discontent which has been penetrating the field of disarmament,
which distorts all discussions and which makes it even more
difficult to address some of today's key challenges posed
by the threats of nuclear proliferation."
The NGO
statement was delivered on 18 September. The statement
was endorsed by 42 organizations. The full version is available
on the RCW website, as is the WILPF
statement. Along with the rest of the international community,
WILPF urges China, Colombia, DPRK, Egypt, India, Indonesia,
Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the US to sign and ratify the
CTBT. Every state has more to gain by ratifying the Treaty
than by remaining outside of the international cooperative
security regime.
For more information on the Conference and the CTBT in general,
and access to the statements to the Conference, please see
the RCW
website.
2) The CD closes its third and final
session for 2007
The CD's annual
report was adopted by consensus in the last formal plenary
on 13 September. The report reflects the progress of the 2007
session towards consensus on a program of work, chronicling
the development of the "Presidential Proposal",
making note of the intensive consultations between the P6
and delegations held before, between, and throughout the 2007
sessions, and outlining the P6 decision to appoint Coordinators
to chair informal meetings on each of the seven agenda items.
The report also notes the situation that developed in the
CD when certain Member States continued to block consensus
on the Proposal while the majority of the Conference was ready
to move forward. Looking ahead to continuing the progress
made in the CD this year, many delegations took the floor
to express their frustration and hopes for achieving a consensus
on the L.1 package. Governmental
statements and the final
CD Report can be accessed on the RCW website.
As this year's session of the Conference on Disarmament draws
to a close, it is evident that there is a sense of pragmatic
and cautious optimism in the Conference chamber about the
coming year. While many delegations are frustrated and disappointed
that the CD was unable to reach consensus on a program of
work, there is a clear sense of wanting to build on what the
CD was able to accomplish this year, to continue the momentum
into next year's work, and to achieve concrete results.
3) UN General Assembly - RCW's Disarmament
Index and First Committee Monitor
The UN General Assembly opened its 62nd session on Tuesday,
18 September. The General Debate will begin on Tuesday, 25
September. Heads of state, foreign ministers, or other high-level
representatives will address the entire international community
to express their state's concerns, priorities, and opinions.
During the General Debate, RCW complies all references to
disarmament, peace, and security, and creates an online index
by country and by topic. The statements from the General Debate
will give us an idea of the issues on which governments will
be focusing during the General Assembly First Committee, which
begins on October 8.
First Committee Monitor
Reaching Critical Will follows the General Assembly First
Committee (beginning Monday, 8 October) and publishes issue-based
summaries of the negotiations, resolutions, and votes. We
send our First
Committee Monitor to our email lists in HTML and PDF
form, and make it available online. The HTML version is chock-full
of hyper-links to more information, treaty texts, and organizations,
and the PDF version prints into an accessible, attractive
newsletter. We encourage you to use this easy resource to
see what your government is saying and doing on disarmament
in the international arena. There is no other source following
these issues as closely. To receive this weekly newsletter
by email, send an email to ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org
with "subscribe First Committee Monitor" in the
subject line - and please indicate whether you prefer the
HTML or PDF version, or both.
Advertising space: You can use the First Committee
Monitor to publicize an important announcement, event,
or project hosted by your organization. Monitors are distributed
to all of the delegates at the First Committee every Monday,
through a free email subscription, and are archived on our
website, www.reachingcriticalwill.org . By placing an ad in
the Monitor, you will be able to get your message across
to hundreds of well-informed members of the disarmament community.
1/4 page ad: $35
1/2 page ad: $55
full page ad: $125
back page ad: $180
(Run your ad twice and get $10 off. Run your add three times
and get $20 off. Run your ad four times and you get $30 off.)
Submit your ad by sending:
* your organization's name;
* contact person;
* email address;
* phone number;
* type of submission (for ads, please specify the size of
the ad, dates for it to run, and payment method);
* and the submission (in PDF format)
4) Space Security Index 2007 just
released by Project Ploughshares Space Security 2007 is comprehensive source of data
and analysis on space activities and their cumulative impact
on the security of outer space.The report is part of an annual
series produced the Space Security Index, whose partners include
the Cypress Fund for Peace and Security, the Institute of
Air and Space Law at McGill University, Project Ploughshares,
Secure World Foundation, the Simons Centre for Disarmament
and Non-Proliferation Research at the University of British
Columbia, and the Space Generation Foundation. It is supported
by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International
Trade and the Ford Foundation.
The Space Security 2007 publication is available as
a free download at
along with an overview of the survey results. Hard copies
can be purchased from Project Ploughshares, which coordinates
the Space Security Index project.
For more information, or to purchase a hard copy of the report,
please contact Jessica West, jwest[at]ploughshares.ca.
5) Other disarmament and non-proliferation
conferences in October
On 2-3 October, the International Coalition to Ban
Uranium Weapons is holding its 2007 Conference, on "Uranium
Weapons: Contributing to a Dangerous World." The conference
will take place in the Church Center, 777 UN Plaza, 2nd Floor,
New York, NY, 10017. The program is posted online at .
For further information, and to register for the Conference,
please contact Doug Weir at office[at]bandepleteduranium.org.
In Florence, Italy, from 3-4 October, several NGOs
including the International Network of Engineers and Scientists
and the International Peace Bureau are hosting a conference
called "Nuclear Proliferation, Historical Appraisal and
Present Problems." For the program, please visit .
August 30
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
As RCW gears up for another busy September and October here
at the UN in New York, we are asking you to support the work
we do and the resources we provide for the global community
of disarmament experts, analysts, and activists.
* Index
every disarmament statement made at the UN General Assembly
General Debate and post it so you can access it on line and
know what your government is saying on a myriad of issues;
* Report on the disarmament-focused debates in our First
Committee Monitor in topic based weekly summaries;
* Provide the only online access to all First Committee statements,
resolutions
and papers;
* Keep you updated on any disarmament action-items via our
General E-news list;
* Coordinate a NGO Working Group for the duration of the First
Committee to collectively strengthen our advocacy; and
* Facilitate access to rooms at the UN for NGO side
events during the First Committee.
We need your support to continue our full range of reporting
and advocacy work!
The created the
Reaching Critical Will project in 1999 to "improve the
quantity and quality of NGO engagement in multilateral disarmament
decision making fora", to serve your needs, and to increase
global transparency on global security by connecting you to
information about multilateral disarmament processes and the
governments that drive them. We are asking the community that
knows the value of our work and uses it regularly to contribute
give a tax-deductible (for US residents), end of the summer,
here comes that First Committee sprint, contribution to the
project.
Please help us keep up our work for global disarmament, and
serve you better. You can either send us a cheque made out
to:
Jane Addams Peace Association
777 UN Plaza, 6th floor
New York, NY 10017 USA
(Be sure to put RCW in the memo line of the cheque!)
Or contribute via PayPal by clicking on the Donate Now! button
here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/about/donate.htm
and putting "RCW" in the "note to seller"
line that comes up on the review page after you submit your
donation and continue to checkout.
Thank you for your continued support!
Best wishes,
Ray Acheson, Acting Project Associate
1) CTBT Article XIV Conference NGO Statement
As in past years, NGOs are given the opportunity to make one
statement to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Entry Into
Force conference, to be held at on 17-18 September 2007 at
the Hofburg Congress Centre, Heldenplatz, A-1014, Vienna,
Austria. (For more information on the conference, please see
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/ctbt/ctbtindex.html#2007
.)
A first draft of the for-the-record statement is now available
for review, and its authors are seeking your input. A shortened
version will be presented in a 5 to 7 minute speech at the
conference.
The draft statement is available at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/ctbt/NGOdraftstatement2007.doc
. Please submit your edits by September 7th to Alex Bollfrass
of the Arms Control Association at alex@armscontrol.org.
We will do our best to represent your point of view, but cannot
guarantee that every suggestion will make it into the final
draft. Once we have incorporated your input, we will send
the statement out again and you can sign on your organization.
We would appreciate receiving only one set of comments per
organization.
Side Events
Monday, 17 September 2007
Reception
Hosted by the Government of Austria. All participants invited.
Time and place: 13:30 - 15:00, Dachfoyer, Hofburg Congress
Centre
Monday - Tuesday, 17-18 September 2007
PTS Exhibition:
"Verifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban"
Experts from the CTBTO's technical divisions will demonstrate
how a seismic station works, how data is processed, and how
an on-site inspection is conducted. The 2007 re-release of
the CTBTO Movie "CTBT: For a Safer and More Secure World",
which includes CTBTO findings with regards to the announced
nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
in October 2006, will also be shown in the exhibition area.
Time and Place: all day, Dachfoyer, Hofburg Congress Centre
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
VERTIC and ACA Seminar
"The CTBT Achievements, challenges and opportunities"
The Verification Research, Training and Information Centre
(VERTIC) and the Arms Control Association (ACA) will be holding
a seminar on political and verification challenges and opportunities
for the Treaty and its verification system.
Time and place:
13:00 - 15:00, Kleiner Redoutensaal, Hofburg Congress Centre
Official Background Document
The CTBTO has released an Official Background paper on the
CTBT Article XIV Conference, available online at
2) UN General Assembly General
Debate Disarmament Index
The UN General Assembly opens its session with a General Debate,
September 18 - October 3, wherein heads of state, foreign
ministers, or other high-level representatives have the opportunity
to address the entire international community to express their
state's concerns, priorities and opinions. During the General
Debate, RCW complies all references to disarmament, peace,
and security and posts them online by country and topic. The
statements from the General Debate will give us an idea of
the issues on which governments will be focusing during the
General Assembly First Committee, which begins on October
8.
Fact sheet on the General Assembly
RCW has developed a two-page backgrounder on the General Assembly
- what it is, and why its important for you to know! It's
meant to be part of a series of backgrounders RCW will develop
on disarmament machinery and issues as a way to promote awareness
and understanding of this challenging field of work. This
first backgrounder on the GA is available in PDF at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/factsheets/ga.pdf.
3) UN General Assembly First
Committee
The General
Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International
Security is to be held October 4 - November 2 in New York.
The First Committee is one of the best opportunities for outreach,
education, and advocacy efforts on disarmament and non-proliferation
issues.
First Committee Monitor
Since 2000, Reaching Critical Will has coordinated a group
of NGOs sharing the monitoring and reporting responsibilities
in an attempt to make the work of the First Committee more
transparent and useful for people not directly involved in
the small New York disarmament community. We edit a weekly
newsletter, the First Committee Monitor, covering the broad range
of issues discussed by the First Committee. The Monitor
is distributed to all delegates of the First Committee, and
is available on our site and through a free email-based subscription
service in both PDF and HTML. It has been hailed by diplomats,
UN staffers, and activists as one of the most useful resources
produced during the General Assembly.
If your group would like to participate in this important
collaboration, contact
the Project Associate today. In the upcoming weeks, we will
be holding a meeting to coordinate the various responsibilities
required for such an effort.
If you are interested in following events at the First Committee,
subscribe to the First Committee Monitor today by
sending an email to ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org
with the subject line "subscribe First Committee Monitor".
Please indicate whether you would like the PDF or HTML version.
Side Events
Side events are an excellent way to educate each other, delegations,
and members of the Secretariat on a broad range of disarmament
and security issues ranging from missiles to radioactive waste.
NGO side events are becoming increasingly popular with both
diplomats and civil society. If you are planning a side event,
meeting, or strategy session during the First Committee and
would like to hold it in the UN, please contact
RCW.
