By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Sep 4 2015 (IPS)

Iran’s nuclear programme has been the target of a great deal of misinformation, downright lies and above all myths. As a result, it is often difficult to unpick truth from falsehood. 

Farhang Jahanpour

As President John F. Kennedy said in his Yale University Commencement Address on 11 June 1962: “For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliché of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of the opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

In order to understand the pros and cons of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed by Iran and the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, France and Germany) on 14 July 2015, and the subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 passed unanimously on 20 July 2015 setting the agreement in U.N. law and rescinding the sanctions that had been imposed on Iran, it is important to study the background to the whole deal.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regulates the activities of the countries that wish to make use of peaceful nuclear energy. The NPT was enacted in 1968 and it entered into force in 1970. Its objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, while promoting the peaceful use of nuclear technology. Iran was one of the first signatories to that Treaty, and so far 191 states have joined the Treaty.“Iran’s nuclear programme has been the target of a great deal of misinformation, downright lies and above all myths. As a result, it is often difficult to unpick truth from falsehood”

It has been one of the most successful disarmament treaties in history. Only three U.N. member states – Israel, India and Pakistan – did not join the NPT and all of them proceeded to manufacture nuclear weapons. North Korea, which acceded to the NPT in 1985, withdrew in 2003 and has allegedly manufactured nuclear weapons.

This treaty was a part of the move known as “atoms for peace”, which allowed different nations to have access to nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but prevented them from manufacturing nuclear weapons.

The treaty was a kind of bargain between the five original countries that possessed nuclear weapons (all the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council) and the non-nuclear countries that agreed never to acquire nuclear weapons in return for sharing the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology.

The Treaty is based on four pillars:

Pillar One – Non-Proliferation:  Article 1 of the NPT states that nuclear weapon state countries (N5) should not transfer any weapon-related technology to others.

Pillar Two – Ban on possession of nuclear weapons by non-nuclear states: Article 2 states the other side of the coin, namely that non-nuclear states should not acquire any form of nuclear weapons technology from the countries that possess it or acquire it independently.

Pillar Three – Peaceful use of nuclear energy: Article 4 not only allows the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but even stresses that it is “the inalienable right” of every country to do research, development and production, and to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, without discrimination, as long as Articles 1 and 2 are satisfied.

It further states that all parties can exchange equipment, material, and science and technology for peaceful purposes. It calls on the nuclear states to assist the non-nuclear states in the use of peaceful nuclear technology.

Pillar Four – Nuclear disarmament: Article 6 makes it obligatory for nuclear states to get rid of their nuclear weapons. The Treaty states that all countries should pursue negotiations on measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race and “achieving nuclear disarmament”.

While nuclear powers have worked hard to prevent other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, they have not abided by their side of the bargain and have been reluctant to give up their nuclear weapons. On the contrary, they have further developed and upgraded those weapons, and have made them more capable of use on battlefields.

Sadly, 37 years after its final ratification, the number of nuclear-armed countries has increased, and at least four other countries have joined the club.

After it was realised that unfettered access to enrichment could lead some countries, such as Iraq and North Korea, to gain knowledge of nuclear technology and subsequently develop nuclear weapons, the NPT was amended in 1977 with the Additional Protocol, which tightened the regulations in order to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

According to the Additional Protocol, which Iran has agreed to implement as part of the JCPOA, “Special inspections may be carried out in circumstances according to defined procedures. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) may carry out such inspections if it considers that information made available by the State concerned, including explanations from the State and information obtained from routine inspections, is not adequate for the Agency to fulfil its responsibilities under the safeguards agreement.” 

However, as the above paragraph makes clear, these inspections will be carried out only in exceptional circumstances when there is valid cause for suspicion that a country has been violating the terms of the agreement, and only if the IAEA decides that the explanations provided by the State concerned are not adequate. Also, such inspections will be carried out on the basis of “defined procedures”

The countries that have ratified the Additional Protocol have agreed to “managed inspections”, and the Iranian authorities have also said that such managed and supervised inspections can be carried out. This of course does not mean “anytime, anywhere” inspections, but inspections that are in keeping with the provisions of the Additional Protocol as set out above.

Meanwhile, in addition to the nuclear states, there are 19 other non-weapons states which are signatories to the NPT and which actively enrich uranium. They have vastly more centrifuges than Iran ever had. Iran’s array of 19,000 centrifuges (only 10,000 of them were operational) prior to the agreement was paltry compared with the capabilities of other countries that enrich uranium.

During the talks between Iran and the P5+1, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali  Khamenei said that Iran wanted to have at least 190,000 centrifuges in order to get engaged in industrial scale enrichment.