What else can civil society do around the First Committee?
Media Outreach: While decisions taken on matters of disarmament
and non-proliferation are some of the most critical issues
to the world, there remains a lack of adequate coverage of
these issues by the mainstream media. Many mainstream media
agencies are subsidiaries
of military corporations. These agencies are never going
to give positive media coverage to groups and messages that
challenge their power. Notice the correspondents in the print,
radio and TV media covering nuclear or foreign policy matters.
Build a data base of media contacts and keep a select group
of journalists, or your entire list, informed of your activities
and analysis of events and developments in this field.
Create your own media: newsletters, radio shows, video documentaries,
email lists, webpages. To find out how to get involved with
local independent media near you, see: .
Organize an event at home: With the First Committee in session,
it is a prime teachable moment to continue your own education,
outreach and advocacy efforts at home. To find out what disarmament
NGOs are working in your area, check our .
Reach out to your representatives: Contact your representatives
in New York and in your capital. Fax or email them letters
urging them to support disarmament-focused resolutions. Offer
them resources for more information and demand a response.
For more information on writing a letter, click here.
Organize a meeting with your representatives; listen to their
opinion on nuclear issues and share yours. Find out who represents
you at our database
of governmental decision-makers.
4) New resources available
from Reaching Critical Will
RCW has been working to put out some new backgrounders on
subjects relevant to disarmament, non-proliferation, and militarism.
We have fact sheets on nuclear energy and the nuclear fuel
cycle; updates to the indigenous fact sheets, with special
sections on indigeous groups affected by nuclear testing,
disasters, and waste in and by the USA and USSR; a two-page
PDF backgrounder on the General Assembly; and several updated
one- or two-page fact sheets on corporations involved in aerospace
and/or nuclear profiteering as part of RCW's Dirty Dozen project.
Additional backgrounders will be made available on a rolling
basis; please contact
RCW if you have any comments or suggestions!
In addition, the Model Nuclear Inventory, previously
only available in hard copy or PDF, has been turned into HTML!
The 2007 HTML edition is available online at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/about/pubs/Inventory07.html.
The Inventory is a comprehensive database of all nuclear materials,
both military and civilian, in the 44 States recognized as
having a significant nuclear capability. The 2007 edition
was originally released in April 2007, just prior to the NPT
PrepCom.
August 3
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
August marks the anniversaries of the US atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destructive horror of these
weapons, which devastated two cities, killed 200,000 civilians
by the end of 1945 and many more through cancer, mutations,
and birth defects for years to come, must be stopped. Today,
27,000 nuclear warheads still remain, most of them in the
arsenals of the permanent five members of the Security Council,
the states in charge of maintaining international peace and
security. As responsible members of civil society, we must
expose the the threat these states' hypocritical policies
pose to the world and demand an end to the insanity.
Best wishes,
Ray Acheson, Acting Project Associate
1) Information for NGO participation
in the CTBT Entry-Into-Force Conference
The fifth conference on facilitating the Entry Into Force
of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (Article XIV Conference)
will be held on 17-18 September 2007 at the Hofburg Congress
Centre, Heldenplatz, A-1014, Vienna, Austria.
Registration Deadline: 20 August 2007
NGOs wishing to attend the conference must register with the
Office of Disarmament Affairs (ODA) no later than August 20.
NGOs need to send the the following information to register:
* A letter written on organizational letterhead signed by
the head of the organization requesting to attend the conference.
This letter should include the composition of the delegation,
and overview of past interactions with the United Nations
particularly in relation to disarmament and non-proliferation.
Such information may also include affiliation with the United
Nations Department of Public Information, consultative status
with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), etc. NGOs that
will be participating for the first time should indicate this
in their request for accreditation.
* A mission statement or summary of work that should include
information on the organization's purpose, programmes, and
activities in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation
issues.
* A complete registeration
form (last page of the Aide Memoire).
The above information should be sent to:
Mr. Christian Evertz
Public Information Section
CTBTO Preparatory Commission
Room E0773
Vienna International Center
P.O. Box 1200
A-1400 Vienna, Austria
Fax: (+43) 1 26 030-5823
Email: Christian.Evertz@ctbto.org
All NGO representatives, including those in possession of
a valid Vienna International Center grounds pass, are requested
to register at Hofburg Congress Center as of 17 September
2007.
NGO Statement
One statement on behalf of all NGOs will be made on 18 September
2007 during the morning session from 10am-1pm. NGOs wishing
to participate in drafting and editing this statement should
email the RCW Project Associate (ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org)
and sign up on the Yahoo listserve at .
NGO Side Events
NGOs will have access to a conference room for the duration
of the conference. Anyone wishing to organize an NGO side
event during the conference should contact the RCW Project
Associate (ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org)
by September 7.
2) Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Commemorative Events
August 6 and 9 mark the anniversaries of the US atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. NGOs around the world are holding
commemorative events on these days. Many US events are outlined
on the
website, at .
For information on events across Canada, please contact Anton
Wagner of the Hiroshima Day Coalition at awagner[at]yorku.ca.
On August 6 at 7:30pm EST, HBO will air White Light/Black
Rain, a documentary about the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, featuring interviews with fourteen survivors and
four Americans involved in the bombings.
Here in New York, RCW is co-sponsoring Peace Boat's 3rd Annual
People Building Peace Concert on Thursday, August 9, 4pm-7:30pm
at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (East 47th Street between 1st and
2nd Avenue across from the UN). The event features free outdoor,
live world music and dance, testimonies from atomic bomb survivors
and leaders of the anti-nuclear movement. For more information,
contact info[at]peaceboat-us.org,
212.687.7214.
3) The Conference on Disarmament opens its third
and final session
The CD's third and final session of 2007 opened on 30 July,
and will continue until 14 September in Geneva. The first
brief plenary meeting revealed that the stalemate over
a programme of work has not been broken, and that inter-session
consultations between diplomats and their capitals have not
resulted in progress. To follow the events of the third session,
subscribe to RCW's CD
Report by sending an email to ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org
with the subject line "subscribe cdreport".
4) Think Outside the Bomb gears up for its National
Grassroots Conference
The Think Outside the Bomb network is holding its third annual
conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara
16-19 August 2007. The four-day event will provide a backdrop
for nuclear abolitionists, peace activists, ecologists, and
other advocates of social justice and a livable planet to
learn in-depth about the threat of nuclear weapons, the destruction
caused by the nuclear fuel chain, and current political opportunities
to move toward nuclear disarmament.
Aside from nuclear abolition, the conference will explore
such interconnected themes as localized resistance to militarism
& empire, demilitarizing higher education, supporting
indigenous resistance to nuclear colonialism, and turning
back the resurgence of "poisoned power" (nuclear
energy). The conference will include workshops, panels, dialogues,
and skills trainings to strengthen our analyses of nuclear
weapons' role in the global political order, empower ourselves
with new tools for effective community organizing, and deepen
our commitment to building a better world.
For more information and to apply to the conference, visit
5) More on ODA
The update on the Office of Disarmament Affairs (ODA) given
in last week's E-News Advisory requires
further clarification. The ODA is an independent entity within
the Secretariat, rather than an appendage of the Secretary-General's
office. The UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 61/257
on 22 March 2007, which supported the establishment of ODA,
"while maintaining the budgetary autonomy and the integrity
of the existing structures and functions of the current Department
of Disarmament Affairs." Furthermore, while the title
of the head of disarmament affairs has changed to High Representative,
she/he will still have the official rank of Undersecretary-General.
RCW hopes this clears up any confusion regarding the structural
changes of the ODA.
July 17
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
There are have been a few changes at Reaching Critical Will
since May. Jennifer Nordstrom, who served the project for
the past two years, completed her time at the end of June.
For the next several months, Ray Acheson will be fulfilling
Jennifer's responsibilities; all RCW-related inquiries should
be directed to her at ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org.
We will be initiating an open search process to find new permanent
staff. In other disarmament news, the Department for Disarmament
Affairs (DDA) is now the Office of Disarmament Affairs (ODA)
and has a new representative; the CD has ended its second
session without agreement on a programme of work; and the
CTBTO is preparing for another Article XIV Conference. Stay
tuned for details!
Best wishes,
Ray Acheson, Acting Project Associate
1) Introducing the new Acting
Project Associate for Reaching Critical Will
Ray Acheson has worked as a researcher and writer for WILPF's
Reaching Critical Will project for the past two years. Many
regular readers will recognize Ray from the First Committee
or the recent NPT PrepCom in Vienna. In addition to work with
RCW, Ray has also worked at the Institute for Defense and
Disarmament Studies and the Boston Consortium for Gender,
Security and Human Rights, and is a regular contributor to
.
She received her Honours BA from the University of Toronto
in Peace and Conflict Studies in 2005.
2) The Department of Disarmament
Affairs (DDA) is now the Office of Disarmament Affairs (ODA)
After a valiant
campaign by civil society against the downgrading of the
Department of Disarmament Affairs, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
revised
his proposal to the General Assembly in March, preventing
DDA from being subsumed by the Department of Political Affairs.
However, the Department has still been changed to an Office
within the Secretary-General's own office, and is now headed
by a High Representative of the Secretary-General, rather
than an Undersecretary-General. The consequences of this move
remain to be fully seen, however, we are concerned that the
downgrade has the following implications:
First, High Representatives are personally linked to
the Secretary-General, with time-bound and expiring mandates
at the discretion of the Secretary-General. This means the
ODA's mandate and chief will change from being part of the
UN secretariat's institutional framework to being personally
linked to changing Secretary-Generals.
Second, retaining DDA's independence would have allowed
the Secretary-General to avoid being directly involved in
political disarmament issues until he chooses to engage,
instead of having every disarmament decision directly linked
to his office as they now will with the ODA.
The efforts of civil society to maintain pressure on the
Secretary-General and to emphasize the independence of the
DDA were not in vain. Now there is a need to maintain pressure
on the High Representative, Ambassador Duarte, to keep disarmament
in the spotlight.
3) Mr. Sergio de Queiroz Duarte
of Brazil is appointed High Representative for Disarmament
Appointed on 2 July 2007, Ambassador Duarte will head the
new Office of Disarmament Affairs at the rank of Undersecretary-General,
and will report directly to the Secretary-General. He has
served in the Brazilian Foreign Service for 48 years, and
his posts have included the Permanent Mission in Geneva, where
he was a member of the Brazilian delegation to the Eighteen-Nation
Disarmament Committee, and the Office of the Special Representative
of Brazil for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva. He chaired the
Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in 1999-2000, and many will recall that he served as
president of the 2005 NPT Review Conference.
4) The Conference on Disarmament
closes its second session without progress
On 28 June, the CD
finished its second session for 2007 without any progress
on adopting a programme of work. Ambassador Jurg Streuli of
Switzerland, who assumed the CD Presidency on 26 June, noted
that some delegations need more time to study the documents,
and told the Conference he would be in touch with those delegations
during the July intersession in attempt to find a way forward.
Switzerland hopes to adopt L.1
"as early as possible" when the CD reconvenes in
August. Ambassador Streuli reiterated that L.1 will allow
delegations to pursue national interest following the adoption
of the draft decision.