It should be remembered that the sale of nuclear fuel is a lucrative business and the countries that do not have enrichment facilities but which have nuclear reactors, are forced to purchase fuel from the few countries that have a monopoly of enriched uranium. Iran had openly stated that it wished to join that club, or at least to be self-sufficient in nuclear fuel.

However, under the JCPOA, Iran has given up the quest for industrial scale enrichment and is even reducing the number of its operational centrifuges from 19,000 to just over 5,000. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Cloud from an atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States at Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands, in November 1952. Photo credit: US Government

By Ramesh Jaura
HIROSHIMA, Aug 28 2015 (IPS)

A three-day landmark U.N. Conference on Disarmament Issues has ended here – one day ahead of the International Day Against Nuclear Tests – stressing the need for ushering in a world free of nuclear weapons, but without a consensus on how to move towards that goal.

The Aug. 26-28 conference, organised by the Bangkok-based United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD) in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of Japan and the city and Prefecture of Hiroshima, was attended by more than 80 government officials and experts, also from beyond the region.

It was the twenty-fifth annual meeting of its kind held in Japan, which acquired a particular importance against the backdrop of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the founding of the United Nations.“In order to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, it is extremely important for political leaders, young people and others worldwide to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and see for themselves the reality of atomic bombings. Through this, I am convinced that we will be able to share our aspirations for a world free of nuclear weapons” – Fumio Kishida, Japanese Foreign Minister

Summing up the deliberations, UNRCPD Director Yuriy Kryvonos said the discussions on “the opportunities and challenges in nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation” had been “candid and dynamic”.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference from Apr. 27 to May 22 at the U.N. headquarters drew the focus in presentations and panel discussions.

Ambassador Taous Feroukhi of Algeria, who presided over the NPT Review Conference, explained at length why the gathering had failed to agree on a universally acceptable draft final text, despite a far-reaching consensus on a wide range of crucial issues: refusal of the United States, Britain and Canada to accept the proposal for convening a conference by Mar. 1, 2016, for a Middle East Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

Addressing the issue, Japan’s Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida joined several government officials and experts in expressing his regrets that the draft final document was not adopted due to the issue of WMDs.

Kishida noted that the failure to establish a new Action Plan at the Review Conference had led to a debate over the viability of the NPT. “However,” he added, “I would like to make one thing crystal clear. The NPT regime has played an extremely important role for peace and stability in the international community; a role that remains unchanged even today.”

The Hiroshima conference not only discussed divergent views on measures to preserve the effective implementation of the NPT, but also the role of the yet-to-be finalised Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in achieving the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons, humanitarian consequences of the use of atomic weapons, and the significance of nuclear weapon free zones (NWFZs) for strengthening the non-proliferation regime and nuclear disarmament.

Speakers attached particular attention to the increasing role of local municipalities, civil society and nuclear disarmament education, including testimonies from ‘hibakusha’ (survivors of atomic bombings mostly in their 80s and above) in consolidating common understanding of the threat posed by nuclear weapons for people from all countries around the world regardless whether or not their governments possess nuclear weapons.

UNRCPD Director Kryvonos said the Hiroshima conference had given “a good start for searching new fresh ideas on how we should move towards our goal – protecting our planet from a risk of using nuclear weapons.”

Hiroshima Prefecture Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki, the city’s Mayor Karzumi Matsui – son of a ‘hibakusha’ father and president of the Mayors for Peace organisation comprising 6,779 cities in 161 countries and regions – as well as his counterpart from Nagasaki, Tomihisa Taue, pleaded for strengthening a concerted campaign for a nuclear free world. Taue is also the president of the National Council of Japan’s Nuclear-Free Local Authorities.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki city leaders welcomed suggestions for a nuclear disarmament summit next year in Hiroshima, which they said would lend added thrust to awareness raising for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Though foreign ministry officials refused to identify themselves publicly with the proposal, Japan’s Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, who hails from Hiroshima, emphasised the need for nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear weapon states to “work together in steadily advancing practical and concrete measures in order to make real progress in nuclear disarmament.”

Kishida said that Japan will submit a “new draft resolution on the total elimination of nuclear weapons” to the forthcoming meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Such a resolution, he said, was “appropriate to the 70th year since the atomic bombings and could serve as guidelines for the international community for the next five years, on the basis of the Review Conference”.

The next NPT Review Conference is expected to be held in 2020.

Mayors for Peace has launched a 2020 Vision Campaign as the main vehicle for advancing their agenda – a nuclear-weapon-free world by the year 2020.