Pakistan
reiterated that it still had significant substantive concerns
over the L.1 proposal and accompanying Presidential
Draft Decision, which sparked a frank and pointed exchange
with New Zealand and Brazil. The second session concluded
with a sense of stalemate, as Pakistan is becoming increasingly
adamant about its difficulties with the L.1 proposal. Pakistan
concluded that it will continue to work with the Conference,
but the "Presidential Draft Decision is a proposal that
has yet to obtain consensus."
Please see the CD
Report for more details. If you would like to subscribe
to the Reaching Critical Will CD Reports, please send an email
with the word "subscribe" in the subject line to
cdreport@reachingcriticalwill.org
.
5) The Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty is gearing up for the fifth Entry-Into-Force (Article
XIV) Conference
Parties to the Comprehensive nuclear Test-Ban Treaty meet
every two years so signatories to and ratifiers of the CTBT
can strategize about how to facilitate the CTBT's entry-into-force.
This year, the Conference will be held in Vienna from 17-18
September 2007. RCW has been asked to once again serve as
the NGO liaison to the Conference. As soon as the ODA releases
the aide memoire for the Conference, we will make it available
on the RCW website and distribute information on registration,
press conference, and side events in the E-News.
In the meantime, we can get started drafting the collective
NGO statement that will be read by one representative from
civil society at the Conference (we are usually granted five
minutes to read this statement). Previous NGO statements from
the 2001,
2003,
and 2005
Conferences are available on the RCW
website. RCW has created a Yahoo listserve to coordinate
the drafting of this statement; please go to
or email Ray Acheson at ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org
to participate.
Why is the EIF Conference Important?
The Entry-Into-Force Conferences are opportunities for:
* announcing ratifications and signatures;
* calling on those states that have not yet signed or ratified
the CTBT to join the international consensus to end nuclear
testing;
* urging states with active nuclear weapon research programmes
and test sites to take actions that would reinforce the CTBT
and support its goals, such as refraining from activities
at test sites that might be construed as CTBT violations,
including halting research, development and production of
nuclear warheads based on modifications of existing designs
that give provide for new military capabilities;
* examining ways and means of removing obstacles which delay
Entry-Into-Force;
* discussing and agreeing on specific measures to convince
the ten holdout states whose ratification is required for
Entry Into Force to ratify the treaty; and
* supporting the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organisation
in Vienna that has made significant progress in setting up
the International Monitoring System and International Data
Center, so that the CTBT's verification system is ready by
the time the treaty enters into force.
What Else Can NGOs Do?
* contact Reaching Critical Will, who will be coordinating
an NGO statement to be delivered to the CTBT States Parties
at the Conference;
* make an appointment to speak with a representative at the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs or equivalent and encourage the
Foreign Minister to attend the conference to publicly urge
the CTBT hold out states to promptly ratify the Treaty; to
contact your government's mission, see RCW's
Governmental Database;
* Register your group to attend; (details on registration
will be forthcoming through the RCW
General E-News service)
* monitor the CTBT EIF progress through the Reaching Critical
Will website and react to what your government does or does
not say
* publicize your views and your government's policies on the
CTBT to the press in your country
* if you live in China, Colombia, the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran (Isalmic
Republic of), Israel, Pakistan or the United States, urge
your government to ratify the CTBT without delay.
6) UN Treaty Event highlights
disarmament treaties this year
Since the Millennium Summit in 2000, an annual Treaty Event,
where delegations can sign, ratify, or accede to treaties
deposited with the Secretary-General of the UN, is held in
the fall. The event is designed to attract high-level signatories
to key treaties by linking the event to the opening of the
UN General Assembly. This year, the Treaty Event's theme is
"Towards Universal Participation and Implementation—A
Comprehensive Legal Framework for Peace, Development and Human
Rights." Accordingly, many of the highlighted treaties
are related to disarmament, including the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty, the Mine Ban Treaty, and the Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons.
The Treaty Event will be held 25-27 September and 1-2 October
2007 at UN Headquarters in New York. It's a good opportunity
to encourage your government to sign, ratify, or accede to
UN treaties, and to raise awareness of these vital, norm-establishing
documents that foster the rule of law in international relations.
You can also contact local and national press to publicize
the event and your government's positions on these treaties.
For further information, and for a complete list of the treaties
being focused on this year, please visit the UN Treaty Collection
website at .
May 31
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
A great deal is happening in the disarmament world: the first
meeting of the new nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review
cycle just concluded; and the Conference on Disarmament is
struggling to get back to work after a decade of deadlock.
Civil society is continuing to push decision-makers to fulfill
their disarmament promises, producing cutting-edge analysis,
and organizing regular people to pressure for change. Women
work for peace and disarmament every day, and in honor of
International Women’s Day for Disarmament (May 24),
we are re-printing an article about that daily work.
Best wishes,
Jennifer Nordstrom, Project Manager
1) Non-Proliferation Treaty
Preparatory Committee closes: Final News in Review online
We have emerged on the slightly brighter other side of the
first Preparatory Committee (PrepCom)
in this review cycle of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Governments managed to wrestle a qualified success
out of a meeting that teetered on the edge of failure. After
four days of fighting over the agenda, governments discussed
the NPT, disarmament, and non-proliferation in a relatively
congenial atmosphere. The conference adopted a consensus factual
summary, but was not able to agree on the Chair’s Factual
Summary, which was submitted as a working paper (WP
72). The summary Chair’s Paper contains a reference
to a Nuclear Weapons Convention (introduced as a working paper
during the session), support for the P6 proposal for a programme
of work in the Conference on Disarmament, positive reference
to the 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion,
and more. Nuclear disarmament is officially back on the table,
which was clear in substantive discussions, and the agenda
for the next two PrepComs includes discussing previous disarmament
commitments. During the PrepCom, it was also clear that the
role of Non-Governmental Organizations has been strengthened;
all of this PrepCom's debates remained open to NGOs, following
the 2004 practice. States parties set the next PrepCom for
28 April – 9 May, 2008 in Geneva.
-Execution by Consensus: Assessing Compliance and the NPT
Review Process
-Alice in Wonderland Revisited: The 13 Practical Steps as
“Suggestions”
-Nuclear War and its Consequences: Reparations (and a Little
Justice) for the People of Rongelap
2) Model Nuclear Inventory:
Accountability is Democracy, Transparency is Security
Reaching Critical Will has just published the 2007 Edition
of our Model
Nuclear Inventory: Accountability is Democracy, Transparency
is Security. The Inventory is a comprehensive database
of all nuclear materials, both military and civilian, in the
44 States recognized as having a significant nuclear capability.
Because the Inventory is designed to encourage better reporting
in the context of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),
only NPT states parties are included.
We track the military and civilian nuclear weapons, materials,
locations, and policies in the NPT states parties of the 44
states listed as having significant nuclear capabilities in
Annex II of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Because it
tracks the compliance of the nuclear weapon states with their
disarmament obligations under Article VI of the NPT and the
proliferation-sensitive activities and materials in non-nuclear
weapon states, an Inventory is useful to all members of the
NPT. As such, it is a possible area of agreement and collective
action.
Moreover, an Inventory increases transparency, which is a
tool for confidence-building and accountability. An extreme
lack of trust pervades the disarmament arena, and transparent
information exchange on nuclear programs can increase confidence
among states honoring their obligations. It also offers an
objective tool to hold those in non-compliance to account.
You can download the Inventory in PDF form from our website
here.
Hard copies of the Model Nuclear Inventory are available to
purchase for $10. Contact
Reaching Critical Will to order your copy.
3) Conference on Disarmament:
China blocks negotiations
On May 22, China
blocked the best chance in years of starting substantive work
in the Conference on Disarmament (CD),
which has been deadlocked for a decade. Purportedly it wants
a stronger mandate for discussing its priority issue, preventing
an arms race in outer space (PAROS). No government has publicly
objected to working on any of the four core issues as they
are in the proposal: a ban on the production of fissile materials
for nuclear weapons (FissBan),
PAROS,
nuclear disarmament, and negative
security assurances. All objections have either been procedural
or in support of stronger mandates for certain issues. CD
members know that any variety of stronger mandates will cause
at least the United States and/or France to object to working
on those issues. Why then let the best be the enemy of the
good? As Nigeria
said today, "when you cannot get what you desire, you make
due with what is available- especially if what is available
is not fundamentally harmful."
China said that the current compromise six Presidents (P6)
proposal for work "has not fully... met [China's] concerns."
China then suggested several changes to the current proposal,
both substantive and procedural. Cuba,
Iran,
Pakistan,
and Egypt
supported opening the proposal to amendments, even though
the P6 have been consulting CD members about this proposal
for months. Algeria
on behalf of the Arab Group encouraged a transparent multilateral
process to pursue compromise. The Netherlands
expressed surprise that some still think the compromise lies
elsewhere, and said the P6 proposal "is the middle." The P6
said they continue to believe their proposal is the best opportunity
to begin substantive work after a decade of deadlock.
China
wants a stronger PAROS mandate that spells out the possibility
of negotiating a new legal instrument. It also wants the mandate
for negotiating a ban on the production of fissile materials
for nuclear weapons (FissBan) to include verification. Procedurally,
China continues to maintain its attachment to working in ad
hoc committees, rather than under a coordinator, which it
is afraid "will not ensure effective and substantive work
on the relevant items."
In typical bridge-building fashion, Canada
tried to open up a dialogue with China on these concerns.
Ambassador Meyer, who coordinated discussions on PAROS throughout
the first session and would continue to do so under the P6
proposal, particularly emphasized the utility of continuing
work on PAROS. China said it wanted a more specific negotiation-oriented
mandate for PAROS, because otherwise discussions might be
an "unfocusing, rhetorical exercise". Meyer assured China
that discussions under his coordination would have a focused
and practical orientation, recalled the "strong convergence"
of views around a PAROS treaty during the first session, and
hoped China did not find those discussions unfocused.
While Nigeria noted that what is possible, while not perfect,
is also not harmful, rejecting the package is harmful. To
have the most intense build towards substantive work in years
fail to initiate negotiations will undermine confidence in
the CD. Procedural concerns do not stand up in this situation,
nor does it make sense to hold out for more. After 10 years
of waiting, it is quite clear that this is what is possible
here and now.
As the Rolling Stones said so eloquently, "You can't always
get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might
find you get what you need." Everyone is making a compromise
here, and no one will get everything they want out of the
package. By accepting a less-than-ideal package, governments,
and the people they represent, will build a stronger international
security regime, something we all need.
4) Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative
Security? Civil society analysis of the current disarmament
regime
Just released by the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear
Policy, Western States Legal Foundation, and Reaching Critical
Will of the Women’s International League for Peace and
Freedom:
Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security?
U.S. Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis, and
Paths to Peace
May 2007, 275 pp, soft cover, $12 + $3 s&h (U.S.). .
An assessment of the report of the Hans Blix-led Weapons
of Mass Destruction Commission and its implications for U.S.
policy, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security offers up-to-the-minute
analysis and comprehensive recommendations regarding U.S.
policy in relation to: the international security framework;
non-proliferation and disarmament; nuclear weapons R&D;
climate change and nuclear power; Iran and the nuclear fuel-cycle;
missiles and weapons in space; and demilitarization and redefining
security in human terms. It recommends that the United States
“make nuclear disarmament the leading edge of a global
trend towards demilitarization and redirection of military
expenditures to meet human and environment needs.”
Contributing authors: John Burroughs, Jacqueline Cabasso,
Felicity Hill, Andrew Lichterman, Jennifer Nordstrom, Michael
Spies, Peter Weiss. Editors: Michael Spies and John Burroughs.