The campaign was initiated on a provisional basis by the Executive Cities of Mayors for Peace at their meeting in Manchester, Britain, in October 2003. It was launched under the name ‘Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons’ in November of that year at the 2nd Citizens Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons held in Nagasaki, Japan.

In August 2005, the World Conference endorsed continuation of the campaign under the title of the ‘2020 Vision Campaign’.

Foreign Minister Kishida expressed the views of the inhabitants of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he pointed out in a message to the UNRCPD conference: “… the reality of atomic bombings is far from being sufficiently understood worldwide.”

He added: “In order to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, it is extremely important for political leaders, young people and others worldwide to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and see for themselves the reality of atomic bombings. Through this, I am convinced that we will be able to share our aspirations for a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

A group of eminent persons (GEM) launched a concerted campaign on Aug. 25, 2015, for entry into force of a global ban on nuclear weapon tests such as this one at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Credit: United States Department of Defense via Wikimedia Commons

By Katsuhiro Asagiri and Ramesh Jaura
HIROSHIMA, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

As the international community gears up to commemorate the 20^th anniversary next year of the opening up of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) for signature, a group of eminent persons (GEM) has launched a concerted campaign for entry into force of a global ban on nuclear weapon testing.

GEM, which was set up by Lassina Zerbo, the Executive Secretary of the September 2013 Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) at the United Nations headquarters in New York, met on Aug. 24-25 in Hiroshima, a modern city on Japan’s Honshu Island, which was largely destroyed by an atomic bomb during the Second World War in 1945.

“Multilateralism in arms control and international security is not only possible, but the most effective way of addressing the complex and multi-layered challenges of the 21st century” – CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only two cities in the world which have suffered the devastating and brutal atomic bombs that brought profound suffering to innocent children, women and men, the tales of which continue to be told by the ‘hibakusha’ (survivors of atomic bombings).

“There is nowhere other than this region where the urgency of achieving the Treaty’s entry into force is more evident, and there is no group better equipped with the experience and expertise to help further this cause than the Group of Eminent Persons,” CTBTO Executive Secretary Zerbo told participants.

The GEM is a high-level group comprising eminent personalities and internationally recognised experts whose aim is to promote the global ban on nuclear weapons testing, support and complement efforts to promote the entry into force of the Treaty, as well as reinvigorate international endeavours to achieve this goal.

The two-day meeting was hosted by the government of Japan and the city of Hiroshima, where CTBTO Executive Secretary Zerbo participated in the commemoration of the 70^th anniversary of the atomic bombing early August.

On the eve of the meeting, Zerbo joined former United States Secretary of Defence and GEM Member William Perry and Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki as a panellist in a public lecture on nuclear disarmament which was attended by around 100 persons, including many students.

In an opening statement, Zerbo urged global leaders to use the momentum created by the recently reached agreement between the E3+3 (China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, United Kingdom and the United States) and Iran to inject a much needed dose of hope and positivity in the current discussions on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

“What the Iran deal teaches us is that multilateralism in arms control and international security is not only possible, but the most effective way of addressing the complex and multi-layered challenges of the 21st century. [It] also teaches us that the measure of worth in any security agreement or arms control treaty is in the credibility of its verification provisions. As with the Iran deal, the utility of the CTBT must be judged on the effectiveness of its verification and enforcement mechanisms. In this area, there can be no question,” Zerbo said.

Also speaking at the opening session, Perry expressed his firm belief that ratification of the CTBT served U.S. national interests, not only at the international level but also at the strictly domestic level for national security measures. He considered that the current geopolitical climate constituted a risk for the prospects of entry into force and reiterated the importance of maintaining the moratoria on nuclear testing.

Participating GEM members included Nobuyasu Abe, former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Japan; Des Browne, former Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom; Jayantha Dhanapala, former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs; Sérgio Duarte, former U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Brazil; Michel Duclos, Senior Counsellor to the Policy Planning Department at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Wolfgang Hoffmann, former Executive Secretary of the CTBTO, Germany; Ho-Jin Lee, Ambassador, Republic of Korea; and William Perry, former Secretary of Defence, United States.

István Mikola, Minister of State, Hungary; Yusron Ihza Mahendra, Ambassador of Indonesia to Japan; Mitsuru Kitano, Permanent Representative, Ambassador of Japan to the International Organisations in Vienna; and Yerzhan N. Ashikbayev, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Kazakhstan, participated as ex-officio members.

The GEM took stock of the Plan of Action agreed in its meetings in New York (Sep. 2013), Stockholm (Apr. 2014) and Seoul (Jun. 2015). The Group considered the current international climate and determined that, with the upcoming 20^th anniversary of the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, there was an urgency to unite the international community in support of preventing the proliferation and further development of nuclear weapons with the aim of their total elimination.

Participants in the meeting discussed a wide range of relevant issues and debated practical measures that could be undertaken to further advance the entry into force of the Treaty, especially in the run-up to the Article XIV Conference on Facilitating Entry into Force of the CTBT, which will take place at the end of September in New York, with Japan and Kazakhstan as co-chairs.

One hundred and eighty-three countries have signed the Treaty, of which 163 have also ratified it, including three of the nuclear weapon states: France, Russia and the United Kingdom. But 44 specific nuclear technology holder countries must sign and ratify before the CTBT can enter into force. Of these, eight are still missing: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States. India, North Korea and Pakistan have yet to sign the CTBT.

The GEM adopted the Hiroshima Declaration, which reaffirmed the group’s commitment to achieving the global elimination of nuclear weapons and, in particular, to the entry into force of the CTBT as “one of the most essential practical measures for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation”, and, among others, called for “a multilateral approach to engage the leadership of the remaining . . . eight States with the aim of facilitating their respective ratification processes.”

The GEM called on “political leaders, governments, civil society and the international scientific community to raise awareness of the essential role of the CTBT in nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and in the prevention of the catastrophic consequences of the use of nuclear weapons for humankind.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

The mayor of Nagasaki, Tomihisa Taue, presents the Nagasaki Peace Declaration, saying that “rather than envisioning a nuclear-free world as a faraway dream, we must quickly decide to solve this issue by working towards the abolition of these weapons, fulfilling the promise made to global society”. Credit: YouTube

By Ramesh Jaura
BERLIN/TOKYO, Aug 10 2015 (IPS)

Seventy years after the brutal and militarily unwarranted atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, a nuclear weapons free world is far from within reach.

Commemorating the two events, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made impassioned pleas for heeding the experiences of the survivors of the atomic bombings and the growing worldwide awareness of the compelling need for complete abolition of such weapons.

The atomic bombings in 1945 destroyed the two cities, and more than 200,000 people died of nuclear radiation, shockwaves from the blasts and thermal radiation. Over 400,000 have died since the end of the war, from the after-effects of the bombs.

As of Mar. 31, 2015, the Japanese government had recognised 183,519 as ‘hibakusha’ (explosion-affected people), most of them living in Japan. Japan’s Atomic Bomb Survivors Relief Law defines hibakusha as people who were: within a few kilometres of the hypocentres of the bombs; within 2 km of the hypocentres within two weeks of the bombings; exposed to radiation from fallout; or not yet born but carried by pregnant women in any of these categories.“Our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policy-makers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation” – Kazumi Matsui, mayor of Hiroshima

During the commemorative events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reports in several newspapers confirmed that those bombings were militarily unwarranted.

Gar Alperovitz, formerly Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, wrote in The Nation that that “the war was won before Hiroshima – and the generals who dropped the bomb knew it.”

He quoted Adm. William Leahy, President Harry S. Truman’s Chief of Staff, who wrote in his 1950 memoir ‘I Was There’ [that] “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender …”

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. president from 1953 until 1961, shared this view. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.

Eisenhower stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.”

Even the famous “hawk” Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, went public the month after the bombing, telling the press that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all,” wrote Alperovitz.

“The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish,” warned Robert Oppenheimer, widely considered the father of the bomb, as he called on politicians to place the terrifying power of the atom under strict international control.

Oppenheimer’s call has yet to be followed.

In his fervent address on Aug. 6, Kazumi Matsui, mayor of the City of Hiroshima, said: “Our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policy-makers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation.”

He added: “We now know about the many incidents and accidents that have taken us to the brink of nuclear war or nuclear explosions. Today, we worry as well about nuclear terrorism.”

As long as nuclear weapons exist, he warned, anyone could become a hibakusha at any time. If that happens, the damage would reach indiscriminately beyond national borders. “People of the world, please listen carefully to the words of the hibakusha and, profoundly accepting the spirit of Hiroshima, contemplate the nuclear problem as your own,” he exhorted.

As president of Mayors for Peace, comprising mayors from more than 6,700 member cities, Kazumi Matsui vowed: “Hiroshima will act with determination, doing everything in our power to accelerate the international trend toward negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention and abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020.”

This, he said, was the first step toward nuclear weapons abolition. The next step would be to create, through the trust thus won, broadly versatile security systems that do not depend on military might.

“Working with patience and perseverance to achieve those systems will be vital, and will require that we promote throughout the world the path to true peace revealed by the pacifism of the Japanese Constitution,” he added.