Foreword by Zia Mian.
Order Information
Order online for $12 plus $3 shipping and handling by filling
out . We will mail you your copies along with
an invoice. Alternatively, you may order the book by sending
an email to orders@wmdreport.org.
Please state “Book Order” in the subject line
and include your name, mailing address, and number of copies
in the body of your message.
Comments on Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security:
"Too many are lulled today into thinking that only ‘loose
nukes’ or new nuclear weapons states are a problem.
We should all be grateful to the authors, who remind us so
powerfully of the dangers that remain from our own government’s
nuclear weapons, and of the vital centrality of international
law as our weapon to abolish these instruments of terror globally."
-Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies
"This book is an important contribution to the effort
to rid our planet of weapons of mass destruction, and I encourage
my colleagues in Congress to read it."
-Congresswoman Barbara Lee
"This assessment of our Final Report and its 60 recommendations
is exactly the kind of response we were hoping for. The Report
has now been critically reviewed and scrutinized by experts
from civil society organizations, adding to its credibility.
A very timely and important contribution."
-Hans Blix, Chairman of the WMD Commission
"A lucid, compelling book with concise, detailed directions
for reducing nuclear dangers on the path to disarmament, a
reliable road-guide away from the nuclear abyss. But it simultaneously
reports that the current U.S. administration is reading that
map upside down, following the guidelines posted in precisely
the wrong direction."
-Daniel Ellsberg, 2006 Winner of the Right Livelihood Award
"With clear prose, the authors add cogent analysis and
new urgency to the often uneven, stalled, and ill-informed
discourse on the provocative U.S. role in nuclear proliferation.
They do more, bringing a critical challenge seldom heard in
academic and arms control circles: nuclear abolition is the
only guarantor of global security, the only path to peace."
-Frida Berrigan, World Policy Institute
"With professional clarity, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative
Security unpacks the policy issues and international security
principles at stake in the debate about nuclear weapons. It
provides the reader with the depth of understanding needed
to become an effective advocate in this important field."
-Jonathan Granoff, Global Security Institute
An Assessment of the Final Report of the WMD Commission and
Its Implications for U.S. Policy
5) Reaching Critical Will Project
Manager is leaving
After two years with the Reaching Critical Will project,
I will be leaving at the end of June. I am sure the Reaching
Critical Will project will benefit from the leadership of
another brilliant woman who will steer the work after my departure.
This is important work, and there is no paucity of passionate
people ready to take it on.
Working with the Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom has been such an important part of my life and my
learning process, and for this I am grateful. The disarmament
community has been a blessing to me, and a source of great
growth. I plan to take these gifts with me as I travel on.
I would like to thank all of RCW's friends and advisors, and
I will see you when I return, in whatever manifestation that
may be.
6) International Campaign to
Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) One of Reaching Critical Will's founding mothers
is out generating more revolutionary disarmament organizations.
Read a message from the new International Campaign to Abolish
Nuclear Weapons below.
"We are told by some governments that a Nuclear Weapons
Convention is premature and unlikely - don't believe it -
we were told the same thing about a Mine Ban Treaty."
-Jody Williams, Nobel Laureate, International Campaign to
Ban Landmines
ICAN is a new campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Convention,
launched by the International Physicians for the Prevention
of Nuclear War and growing daily. Organisations and individuals
are getting involved because nuclear weapons are not like
other weapons - there is no other weapon that can kill hundreds
of millions of people in a few hours and bring about the end
of human civilisation.
Watch our 6 minute ICAN film - copy and distribute - it's
copyleft: http://www.icanw.org/launch-video
Sign the ICAN petition - it will be presented annually
to the nuclear terror states at the UN :
Get informed about nuclear dangers and solutions, use the
educational tools:
Get involved, there are 10 things you can do today:
Download Securing our Survival (SOS): The Case for a Nuclear
Weapons Convention:
The 27,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of 9 States are illegal,
immoral and genocidal; they can destroy our cities, health,
water catchments and our food chain, and they routinely deplete
enormous funds and attention from achieving human security.
Nuclear weapons have no legitimate purpose. To possess them
and thereby threaten their use is utterly immoral. They are
the ultimate weapons of terror. Its time to outlaw them and
get rid of them once and for all.
WE CAN achieve a nuclear weapon free world
YOU CAN get informed, get involved and get your government
moving
THEY CAN negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention
7) Women’s Role in Peace
and Disarmament
Written by Binalakshmi Nepram Mentschel of the Manipuri Women
Gun Survivors Network in India
“Our world is hovering at the edge of an abyss, driven
there by man’s unreason. One crisis is cresting on top
of another… The sinister developments in the advance
of towards the brink of disaster all interact, worsened by
the calamitous threat namely the arms race and militarization.
These essentially ethical problems of wars, weapons, and tools
of violence have existed since time immemorial, but in the
present era they have been deeply aggravated and will continue
to be aggravated if a halt is not called for.” Alva
Myrdal
For the first time in history, on April 28, 1915, a group
of 1,200 women from warring and neutral countries named the
“International Congress for Women” came together
to protest against World War I at The Hague in the Netherlands.
This later became the Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Thus began a century where women
and women’s organisations and movements mobilised in
support of peace and disarmament.
During the Cold War, women lobbied against stockpiling and
possible use of nuclear weapons. After a conference in 1959
on the “Responsibility of Women in the Atomic Age”,
the newly formed “European Movement of Women Against
Nuclear Disarmament” and other women’s groups,
embarked on a massive educational and petition campaign. A
few years later in 1961, WILPF pioneered the US/Soviet women’s
seminars to help break Cold War barriers. In 1964, a new movement
started in America called “Women’s Strike for
Peace” and the same year women from many countries came
to the NATO Conference in the Netherlands to staged a demonstration
against plans to set up a multilateral nuclear force. In 1969,
WILPF sponsored an international conference on ending chemical
and biological warfare. And during the 1980s the women of
Greenham Common inspired the world by their commitment to
opposing nuclear weapons and bases. They left their homes
to dedicate themselves to peace – just as for centuries
men have left their homes to fight wars. In the Pacific region
women have organised themselves against nuclear testing and
Japanese women set up a peace camp at the base of Mount Fuji.
Women groups in Africa have also been involved in advocating
for peace and reconstruction as seen in Angola, Burundi, Somalia
and Niger.
One of the most evident mobilising factors is the building
of numerous organisations related to women’s roles as
mothers. Women have often organised themselves to protect
their children like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina
and the Meira Paibis of Manipur, both protesting the “disappearance”
of their children in a military dictatorship and in an armed
conflict. In Sri Lanka, a group of more than 2000 women from
across the island, directly and in-directly affected by the
war; their sons, husbands missing/missing in action, killed,
or disabled due to the war formed the Association of War Affected
Women (AWAW).
In the 1990s women have continued anti-war action as mothers
in Macedonia and in Chechenya. In 1999 in the United States,
the Million Mom March was founded, dedicated to prevent gun
death and injury and to support victims and survivors of gun
violence.
Why Women are asking for Disarmament?
An individual’s decision to disarm is influenced by
the perception of personal and economic security, an issue
that is closely related to women. This makes disarmament a
continuing process that is dependent on myriad factors such
as the state’s ability to protect its citizens, crime
levels, economic opportunities and the degree to which the
gun has become legitimise within society.
A key to understand why women have formed organisation in
favour of disarmament is the link many women have made between
gender equality and peace. For instance the 1915 meeting of
women in The Hague concluded that permanent peace could be
built only on the basis of equal rights, including equal rights
between women and men, justice within and between national
independence and freedom. Women have linked various phenomenons
of violence, such as violations of human rights, violence
against women, and structural violence in economic disparities,
to the violence seen during wars. Thus disarmament relates
to all forms of violence and creating a culture of peace,
which can be perpetuated from generation to generation.
The security implications for women, while they may not be
comparable to those faced directly be men, are also enormous.
When guns flow freely in community settings, and are not removed
after the conflict ends, women run the risk not only of facing
lethal domestic violence but become more vulnerable while
managing their daily workload. Women are also burdened with
carrying for those who have been injured or disabled by gunfire.
Men have been traditionally been associated with the use,
ownership and promotion of small arms, which is unsurprisingly
as they are overwhelmingly the owners and users of guns besides
being primary victims of gun violence. Evidence shows that
women ownership and use of guns is far more smaller numbers
than that of men and therefore, they generally women’s
view towards weapons is different that that of men. This difference
can be carefully nurtured and lead to more women’s participation
in disarmament processes. According to the United Nations
Development Programme:
In sensitisation campaigns, disarmament should be separated
from military disarmament and women should be the priority
target audience because they know the negative side of guns,
unlike male users who tend to focus on the upside of gun ownership.
So when community disarmament and rebuilding strategies are
planned, women are better targets.
Women, Peace & Security: United Nations Resolution
No 1325
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women,
peace and security was adopted in October 2000. This particular
resolution specifically mentions the need to incorporate gender
perspectives in all areas of peace support operations, including
disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation initiatives.
This resolution was a monumental turning point in recognizing
the concept of women’s direct contribution to Disarmament.
The resolution codified in international law a tradition of
women actively advocating for peace and disarmament at every
level.
In 2001, the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs
along with the Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues
and the Advancement for Women of the Department of Economic
and Social Affairs issued a special collection of briefing
notes entitled, “Gender Perspectives on Disarmament”.
In addition “Reaching Critical Will”, a project
of WILPF’s UN office has been monitoring disarmament
for at the UN since 1999. This project has been playing an
important role in collecting and distributing vital information
from UN meetings on Disarmament.
Success Stories of Women’s Involvement in Disarmament
In the year 1998, UNDP and UNIFEM developed a pilot project,
which went on till 2002 and was aimed at increasing women’s
role in the “Weapons for Development Programme”.
This project was carried out in the Albanian districts of
Gramsch, Elbasan and Diber. It was found during this project
that women’s support for the project contributed to
its success as their involvement led to the increased number
of weapons that were collected. Also, Albanian women who had
no earlier knowledge of disarmament started understanding
the issues surrounding it. After women participated in this
project, they could now more effectively deal with local authorities,
including police and others on the issue. According to Vanessa
Farr, “Women felt that their participation in a family
decision –making process had been improved because their
preparation gave them a more authoritative opinion in family
and community security decisions”. It became clear that
in their involvement, women started understanding disarmament
from a more comprehensive perspective, one that is a means
for communities to make political, social and economic progress,
and not just as a means to reduce criminality and armed violence.
The Albanian women’s example can be replicated in other
areas, which are affected by armed violence.
Wars are a major source of devastation; human suffering and
poverty, affecting all aspects of economic, social and political
life. The nature of warfare has changed; it is no longer soldiers
who comprise the largest number of casualties, but civilians.
In World War I, 14 percent of the deaths were civilians; today
it is estimated that this number has risen to over 75 percent.
The nature of battle field has changed: Wars are no longer
fought in remote battlefields between armies but it is fought
in our homes, our schools, our communities and increasingly
on women’s bodies. On this day of international Women’s
Day for Peace and Disarmament, May 24, we salute the extraordinary
courage of women from across the world who have dedicated
their lives for peace and disarmament worldwide.
The article is also available at:
April
23
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
It is with great sadness that we mark this e-news with the
passing of two of our own. As we work for disarmament at the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we are doing so in the memory
of the vision and brilliance of two of our tireless disarmament
activists, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's Janet Bloomfield
and Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh. It was a great shock for our
community to lose two of its leaders so suddenly, and we are
greatly saddened. We mourn their loss, and send our condolences
to their friends and family. In their honor, we will carry
forward their vision of a nuclear weapon free world.
2.
NGO Reporting at the PrepCom
Reaching Critical Will will continue its tradition of monitoring
and reporting on the review process of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty through the daily News in Review. The NIR is the only
daily publication from civil society that offers analysis
on the official proceedings, summaries of NGO side events,
announcements, calendars of events, interviews with diplomats
and NGO representatives, artwork, puzzlers and much, much
more.
To subscribe, simply send a message to jennifer(at)reachingcriticalwill.org
with NIR-subscribe as the subject. You will receive the NIR
in your inbox every morning.
Reaching Critical Will will also continue to post all governmental
statements, working papers, non-papers and reports on our
website in near real-time. Check out the NPT 2007 PrepCom
index regularly to see what your government is doing and saying
in reviewing the most important treaty for disarmament and
non-proliferation: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/2007index.html
Another member of the Women's International League for Peace
and Freedom who has been a part of the RCW project from its
inception is working with a group from the International Law
Campaign to produce short webcast reports -- NPT Newsreels
-of the PrepCom. You can watch these real-time interviews
and reports at:,
or type "banningthebomb.tv" into your web browser.
3.
NGO Registration at the PrepCom
For those of you that are coming to Vienna for the PrepCom,
you must remember to BRING YOUR PASSPORT or other form of
valid photo ID (ie, driver's license) with you to registration.
Registration Counters will be located on the first floor (Americans
will understand this as the "second floor"). Enter the Austria
Center through the main doors on the ground floor and then
take the escalators going up on your left to the registration
desks.
Registration will take place on the first day of the Preparatory
Committee, Monday 30 April, from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm and from
3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. It will take place on 1, 2 and 3 May from
9:00 am to 12:00 pm and from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Starting
on 3 May, registration and security passes will be given at
Gate 1 at the Vienna International Center. NGOs are strongly
encouraged to begin registration at 8am on Monday, April 30,
as the lines will get longer the closer it gets to 10am, and
governments will be given priority.
4.
Contacting YOU at the PrepCom
As NGO liaison to the NPT PrepCom, and a focal point for NGO
disarmament networks, Reaching Critical Will often gets asked
for NGO contacts. To make this easy for us, and to make sure
you receive all the information and events that are NPT-specific,
please send the email of the primary contact person at the
PrepCom for your organization to ray(at)reachingcriticalwill.org
and jennifer(at)reachingcriticalwill.org. Send this in an
email with the name of your organization and "contact email"
in the subject, so that we can automatically sort it, and
with the email in the body of the email, so it can easily
be cut and paste into a list.
5.
NGO Reception and Orientation
The NGO Committee on Peace will be holding a reception and
orientation for NGOs the night before the PrepCom begins,
Sunday 29 April, from 6pm to 9pm. The reception will be held
in the meeting room of Donaucity Church (right next to Austria
Center, where the PrepCom will be, at the underground station
U 1 - Kaisermuehlen VIC). This will be a good opportunity
to meet with old friends, meet new colleagues and strategize
for the coming week of events. There will be information about
the PrepCom, Vienna, background materials, and food! For directions,
see the link on our Calendar of events. All NGOs are invited,
but if you would like more information, contact Thomas Schoenfeld:
Thomas.Schoenfeld@univie.ac.at
6.
NGO Presentations
The NGO presentations are currently scheduled for May 2, 10am
to 1pm. Text of these statements will be handed out to all
delegates as well as archived on the RCW site as soon as they
are delivered.
The presentations are the product of an open collaborative
drafting process incorporating the perspectives of NGOs from
around the world. They will include our thoughts on the current
state of the NPT regime, current blocks to progress, potential
solutions, and achieving a nuclear weapon free world. We will
also hear statements from the youth, the Hibakusha, and Mayors
for Peace.
Watch your inboxes in order to sign on to the final version
of these statements, which should be ready by the end of the
week. The presentations will also be posted on our website,
from a link on the 2007 NPT PrepCom index. We will send a
brief note to you when they are up.
7.
Calendar of Events
There will be something happening every day of the PrepCom,
and NGO parallel events about the most salient topics in disarmament
and non-proliferation will be happening throughout the two
weeks. These events offer an opportunity to learn and make
connections with other NGOs doing complementary work. A daily
calendar will be printed in the News in Review, where many
of the events will also be covered after the fact. See the
on-line calendar of events here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/prepcom07/events.html.
8.
NGO Meeting Room and NGO Office
The NGOs will have two rooms during the PrepCom: the NGO Room,
which will be full of meetings and events, and the NGO Office,
which will generally be used as a resource room for NGOs to
work and meet in small groups. NGOs will have two computers
with internet access available to them in the NGO office,
as well as two printers. We will also have access to a photocopier
with paper. Wireless internet will probably be available in
the Austria Center.
9.
NGO Materials: Distribution and Shipping
NGOs have so much to share! This year, like other years, there
will be a table for NGOs to distribute their documents to
the delegates, and space in the NGO Office for you to share
your materials with other NGOs. However, this year, we are
going to have to submit one copy of anything we put out to
the NPT Secretariat first. To streamline this process, Reaching
Critical Will will put a clearly marked box in the NGO Office
for one copy of whatever you want to put out on the tables,
and we will hand the contents of this box over to the Secretariat
daily. We know this is an added bureaucratic measure, and
we apologize, but we kindly ask you to make our lives easier
by just putting one copy of whatever you are handing out into
the clearly marked box in the NGO Office.
NGOs that need to ship materials to Vienna should send them
to Paul Schmidt at IML (Available at: +43-01-26069- 2203).
IML will receive the parcels and hold it at no cost until
Monday morning, 30 April. NGOs can pick up their materials
on Monday on the U3 level between 12 noon and 1 pm. However,
NGOs will need a UN escort to retrieve their materials. Please
meet in the NGO Office at 10 minutes to 12 noon if you are
picking up your materials. If you cannot pick up your materials
at that time, please contact Kristin Jenssen: jenssen@un.org
to arrange a time. If NGOs need materials moved to the NGO
room for them, costs are involved.
The address for sending materials to the IML:
NPT Prep Com Meeting / NGO Material
IML
AUSTRIA CENTER VIENNA
Internationales Amtssitz- u nd
Konferenzzentrum Wien, AG
Bruno-Kreisky-Platz 1
1220 Wien, Austria
If you want IML to ship it to the NGO room mark it "to be
delivered to Room O2 C 248" (significant costs are involved).
10.
UN Disarmament Commission Opens Second Session
The UN Disarmament Commission began its second session on
April 11, and will meet until April 27. This year is the second
in a three-year cycle focusing on two agreed agenda items:
recommendations for achieving the objectives of nuclear disarmament
and nuclear non-proliferation; and practical confidence-building
measures in the field of conventional weapons.
The nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation working group
seems to be making headway. The Chair produced a new compilation
paper that was relatively well-received. However, after nearly
a week of additions, the paper grew to a formidable 16 pages.
By the end of last week it was more of a compilation of views
than a document of consensus recommendations. On the suggestion
of several governments, the Chair developed a relatively short
simple paper that could possibly be agreed upon, but was clearly
the lowest-common denominator and deficient in disarmament.
The working group is still determining the status of both
documents, and the shorter paper may be appended to the group's
report while the longer paper is submitted as a conference
room paper that will show the range of the debate. Hopefully
the working group will also be able to agree on increasing
recommendations on disarmament.
11.
Conference on Disarmament: close to negotiations, but not
quite there
The Conference on Disarmament (CD) has not yet held an extraordinary
special session to decide whether to begin negotiations, and
is unlikely to do so before the Non-Proliferation Treaty PrepCom
begins. The CD, the world's sole multilateral body for negotiating
disarmament treaties, came closer to breaking its decade-long
deadlock during its first session of 2007 than it has in many
years. After 10 weeks of the most intensive discussions in
recent memory, the conference's six presidents (P6) presented
a proposal for work that would: 1) initiate negotiations on
a ban on the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons
(FissBan), and 2) continue discussions on preventing an arms
race in outer space (PAROS), nuclear disarmament, and negative
security assurances (NSAs). Despite the announced intention
to decide on the proposal, the CD, on the final day of its
first session, delayed the decision, putting its future work
in jeopardy.
Getting Here: Active Diplomacy
and Compromise
At its January 24 plenary meeting, the CD agreed to an organizational
framework for the year prepared by the P6 (South Africa, Sri
Lanka, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Syria). This framework
set up a schedule and designated coordinators to chair work
on each of the agenda items. The compromise framework, which
was worked out after months of intensive consultations by
South African Ambassador Mshtali, substantially increased
the CD's work over previous years, challenging governments
to address substantive disarmament issues.
As promised by the framework, during the last two weeks of
the CD's first session, the P6 evaluated the work done to
date and presented the conference with a proposal for future
work. The carefully crafted proposal was the result of extensive
consultations with all CD members. It designates a coordinator
to preside over negotiations on a FissBan. It also appoints
coordinators to preside over substantive discussions on nuclear
disarmament and the prevention of nuclear war; issues related
to PAROS; and international arrangements to assure non-nuclear
weapon states against the threat or use of nuclear weapons
(negative security assurances or NSAs).
What Is the Fissile Materials
Cut-off Treaty or FissBan?
A FissBan treaty would constrain states from producing fissile
materials for nuclear weapons, affecting in particular those
countries with smaller fissile material stocks, namely India,
Israel, North Korea and Pakistan (all of whom produce plutonium
for military purposes). China might also be affected as it
has not declared a moratorium on fissile material production,
unlike the other declared nuclear weapon states. (China stopped
producing such material in 1991 but it owns significantly
less fissile material than the other nuclear weapon states.)
In the past, India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan agreed
to negotiate a FissBan treaty knowing such talks would not
happen because of US opposition to side issues. Now that the
US has agreed to begin negotiating, we will see how the states
most affected by a FissBan treaty react. Similarly it will
be interesting to see where China stands on the proposed substantive
discussions on PAROS, its priority issue, now that the US
has signaled its willingness to support such discussions.
Questions about the Proposal
On March 27, many delegations requested clarifications about
the P6 proposal. China gave an extensive list of questions,
most procedural and one substantive: will the discussions
on PAROS include talks about a treaty on the prevention of
the placement of weapons in space? Iran and India said they
would support negotiations on FissBan only if the mandate
for such negotiations includes verification measures (currently
it does not). Egypt, Algeria and China implied they might
make amendments to the proposal for work, which would likely
stop it from moving forward.
The US, Australia, the UK, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru,
Italy, the Netherlands, Chile, Germany, Argentina, Turkey,
Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Austria, the European Union, France,
Slovakia, Poland, South Korea, Bulgaria, Venezuela, Belarus,
the Ukraine and Ecuador have indicated they are ready to move
forward with the proposal. The world is still waiting to hear
decisions from Algeria, Iran, Egypt, China, Cuba, India, and
Pakistan, and to hear statements from Israel and North Korea.
Delaying the Decision
On March 29, the day the CD was supposed to make a formal
decision on the proposal, Sri Lanka announced without further
explanation, that it would not be possible to do so. China
and the Arab Group reportedly were the cause of the delay.