“We call on the Japanese government, in its role as bridge between the nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states, to guide all states toward these discussions, and we offer Hiroshima as the venue for dialogue and outreach,” the mayor of Hiroshima said.

In the Nagasaki Peace Declaration issued on Aug. 9, Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue asked the Japanese government and Parliament to “fix your sights on the future, and please consider a conversion from a ‘nuclear umbrella’ to a ‘non-nuclear umbrella’.”

Japan does not possess any atomic weapons and is protected, like South Korea and Germany, as well as most of the NATO member states, by the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

He appealed to the Japanese government to explore national security measures, which do not rely on nuclear deterrence. “The establishment of a ‘Northeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NEA-NWFZ),’ as advocated by researchers in America, Japan, Korea, China, and many other countries, would make this possible,” he said.

Referring to the Japanese Parliament “currently deliberating a bill, which will determine how our country guarantees its security”, he said: “There is widespread unease and concern that the oath which was engraved onto our hearts 70 years ago and the peaceful ideology of the Constitution of Japan are now wavering. I urge the Government and the Diet to listen to these voices of unease and concern, concentrate their wisdom, and conduct careful and sincere deliberations.”

The Nagasaki Peace Declaration noted that the peaceful ideology of the Constitution of Japan was born from painful and harsh experiences, and from reflection on the war. “Since the war, our country has walked the path of a peaceful nation. For the sake of Nagasaki, and for the sake of all of Japan, we must never change the peaceful principle that we renounce war,” the declaration said.

The Nagasaki mayor regretted that the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held at the United Nations earlier this year had struggled with reaching agreement on a Final Document.

However, said Taue, the efforts of those countries which were attempting to ban nuclear weapons had made possible a draft Final Document “which incorporated steps towards nuclear disarmament.”

He urged the heads of NPT member states not to allow the NPT Review Conference “to have been a waste”. Instead, they should continue their efforts to debate a legal framework, such as a ‘Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC),’ at every opportunity, including at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Many countries at the Review Conference were in agreement that it was important to visit the atomic-bombed cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Against this backdrop, the Nagasaki mayor appealed to “President [Barack] Obama, heads of state, including the heads of the nuclear weapon states, and all the people of the world … (to) please come to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and see for yourself exactly what happened under those mushroom clouds 70 years ago.”

No U.S. president has ever attended the any event to commemorate the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller was the highest-ranking U.S. official at the Aug. 6 ceremony. She was reported as saying that nuclear weapons should never be used again.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The recent agreement between Iran and six nations on nuclear non-proliferation will likely have a “positive impact” on North Korea, according to a senior South Korean diplomat.

Choong-Hee Hanh, South Korea’s Deputy Permanent Representative and former Deputy Director-General for North Korean Nuclear Affairs, told IPS that the Iran nuclear deal bolsters the case for taking a multilateral approach to resolving sensitive international security issues.

“I think the Iran nuclear formula will give us a general hint that these issues should be dealt with in this multilateral approach,” he said. “I think that this case of diplomacy in Iran will (bring) pressure to North Korea and (create) awareness to international society about the benefits of utilising pressure to resolve these issues.”

Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council in addition to Germany reached an agreement in Vienna last month to limit Tehran’s nuclear energy programme in order to prevent it from developing weapons. The U.N. Security Council promptly approved the deal, which capped prolonged negotiations.

Similar six-party negotiations involving North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and United States was begun in 2007 but it stalled in 2009 when North Korea pulled out. Pyongyang has since carried out nuclear tests and withdrawn from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

“I believe the Iranian case can lend a positive impact in North Korea,” Hahn said, but added a note of caution. “On the other hand, North Korea continuously argues that they are a nuclear weapon state according to their constitution. They may think they should not abandon their nuclear weapons programme for the survival of the regime, so it seems not easy to resolve this issue.”

While China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. shared the objective of preventing the nuclearisation of North Korea, he said, “At the same time, their priorities are a little bit different. “

“The Six-Party Talks are meaningful as it is an opportunity to explore the bottom line of North Korea’s mindset on this issue as well as a shared perception among five parties,” he added. “I think this shared perception of five parties on the situation is very important to taking the next step and moving forward.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Gamma spectroscopy can detect traces of radioactivity from nuclear tests from the air. Credit: CTBTO Official Photostream/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 2015 (IPS)

With the four-week-long review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) underway at the United Nations, hopes and frustrations are running equally high, as a binding political agreement on the biggest threat to humanity hangs in the balance.

Caption: Dr. Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO). Credit: CTBTO Official Photostream

Behind the headlines that focus primarily on power struggles between the five major nuclear powers – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – scores of organisations refusing to be bogged down in geopolitical squabbles are going about the Herculean task of creating a safer world.