While China had previously shown resistance to the proposal,
the statement from the Arab Group came as a relative surprise,
particularly given that Syria, one of the six presidents,
is a member of the Arab Group. Some CD delegations showed
frustration with the delay, which China did not appreciate.
On March 30, the conference was again unable to make a decision
about the proposal, instead agreeing to convene a special
session in April 2007 to once again consider it. However,
the CD has not convened a special session to date.
Where Do We Go from Here?
After 10 years of deadlock, it is time for the CD to make
an official decision on a compromise proposal for its work.
This will force those governments that do not want to begin
negotiations on FissBan or continue substantive discussions
on PAROS, nuclear disarmament and NSAs, to explain their positions.
It would have been helpful to do this before the Non-Proliferation
Treaty Preparatory Committee (NPT PrepCom) which will take
place April 30- May 11, 2007, because the decision will significantly
affect the work of the PrepCom. Indeed, some governments may
be stalling precisely to delay the decision until after the
NPT PrepCom, thereby adding to frustration at the PrepCom,
and if that goes poorly, providing additional excuses for
not moving forward in the CD. Even if the CD cannot take the
decision until the beginning of the second session on May
15, it must do so then.
Friday, 20 April, marked one month since the CD member states
were presented with the proposal in writing, more than three
months since they agreed to evaluations that would likely
contain such a proposal, more than six months since this process
began, and more than 10 years since the CD last negotiated
a disarmament treaty. It is time for the CD to begin negotiating
again, or for governments to publicly identify their reasons
for not doing so. The work done to date has been enormous,
and must not go to waste.
March
8 Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
Happy International Women's Day! For nearly a century now,
women around the world have celebrated International Women's
Day by demanding political and economic rights, and working
for peace and justice. The Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom (),
the oldest women's peace organization in the world, has been
celebrating by working for women's rights, peace, and disarmament.
WILPF's
sent a to the UN calling for a long-overdue upgrade of
women's equality work in the UN system. WILPF's Reaching Critical
Will project delivered a
to the Conference on Disarmament reminding that treaty-negotiating
body of its responsibilities for abolishing nuclear weapons,
and upholding the UN's promise of saving future generations
from the scourge of war. Women's work for peace with justice
is visionary; we are building the world we want to live in.
Let us spend today remembering the last century's successes,
celebrating our current strengths, and creating our future.
Best wishes,
Jennifer Nordstrom, Project Manager
1. Civil Society helps save
the Department for Disarmament Affairs: What's next?
Civil society's campaign
against downgrading disarmament in the UN system has been
extremely effective to date. Civil society and governments
have opposed the proposed downgrade so vigorously that Secretary-General
Ban Ki Moon has improved his proposals twice so far. The Department
will no longer be subsumed under the Department of Political
Affairs, as originally proposed, and it will now be headed
by an Under-Secretary General instead of the lower Assistant-Secretary-General,
as originally proposed. Reaching Critical Will would once
again like to commend our civil society partners for this
work—this is an significant success for those working
for disarmament.
However, the new UN Secretary-General continues to propose
changing the current Department into an Office and moving
it into his own office, headed by a High Representative of
the Secretary-General, for reasons that remain unclear. According
to the the Secretary-General, he wants the Department to be
“closer” to him, thus the move into his own office.
Presumably, however, if he had simply wanted the DDA to be
in his office, he would have originally proposed this and
not the move into the Department of Political Affairs. Analysts
also originally assumed that the proposal to demote DDA's
chief from an Under-Secretary-General to an Assistant-Secretary-General
was to make room for the additional proposed Under-Secretary-General
in Peacekeeping without increasing the UN's budget allocation
for the top posts. But if the DDA continues to be headed by
an Under-Secretary-General, then this does not explain the
restructuring either.
As we said in our last last
E-news, there are important reasons to either maintain
DDA as it is, or increase its resources, for the following
reasons:
First, High Representatives are personally linked to the
Secretary-General, with time-bound and expiring mandates
at the discretion of the Secretary-General. We do not want
DDA's mandate and chief to change from being part of the
UN secretariat's institutional framework to being personally
linked to changing Secretary-Generals.
Second, retaining DDA's independence will allow the Secretary-General
to avoid being directly involved in political disarmament
issues until he chooses to engage, instead of having every
disarmament decision directly linked to his office.
Without clear reasons for changing the Department into an
Office and moving it into the Secretary-General's office,
it makes more sense not to restructure the Department. Given
disarmament's importance, it would make the most sense to
increase DDA's resources.
Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon made the new restructuring proposal
to the General Assembly at an informal session on February
16, and a General Assembly framework resolution on all his
restructuring proposals is supposed to be coming out soon.
The proposals still have to go through several bureaucratic
processes, including the UN's budgetary committee, before
being approved, which could take several months.
2. Iran and the Security Council:
another resolution on the horizon
The Security Council is discussing increasing the current
sanctions on Iran, created by SC Resolution 1737. That same
resolution called on Iran to stop enriching uranium by February
21, which Iran has not done, and asked the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) to report back on progress. Director-General
of the IAEA circulated his
to the Security Council and the IAEA Board of Governors the
following day. The five permanent members of the Security
Council, plus Germany, met in London on February 26 and agreed
to begin work on a new UN Security Council resolution on Iran
over its nuclear programme. It will be interesting to see
if the 10 elected members of the Security Council will have
as little to do with these negotiations as they have in the
past year, or if Indonesia and South Africa, both of which
have given qualified support for Iran's right to develop nuclear
energy in other fora, will attempt to engage in the process.
See Reaching Critical Will's blow-by-blow coverage here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/iran.html
3.
Open Debate on Security CouncilResolutions
1540 and 1673: criminalizing weapons of mass destruction
On 23 February 2007, the Security Council held an open debate
on the “Cooperation Between the UN Security Council
and International Organizations in the Implementation of Resolutions
1540
(2004) and 1673
(2006).” [See governmental statements at this debate
here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/SC/SC.html#feb23]
Resolution 1540 calls upon all member states to enact national
legislation criminalizing the development, acquisition, manufacturing,
possession, transport, or transfer of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) and their means of delivery by non-state actors. It
also established the 1540 Committee, to which all member states
are obligated to submit national progress reports on their
measures to implement 1540. Resolution 1673 extends the mandate
of the1540
Commitee for two years and encourages it to cooperate
with other organizations and increase its assistance to national
governments. In his presidential statement, Ambassador Ján
Kubis of Slovakia
described 1540 as a “landmark contribution” to
strengthening WMD non-proliferation efforts. He accredited
1540 with complimenting rights and obligations under existing
international non-proliferation treaties, and with translating
commitments to these treaties into national norms and laws.
He also called for governments to prioritize 1540 and to seek
or donate assistance and expertise where needed.
Many participating states called for increased national reporting,
though South
Africa, Indonesia,
El Salvador, Pakistan,
and Peru
argued that reporting can be difficult for small states. On
behalf of the Pacific Island Forum, New
Zealand pointed out that small states require assistance
in overcoming capacity and resource challenges. Some states
also expressed concern over the level of assistance the 1540
Committee has provided during the last three years. Japan
and Pakistan believe the Committee has reached its capacity
for assistance and expertise.
Representatives from the Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency,
and the World Customs Organization offered technical assistance
to states. They have experience promoting the implementation
of resolutions and treaties, which is applicable to ensuring
the universalization of 1540. France, Italy,
Japan, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and Viet Nam advocated
cooperation between states, the 1540 Committee, and relevant
international organizations.
Argentina,
the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the European
Union, Guatemala, South
Korea, Uruguay,
and Viet Nam proposed enhancing regional cooperation through
workshops and seminars. South Korea believes “regional
and sub-regional initiatives for implementation would not
only spur national governments to action, but also provide
positive examples for nations in other regions.”
However, some states voiced concerns about the legitimacy
and mandate of 1540. Indonesia
expressed trepidation over the legislative role the Security
Council assumed during the adoption of 1540, while Cuba
is worried about the “deliberately ambiguous provisions”
of 1540 that potentially allow for actions that undermine
the UN Charter and existing multilateral agreements.
A crucial concern of some states, including Cuba, Indonesia,
Iran, and South Africa, is that in pursuing non-proliferation
initiatives such as 1540, the international community is forgetting
about disarmament. They argued that the only guarantee against
the proliferation of WMD is their complete elimination, for,
as South Africa said,
“as long as these weapons exist, the world will always
exist under a threat of a nuclear catastrophe.”
-Ray Acheson, Reaching Critical Will
4.
Updates and Reminders about the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory
Committee
The nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty Preparatory Committee(NPT PrepCom) is just two
short months away! First, NGOs should know that it looks like
we will be working on Tuesday, May 1, previously scheduled
as a holiday, which means it will be most likely that the
NGO presentations will be held on Wednesday, May 2. Second,
because we are buzzing along, please remember the following:
Send in your accreditation and registration applications
to the Department for Disarmament Affairs! These must be
received in snail mail by March 26, or
you will not be able to attend the PrepCom. Please be sure
to have your entire delegation listed in your application—changes
will not be accepted later on.
Send your feature articles, photographs, artwork, cartoons
and poetry for Reaching Critical Will's daily newsletter
at the PrepCom, the News in Review, to the Project
Manager. The News in Review is read daily by the diplomats
and NGOs around the world. Find examples of past issues
here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/nirindex.html
Find guidelines for submission here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/action/Advisories.html#jan187
Also send your advertisements for the News in Review to
the Project Manager.
All ads are less than $100, and will be seen by all the
governments at the PrepCom and NGOs around the world. Examples
of past issues and guidelines for submission are available
at the links above.
February 6 Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
On Friday, February 2, the UN released a report in which 2,500
scientists from 130 countries agreed that climate change is
primarily due to human activity, and detailed the catastrophic
effects of this climate change. recently linked the perils
posed by climate change to the threat of nuclear annihilation,
as the two greatest threats to life as we know it. On January
17, the scientists moved the famed two minutes closer to midnight, reflecting the dire
combination of standing “at the brink of a Second Nuclear
Age” with the threat that “climate change could
cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies
depend for survival.” The scientists deemed the threat
of global warming “second only to nuclear weapons.”
As humans try to find energy alternatives to the carbon-emitting
fossil fuels that cause climate change, we must be sure not
to propose solutions that are more problematic than the original
problem. As the scientists noted, nuclear energy “raise[s]
other significant concerns, such as the health and environmental
hazards of nuclear waste, the production of nuclear materials
that can be diverted to the production of weapons, and the
safety and security of the plants themselves.” Nuclear
waste remains radioactive for unimaginable time periods: over
24,000 years () to over 4.5 billion years (). The recently released a
detailing the severe environmental impacts of nuclear energy,
and concluded that it was not the solution to climate change.
NGOs are heading into a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
Preparatory
Committee held in the city of the International Atomic
Energy Agency. This confluence, as the Agency commemorates
its 50th year of simultaneously promoting nuclear technology
and ensuring that technology is not used for nuclear weapons,
provides an opportunity to challenge the safety and utility
of nuclear energy. We understand that access to nuclear energy
is written into the NPT, but we also understand that access
to a dangerous counter-productive technology does not require
its use. Why would anyone want a system that causes more problems,
including at least 1,200 generations of radioactive waste,
conventional pollution, limited fuel supply, insecure nuclear
materials, nuclear accidents, and nuclear proliferation, than
it solves? Bring your thoughts to the NPT.