One of these bodies is the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), founded in 1996 alongside the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), with the aim of independently monitoring compliance.

With 183 signatories and 164 ratifications, the treaty represents a milestone in international efforts to ban nuclear testing.

In order to be legally binding, however, the treaty needs the support of the 44 so-called ‘Annex 2 States’, eight of which have so far refused to ratify the agreement: China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and the United States.

This holdout has severely crippled efforts to move towards even the most basic goal of the nuclear abolition process.

Still, the CTBTO has made tremendous strides in the past 20 years to set the stage for full ratification.

Its massive global network of seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide detecting stations makes it nearly impossible for governments to violate the terms of the treaty, and the rich data generated from its many facilities is contributing to a range of scientific endeavors worldwide.

In an interview with IPS, CTBTO Executive Secretary Dr. Lassina Zerbo spoke about the organisation’s hopes for the review conference, and shared some insights on the primary hurdles standing in the way of a nuclear-free world.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What role will the CTBTO play in the conference?

"Right now 90 percent of the world is saying “no” to nuclear testing, yet we are held hostage by [a] handful of countries [...]." -- Dr. Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO)
A: Our hope is that the next four weeks result in a positive outcome with regards to disarmament and non-proliferation, and we think the CTBT plays an important role there. The treaty was one of the key elements that led to indefinite extension of the NPT itself, and is the one thing that seems to be bringing all the state parties together. It’s a low-hanging fruit and we need to catch it, make it serve as a stepping-stone for whatever we want to achieve in this review conference.

For instance, we need to find a compromise between those who are of the view that we should move first on non-proliferation, and between those who say we should move equally, if not faster, on disarmament.

We also need to address the concerns of those who ask why nuclear weapons states are allowed to develop more modern weapons, while other states are prevented from developing even the basic technologies that could serve as nuclear weapons.

The CTBT represents something that all states can agree to; it serves as the basis for consensus on other, more difficult issues, and this is the message I am bringing to the conference.

Q: What have been some of the biggest achievement of the CTBTO? What are some of your most pressing concerns for the future?

A: The CTBTO bans all nuclear test explosions underwater, underground and in the air. We’ve built a network of nearly 300 stations for detecting nuclear tests, including tracking radioactive emissions.

Our international monitoring system has stopped horizontal proliferation (more countries acquiring nuclear weapons), as well as vertical proliferation (more advanced weapons systems).

That’s why some [states] are hesitant to consider ratification of the CTBT: because they are of the view that they still need testing to be able to maintain or modernise their stockpiles.

Any development of nuclear weapons happening today is based on testing that was done 20-25 years ago. No country, except for North Korea, has performed a single test in the 21^st century.

Q: How do you deal with outliers like North Korea?

A: We haven’t had official contact with North Korea. I can only base my analysis on what world leaders are telling me. [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov has attempted to engage North Korea in discussions about the CTBT and asked if they would consider a moratorium on testing. Yesterday I met Yerzhan Ashikbayev, deputy foreign minister for Kazakhstan, which has bilateral relations with North Korea, and they have urgently called on North Korea to consider signature of the CTBT.

Those are the countries that can help us, those who have bilateral relations.

Having said this, if I’m invited to North Korea for a meeting that could serve as a basis for engaging in discussions, to help them understand more about the CTBT and the organizational framework and infrastructure that we’ve built: why not? I would be ready to do it.

We are also engaging states like Israel, who could take leadership in regions like the Middle East by signing onto the CTBT. I was just in Israel, where I asked the questions: Do you want to test? I don’t think so. Do you need it? I don’t think so. So why don’t you take leadership to open that framework that we need for confidence building in the region that could lead to more ratification and more consideration of a nuclear weapons-free zone or a WMD-free zone.

Israel now says that CTBT ratification is not an “if” but a “when” – I hope the “when” is not too far away.

Q: Despite scores of marches, thousands of petitions and millions of signatures calling for disarmament and abolition, the major nuclear weapons states are holding out. This can be extremely disheartening for those at the forefront of the movement. What would be your message to global civil society?

A: I would say, keep putting pressure on your political leaders. We need leadership to move on these issues. Right now 90 percent of the world is saying “no” to nuclear testing, yet we are held hostage by the handful of countries [that have not ratified the treaty].

Only civil society can play a role in telling governments, “You’ve got to move because the majority of the world is saying ‘no’ to what you still have, and what you are still holding onto.” The CTBT is a key element for that goal we want to achieve, hopefully in our lifetime: a world free of nuclear weapons.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Daisaku Ikeda
TOKYO, Apr 9 2015 (IPS)

From the end of April, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference will be held in New York. In this year that marks the seventieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I add my voice to those urging substantial commitments and real progress toward the realisation of a world without nuclear weapons.

Dr. Daisaku Ikeda. Credit: Seikyo Shimbun

In recent years, there has been an important shift in the debate surrounding nuclear weapons. This can be seen in the fact that, in October of last year, more than 80 percent of the member states of the United Nations lent their support to a joint statement on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, in this way expressing their shared desire that nuclear weapons never be used – under any circumstances.

Meanwhile, the Third Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons held in Vienna, Austria, in December, marked the first time that nuclear-weapon states – the United States and the United Kingdom – participated, acknowledging the existence of a complex debate on this question.

In order to break out of the current deadlock, I believe we need to refocus on the fundamental inhumanity of nuclear weapons in the full breadth of their impacts. Taking this as our point of departure, we must formulate measures to ensure that no country or people ever suffer the kind of irreparable damage that nuclear weapons would wreak.

Here, I would like to propose two specific initiatives. One is to develop a new NPT-centred institutional framework – a commission dedicated to nuclear disarmament:“We must formulate measures to ensure that no country or people ever suffer the kind of irreparable damage that nuclear weapons would wreak”

I urge the heads of government of as many states as possible to attend the NPT Review Conference this year, and that they participate in a forum where the findings of the international conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons are shared.

Then, in light of the fact that all parties to the NPT unanimously expressed their concern about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons at the 2010 Review Conference, I hope that each head of government or national delegation will take the opportunity of this year’s conference to introduce their respective plans of action to prevent such consequences.

Finally, building upon the “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament,” reaffirmed at the 2000 Review Conference, I propose that an “NPT disarmament commission” be established as a subsidiary organ to the NPT to ensure the prompt and concrete fulfilment of this commitment.

The second initiative I would like to propose concerns the creation of a platform for negotiations for a legal instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons:

Creation of such a platform should be based on a careful evaluation of the outcome of this year’s NPT Review Conference, and it could draw on the 2013 General Assembly resolution calling for a United Nations high-level international conference on nuclear disarmament to be convened no later than 2018. This conference could be held in 2016 to begin the process of drafting a new treaty.

I strongly hope that Japan will work with other countries and with civil society to accelerate the process of eliminating nuclear weapons from our world.

In August of this year, the United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues will be held in Hiroshima; the World Nuclear Victims’ Forum will take place in November, also in Hiroshima; and the annual Pugwash conference will be held in Nagasaki in November.

Planning is also under way for a World Youth Summit for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons to be held in Hiroshima at the end of August as a joint initiative by the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and other groups. I hope that the summit will adopt a youth declaration pledging to bring the era of nuclear weapons to an end, and that it will help foster a greater solidarity among the world’s youth in support of a treaty to prohibit these weapons.

At the Vienna Conference in December, the government of Austria issued a pledge to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders in order to realise the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.

In the same spirit, together with the representatives of other faith-based organisations, the SGI last year organised interfaith panels in Washington D.C. and Vienna which issued Joint Statements expressing the participants’ pledge to work together for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The future is determined by the depth and intensity of the pledge made by people living in the present moment. The key to bringing the history of nuclear weapons to a close lies in ensuring that all actors – states, international organisations and civil society – take shared action, working with like-minded partners while holding fast to a deep commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Excerpt:

In the face of the growing number of crises taking place at the same time worldwide, humanitarian aid organisations – many of which have already reached their financial and logistic limits – are in desperate need of global coordination.

“We feel like we’ve hit the wall,” is how U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-Wha Kang has described the dramatic situation.

This situation was the subject of the 3rd Vienna Humanitarian Congress held last week in the Austrian capital under the slogan ‘Humanitarian Aid Under Fire’.Humanitarian organisations are rethinking their strategies, especially in Syria and Iraq, and trying to include all stakeholders in a dialogue to obtain access to the people in need – Kyung-Wha Kang, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs

Opening the congress, Annelies Vilim, Director of Global Responsibility, the Austrian platform for development and humanitarian aid, told participants: “Humanitarian aid is not an act of charity. It is a human right.“

In a world in which trouble spots and wars are on the rise, the question of how aid operations are carried out most successfully to meet the necessities of recipients is becoming increasingly relevant and, noted Vilim, at this moment millions of people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

Among others, the goal of the congress was to make humanitarian work more visible in these difficult times and to commit decision makers at all levels to value the importance of humanitarian assistance and cooperation.