All NGOs wishing to participate at the 2007 Preparatory Committee
of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty must apply for accreditation
through the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs.
To apply, your organization must send:
A letter written on organizational letterhead signed by the
head of the organization requesting attendance at the Conference.
This letter should include the composition of the delegation,
and an overview of past interactions, if any, between the
organization and the United Nations particularly in relation
to disarmament and non-proliferation. Such interaction may
also include affiliation with the Department of Public Information-DPI,
consultative status with the Economic and Social Council-ECOSOC,
etc. NGOs that will be participating for the first
time should indicate this in their request for accreditation.
A mission statement or summary of work that should include
information on the organization’s purpose, programmes
and activities related to the scope of the Preparatory Committee.
This information should not exceed two pages in length.
A completed registration form (Download the form here).
This information should be sent by fax to Ms. Myrna
Peña, by letter, (Secretariat of the Preparatory
Committee c/o Ms. Myrna Peña, Political Affairs Officer,
Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch, Department for Disarmament
Affairs, Room S-3140 B, United Nations, New York, N.Y. 10017,
USA) no later than 25 March. You may send accreditation requests
by fax (1-212) 963-8892 or e-mail (DDACONF-NGO@un.org),
but they will be considered provisional until the signed letters
are received by mail.
Note that names of representatives of your delegation cannot
be changed once submitted, due to enhanced security
at the UN Office in Vienna.
In April, you will be notified if your application was accepted
or rejected. When you arrive in Vienna, you will have to register
at the Austria Center. For more information on registration,
be sure to read the DDA aide memoire here.
2. News in Review Submissions
This is a reminder for you to submit to the daily NGO newsletter
at the NPT PrepCom, the News in Review! The News in Review
is one of the best ways for NGOs to get their views across
to all delegates at the conference, as well as to the 1000+
subscribers who receive via email every day.
We are looking for feature articles (no more than 1000 words)
highlighting any aspect of the negotiations including nuclear
disarmament, non-proliferation, "peaceful uses", national
issues relating to NPT, and more. We are also looking for
cartoons and artwork- a vital part of the NIR! We are glad
to reprint articles and artwork that you have already written
or published. We are also still accepting submissions for
advertisements.
This is a reminder that the drafting process for the NGO presentations
has already begun. NGOs are allotted one, three-hour session
to present their ideas and recommendations to States Parties.
These presentations are drafted in a collective, consensus-based
manner, and will also be distributed to all governments and
archived on the RCW website. Join the discussion by sending
an email to:nptpresentations-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
4. Update on the UN Department
for Disarmament Affairs
Response to Ban Ki Moon's proposal to downgrade DDA has been
overwhelming. Governments and civil society have opposed the
downgrade, originally slated as a move into the Department
of Political Affairs and now proposed as a move into the Secretary-General's
own office. The General Assembly discussed the restructuring
with the Secretary-General on Monday, February 5, in a closed,
informal meeting, and smaller-scale consultations are scheduled
to continue. Some governments have suggested the proposed
restructuring be processed through the notorious Administrative
and Budgetary (Fifth) Committee, where it would presumably
encounter challenges.
Due to opposition, the proposed downgrade has changed form,
but is still opposed. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the
Group of 77 (G77) originally opposed moving the DDA into a
Department for Political Affairs because it was likely to
be headed by a nuclear weapon state representative, so the
Secretary-General has now proposed moving the Department into
his own office. The Department would become an “office”,
headed by a Special Representative or High Representative
of the Secretary-General (SRSG), initially an Assistant-Secretary
General. However, the NAM and the G77 reportedly still have
reservations, as do several western governments, including
Austria, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.
It is still important to retain an independent DDA, with its
own institutional mandate and Under-Secretary General. Changing
the Department to an office and demoting its chief still represent
a downgrade, which is moving in the wrong direction when challenges
to disarmament and nonproliferation are increasing. Moreover,
SRSGs are personally linked to the Secretary-General, with
time-bound and expiring mandates at the discretion of the
Secretary-General. We do not want DDA's mandate and chief
to change from being part of the UN secretariat's institutional
framework to being personally linked to changing Secretary-Generals.
Finally, retaining DDA's independence will allow the Secretary-General
to avoid being directly involved in political disarmament
issues until he chooses to engage, instead of having every
disarmament decision directly linked to his office.
Reaching Critical Will would like to commend civil society's
response to this issue. You were loud, you were quick, and
you made a difference. Letters are still helpful, but either
update them with the above information, or use our new sample
letter here. For more updates, watch this space!
5. Conference on Disarmament opens,
agrees to an Organizational Framework for 2007
The Conference on Disarmament (CD)
is off to a relatively auspicious beginning, having already
agreed to an agenda, a framework for substantive discussions,
and work plans for the year. The Organizational
Framework set out a general schedule for the CD's discussions,
and appointed a Coordinator to each of the seven CD agenda
items. The seven Coordinators have designed work plans for
their agenda items, detailing what issues will be discussed
when. In the first three plenary sessions of 2007, the CD
set up a framework allows time and space for in-depth work
on the most important issues and agreed to Coordinators to
coordinate that work. Now they must continue to build their
confidence and bridge differences so they can move into negotiations.
The Organizational Framework is the compromise between those
that prefer to pay equal attention to all agenda items and
those that prefer to focus on agenda items they see as moving
more quickly than others. During the first ten week session
of the CD, governments will debate two agenda items per week,
with three informal sessions and one formal session devoted
to each agenda item. In the last week of the first session,
they will evaluate this process in order to construct their
second session according to progress in the first set of debates.
The first six weeks of the seven week second session are then
open to work on any issues on which the Conference agrees
it can make progress.
According to the current South
African CD president, the Coordinators “will arrange
and chair deliberations dealing with the agenda items in a
comprehensive manner without preconditions, bearing in mind
all relevant views and proposals, past, present and future.”
These Coordinators will report to the P6, who appointed them.
They are as follows:
Ambassador Wegger Strommen of Norway for agenda item
1, entitled “cessation of the nuclear arms race and
nuclear disarmament”;
Ambassador Carlo Trezza of Italy for agenda item 2, entitled
“prevention of nuclear war, including all related
matters”;
Ambassador Paul Meyer of Canada for agenda item 3, entitled
“prevention of an arms race in outer space”;
Ambassador Carlos Paranhos of Brazil for agenda item 4,
entitled “effective international arrangements to
assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat
of use of nuclear weapons”;
Ambassador Petko Draganov of Bulgaria for agenda item
5, entitled “new types of weapons of mass destruction
and new systems of such weapons, including radiological
weapons”;
Ambassador Makarim Wibisono of Indonesia for agenda item
6, entitled “comprehensive programme of disarmament”;
and
Ambassador John Duncan of the United Kingdom for agenda
item 7, entitled “transparency in armaments”.
On January 30, the Coordinators presented detailed work
plans for each of their agenda items for the year, and the
Conference agreed to them with little controversy. These work
plans are available on the RCW website here:
Presumably, NGOs with suggestions about any of the above agenda
items should direct those suggestions to the Coordinator.
The CD also still accepts NGO
submissions.
January 18
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
As many of you already know, the next cycle of the nuclear
Non Proliferation Treaty review will begin with a Preparatory
Committee meeting in Vienna, 30 April – 11 May. In this
E-news we have compiled the information that you will need
in preparation for this upcoming meeting, as well as an update
on the Security Council sanctioning Iran.
1) Invitation to NGOs to attend
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee
(NPT PrepCom)
All non-governmental organizations that work on nuclear disarmament
and nonproliferation are invited to attend the first Preparatory
Committee of the NPT, to be held in Vienna April 30 –
May 11, at the Austria Center (Bruno Kreisky Platz 1, 1220
Vienna).
Ambassador Yukiya Amano of Japan will be chairing the conference.
All states, both signatories and non-signatories, are invited
to attend.
If your organization wishes to participate in the upcoming
PrepCom, be sure to subscribe to Reaching Critical Will's
General E-News service to receive all updates and information
throughout the upcoming weeks. Send an email requesting a
subscription to the General E-News service to the Project
Manager. In addition, information will be posted regularly
to the NPT section of the Reaching Critical Will website,
at this link: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/2007index.html
2) NGO Accreditation and Registration
NGOs wishing to attend the Review Conference must apply for
accreditation to the Department for Disarmament Affairs. All
NGOs, even those with UN badges, must apply.
Details on accreditation will be forthcoming within the next
few weeks, but for now you should be prepared to submit, by
March 27:
1) a letter on organizational letterhead requesting attendance
at the Conference. Include the composition of the delegation,
the names of all representatives, and an overview of past
interactions between your organization and the United Nations
in relation to disarmament and nonproliferation.
2) A mission statement or summary of work.
Once these materials have been received by the DDA, you will
be notified of your acceptance mid-April. Once accredited,
you must register with the DDA when you arrive in Vienna.
Although there will be no pre-registration this year, NGOs
are strongly encouraged to register as soon as possible upon
arriving in Vienna, and if possible, register early on Monday,
April 30, when the desks open at 8am. DDA will run registration
the first three days of the PrepCom; after that NGOs must
register through Safety and Security.
DDA hopes that NGOs will give careful consideration to their
delegation lists before submitting their applications. It
is very important that you include all the names of your organization's
representatives; add-ons will not be permitted later
on.
When the aide memoire is available, (further outlining the
accreditation process) it will be posted on our site and on
the and will be announced through this E-News subscription
list.
3) What is the role of NGOs
at the Preparatory Committee?
In recent years, NGOs have provided invaluable insight and
expertise to the conference, and their influence is growing.
In order to continue and build on this influence, committed
NGOs should attend the Preparatory Committee, to insist States
Parties start the new review cycle properly. NGOs are needed
to provide credible analysis, views and perspectives on the
global nuclear regime, support progressive measures towards
disarmament and nonproliferation, and bring media and public
attention to these important issues. With this meeting in
Vienna, the city housing the International Atomic Energy Agency,
an organization dually charged with preventing the spread
of nuclear weapons while promoting nuclear energy, NGOs also
have the opportunity to highlight the deadly proliferation
links between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
At this meeting, NGOs will be:
urging the governments to renew their commitment to the
NPT;
offering review and analysis of the nuclear weapon states'
progress on the 13 point action plan for disarmament;
fostering a reassessment of the role and level of participation
of NGOs in international fora;
recommending ways of strengthening other disarmament machinery,
including the Conference on Disarmament and the Disarmament
Commission;
engaging diplomats in discussions on the newest ideas
and issues in disarmament at side-events and lunch time
panels;
holding press conferences and conducting media outreach
to draw attention to the PrepCom and the issues;
and more.
4) NGO Statements to the delegates
NGOs are allotted one, three-hour session to present their
ideas and recommendations to States Parties. These presentations
are drafted in a collective, consensus-based manner, and will
also be distributed to all governments and archived on the
RCW website. (You can read the statements from the 2005 NPT
Review Conference at: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/RevCon05/NGOpres/NGOpres.html
.)
If you are an NGO wishing to participate in this drafting
and editing process- and we urge you to do so, whether or
not you plan to go to Vienna- join the discussion by sending
an email to: nptpresentations-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
Once you have subscribed, you will receive further instructions
on participating.
This process will begin immediately, so subscribe today!
5) NGO side events
NGOs have reserved one conference room for their use throughout
the Preparatory Committee. Some groups have already begun
organizing events to be held in that room.
If your organization wishes to organize an event, we encourage
you to book your time slot as soon as possible. Send an email
to Jennifer with
the title of your event, the time and date, and contact information.
Events will all be posted on the Calendar of Events here:
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/prepcom07/events.html
It is imperative that NGOs utilize the room reserved for
us to its utmost potential. If the room is under-utilized,
(and it never has been in the past), we may undermine our
chances of obtaining a room at future PrepComs or Review Conferences.
6) Housing Options for NGO representatives
Reaching Critical Will wants to make it as easy as possible
for NGOs to come to Vienna for this PrepCom. That's why we
will help you find the best accommodations to suit your budget
and your needs.
If you have a spare bed, couch, or other sleep space in Vienna,
please consider hosting a disarmament activist in your home
during the PrepCom, April 30- May 11. Some activists come
only for the first week, others for only the first few days.
Please discuss it with your family or housemates if you would
be able to share your home with one or more of our out-of-town
friends for a few nights.
If you are interested in being a host or a guest, please
contact the Project
Manager indicating any special needs that must be met.
The News in Review is a daily publication produced
during the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee
and Review Conferences. It features analysis of the day's
events, feature articles from NGOs around the world, interviews
with diplomats and NGO representatives, nuclear facts, announcements,
cartoons, calendar of events, and more. You can read past
NIRs at: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/nirindex.html.
We encourage you to submit to this year's News in Reviews.
The guidelines are as follows:
Feature articles: In addition to the daily analysis
of the proceedings of the PrepCom, the News in Review
also contains feature articles that cover a range of nuclear
disarmament issues. We welcome submissions from NGO experts
around the world, regardless of whether or not you will be
in Vienna. Articles should be between 500-1000 words and may
be edited for length. The deadline for feature submissions
is April 15th.
Advertising space: You can use the News in Review
to publicize an important announcement, event, or project
hosted by your organization. NIRs are distributed to all of
the delegates at the PrepCom, through a free email subscription,
and are archived on our website, www.reachingcriticalwill.org
. By placing an ad in the News in Review, you will be able
to get your message across to hundreds of well-informed members
of the disarmament community.
1/4 page ad: $35
1/2 page ad: $55
full page ad: $125
back page ad: $180
(Run your ad twice and get $10 off. Run your add three times
and get $20 off. Run your ad four times and you get $30 off.)
Cartoons, photos, artwork, poetry: Calling all creative
anti-nuclear activists! The News in Review wouldn't
be complete without its fill of poignant, satirical, and beautiful
artwork. We are accepting all forms of anti-nuclear artwork,
to be sent in either a .jpg, .gif, or .pdf file. Start drawing,
coloring, taking photos, painting, or doodling- but get it
in to us soon!
Submit your ad, article or artwork by sending:
your organization's name;
contact person;
email address;
phone number;
type of submission (for ads, please specify the size of
the ad, dates for it to run, and payment method);
and the submission
to the Project Manager.
The deadline for all submissions is April 15.
Subscribe to RCW's CD News Advisory list, and receive
weekly updates on what your government is saying this week
in Geneva.
Make an appointment with your Foreign Ministry or equivalent.
Urge your Foreign Minister to attend the conference, reminding
them that they represent YOU. Use our Governmental Contact
Database for their information: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/govcontacts/govindex.html
Call your local media! Publicize your views and your government's
policies, and let them know what's happening in Vienna.
Once the Review Conference is in session, you can read
what your government did or did not say by checking RCW's
NPT page every day. We post all statements, working papers,
non-papers, reports, NGO statements, and official documents
on our website in near real-time. Subscribe to the News
in Review, the daily non-governmental NPT publication, and
receive daily updates on what is happening in Vienna. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/nirindex.html
On December 23, 2006, just before the new elected members
began their term in January, the UN Security Council unanimously
passed a resolution (1737) sanctioning Iran for not suspending
its enrichment and reprocessing-related activities. The resolution
requires states to take measures to prevent any trade that
could contribute to Iran's enrichment-related, reprocessing
or heavy water-related activities or to the development of
nuclear weapon delivery systems. It also places travel restrictions
on and freezes the assets of individuals and organizations
that the Council says are involved in those activities. It
requests the Director General of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) to report on the Iran's compliance within
60 days, and says the Council will “take further appropriate
measures under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the Charter”
if Iran has not complied.
The major conflict in this resolution was over the restricting
the travel and freezing the assets of the individuals and
organizations listed in an Annex to the resolution. Russia
did not want the Annex nor the paragraphs on travel restrictions
and assets because they would make negotiations with Iran
more difficult, but eventually agreed to them. Other Russian
amendments to include the clause that States actions' resulting
from this resolution be “in accordance with their national
legal authorities and consistent with international law”
were similarly not included.
This is the second resolution on Iran that attempts to creatively
create a binding resolution while avoiding authorizing the
use of force. As with the last resolution on Iran, the resolution
operates under a Chapter VII mandate without finding an Article
39 threat to peace and security. The resolution instead acts
under Article 41, which authorizes action but specifically
excludes military action (“measures not involving the
use of armed force”; see more legal analysis ).
Some members of the Council are clearly trying to prevent
any attempts to use these Security Council resolutions to
justify the invasion of Iran. Security Council members must
remain vigilant in proscribing the use of force. As Russia
and China appear to be less resistant to the Western agenda
than they were a year ago, Indonesia and South Africa, both
of whom just joined the Council as elected members, will have
to take a more active role in these negotiations.
The resolution also creates a Security Council Committee
to: seek information from states and the IAEA on the implementation
of the resolution; take action on violations; and monitor
and amend the sanctions as needed. This Committee will report
to the Security Council every 90 days.
January 12
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,
Because of the urgent nature of the issue, we are sending
this RCW e-news with a lone issue. We will send out all the
information about the upcoming nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Preparatory Committee next week, so stay tuned!
Best wishes,
Jennifer Nordstrom, Project Manager
Call on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon:
Don't Downgrade Disarmament at the UN
The Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA)
is the United Nation's institutional memory and stronghold
of expertise on disarmament at the international level. Several
countries have a shameful record on disarmament and would
like to see the Department and its institutional memory and
activity downgraded.
The new Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, is purportedly
considering subsuming the Department for Disarmament Affairs
(DDA) into the Department of Political Affairs, reducing the
stature of disarmament within the UN at a time when the problems
posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, as
well as small arms, are escalating.
Disarmament was recognized from the outset of the United
Nations as an essential condition for global peace and security.
The UN Charter recognized that an armed peace was not going
to be a just peace, and that preparation for war was not going
to bring peace. Nuclear disarmament was the subject of the
very first United Nations resolution, and general disarmament
is included in the mandate of the Security Council.
Characterizing the Department as of the "Cold War" era is
inaccurate. The current Department is a post-Cold War phenomenon,
created out of recognition that problems associated with weapons
have changed but not decreased. In fact military budgets are
soaring, wars are being fought over weapons and new treaty
processes are forming. The disarmament agenda remains unfinished,
which lies at the core of today's security challenges.
Putting the issue of disarmament into the Department of Political
Affairs is unhelpful and unnecessary, both in terms of the
UN fulfilling its mandate, and servicing inter-governmental
meetings and treaty bodies. The world's disarmament machinery,
norms and regime are embattled right now, and reducing the
stature of the primary global institution responsible for
implementation of UN decisions is the wrong course. It is
important for the Department to remain its own entity with
its own mandate specific to disarmament, headed by an Under-Secretary-General
whose primary concern is disarmament. This allows the Department
to make independent assessments with disarmament as the goal.
The Department also houses years of expertise and institutional
memory that is invaluable to governments and civil society,
and which could be quietly lost under a different department.
Having a disarmament-focused department actually allows decisions
to be made more quickly than having them processed through
a department dealing with disparate concerns that may be less
familiar with the issues. The Department is sufficiently burdened
with work to warrant a dedicated department, and the issue
it covers is sufficiently urgent to justify expansion rather
than absorption.
Among its many crucial functions, DDA:
serves states parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), the major treaty governing nuclear weapons,
because that treaty does not have its own secretariat;
serves the General Assembly during the First Committee
on Disarmament and International Security when the world's
governments meet and debate the most pressing disarmament
and security issues;
serves the Conference on Disarmament, the world's sole
multilateral disarmament treaty negotiating body;
maintains the Register of Conventional Arms and the Instrument
for Reporting Military Expenditures;- provides independent
assessments to the Secretary-General and Security Council
and General Assembly as appropriate; and
provides technical assistance to governments in the process
of ratifying and implementing treaties.
Demoting DDA has been proposed before, but protest from cooler
heads - both governmental and non-governmental - saved the
Department whose goal it is to promote the global norms of
disarmament. Last time, the response from civil society was
critical in turning the tide, and your help is needed again.
Take Action!
Please register your concern in writing. A sample letter in
support of keeping an independent DDA is provided below for
you to adapt. You can also download
the letter.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's fax number is: +1 212
963-4879
SAMPLE LETTER (Replace the address heading and title with
your government's UN Ambassador's information and then Foreign
Minister's information to send a letter to them as well)
DATE
His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary-General of the United Nations
United Nations Headquarters
New York, New York
Dear Mr. Secretary-General:
I am writing to you in support of keeping an independent
Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA), with its own mandate
and Under-Secretary-General. I am concerned by reports that
DDA might be subsumed under the Department for Political Affairs,
a shift that is unhelpful and unnecessary, both in terms of
the UN fulfilling its mandate, and servicing inter-governmental
meetings and treaty bodies.
Disarmament is one of the central tasks of the UN, as evidenced
by the first UN General Assembly resolution calling for nuclear
disarmament, and the UN Charter's vision for the “the
least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic
resources” (Article 26). The UN must live up to its
mandate and prioritize disarmament in the Secretariat, maintaining
the independent DDA instead of subordinating it to other agendas.
The UN should not be reducing the stature of disarmament
within the UN at a time when the problems posed by nuclear
and other weapons of mass destruction, as well as small arms,
are escalating. The DDA, which was designed to address post-cold
war disarmament issues, is even more necessary in an era with
increased opportunity for, but decreased attention to, disarmament.
Moreover, the world's disarmament machinery, norms and regime
are embattled right now, and reducing the stature of the primary
global institution responsible for implementation of UN decisions
is the wrong course.
It is important for DDA to remain its own entity with its
own mandate and Under-Secretary-General whose primary concern
is disarmament. It is also important that a department dealing
with nuclear disarmament answer to an Under-Secretary-General
from a non-nuclear weapon state. This allows DDA to make independent
assessments with disarmament as the goal. DDA houses years
of expertise and institutional memory that is invaluable to
governments and civil society, and which could be quietly
lost under a different department. For example, when something
similar happened in the United States, and the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency was moved into the State Department,
technical expertise and institutional memory was lost, as
was internal advocacy for disarmament. Finally, disarmament
is very technical; having a disarmament-focused department
actually allows decisions to be made more quickly than having
them processed through a department dealing with disparate
concerns that may be less familiar with the issues.
The Department for Disarmament Affairs must not lose its
unique identity, mandate and its ability to report directly
to the Secretary-General through its own Under-Secretary-General.
The quantity and technical nature of the Department's work
is sufficient to warrant a dedicated department, and the issue
the Department covers is sufficiently urgent to justify expansion
rather than absorption. Thank you for your consideration.