Unfortunately, sufficient funding and clear structures are lacking and already inadequate contributions are under constant threats of budget cuts.

Host country Austria itself, for example, is no exception – an OECD study has shown that state spending in 2013 was only 1.3 euro per capita, 20 times less than the amount a country of similar wealth such as Sweden was paying.

“The world is facing drastic transformations and politics are not keeping up,” complained Yves Daccord, Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

To address those challenges, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has launched an initiative, managed by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to hold the first World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey.

It will bring together governments, humanitarian organisations, people affected by humanitarian crises and new partners, including from the private sector, to draw up solutions and set an agenda for the future of humanitarian action.

Logo of the 3rd Vienna Humanitarian Congress. In the face of the growing number of crises taking place at the same time worldwide, humanitarian aid organisations are in desperate need of global coordination.

One issue that is certain to be on the agenda is the safety of aid workers. With 1.5 billion people living in conflict-affected areas, “we will unfortunately have to face more stories in the media about aid workers killed in the line of duty, of atrocities committed against innocent civilians,” said Kang.

In 2013 alone, 474 humanitarian workers were attacked, injured or abducted and 155 lost their lives.

Due to the difficult circumstances, Kang explained that humanitarian organisations are rethinking their strategies, especially in Syria and Iraq, and trying to include all stakeholders in a dialogue to obtain access to the people in need.

Controversially, this also means that for the sake of civilians, parties that are considered “terroristic” should also be involved in the process. Humanitarian actors legitimate this by upholding the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and non-discrimination in regard to beneficiaries, and independence.

It is estimated that today over 30 armed conflicts are taking place worldwide, 16 of which are considered as wars with more than 1,000 victims each year. According to the United Nations, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are ranked at the highest level of emergency.

The Central African Republic occupied some of the limelight at the Vienna congress in a panel discussion on humanitarian space and life and work in war. Two of the country’s religious leaders – Archbishop Dieudonne Nzapalainga and Imam Layama Oumar Kobine – spoke out about their fight for peace and disarmament.

Both argued that the civil war in their country was not a religious war. “Neither the Bible nor the Koran say that people should kill,” said Nzapalainga, explaining that five days after the beginning of the crisis in December 2012, religious leaders had come together to work collectively on an interreligious platform.

The problem, said the religious leaders, is that 75 percent of the country’s population is illiterate and therefore open to exploitation and recruitment by militant groups. This affects young people in particular and, because the state and government have ceased to exist, it is humanitarian workers who often fulfil the duties of the authorities.

Karoline Kleijer, Emergency Coordinator of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), described her experience of how life has become incredibly difficult for humanitarian workers in the country.

She described how shortly after arriving in the country in April 2014, armed forces entered a meeting of MSF staff and local community leaders that she was attending, opened fire and killed 20 people, including three MSF workers.

The incident had a huge impact on the organisation, she said, but despite all the difficulties “it did not stop us from working in the country. Since then, we have performed more than 10,000 operations and treated more than 300,000 people for malaria. We have delivered more than 15,000 babies and we have been continuing activities up to today.”

Although the principle that civilians have to be protected in armed conflicts and war and have a right to humanitarian assistance is embedded in the Geneva Convention, humanitarian workers have to take great risks to obtain access to the population in distress and, contrary to their neutrality, are becoming targets themselves.

“We hope that humanitarian workers will continue to take those risks, because we continue to take those risks in order to help the population in need,” said Nzapalainga.

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 28 2014 (IPS)

Tarzie Vittachi, a renowned Sri Lankan newspaper editor and one-time deputy executive director of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, once recounted the oft-quoted story of an African diplomat who sought his help to get coverage in the U.S. media for his prime minister’s address to the General Assembly.

The diplomat, a friend of Vittachi’s, said the visiting African leader was planning to tell the world body his success stories in battling poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS."Its enterprising role has also been evident in the way it championed the creation of U.N. Women." -- Assistant Secretary-General Lakshmi Puri

“How can I get this story into the front pages of U.S. newspapers?” he asked rather naively.

Vittachi, then a columnist and contributing editor to Newsweek magazine, jokingly retorted: “Shoot him – and you will get the front page of every newspaper in the U.S.”

As the old tabloid journalistic axiom goes: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

But in its news coverage over the last 50 years, IPS has led mostly with “unsexy” and “un-bleeding” stories, long ignored by the mainstream media.

As IPS commemorates its 50th anniversary this year, its news coverage of the developing world and the United Nations has been singled out for praise because of its primary focus on social and politico-economic issues on the U.N. agenda, including poverty, hunger, population, children, gender empowerment, education, health, refugees, human rights, disarmament, the global environment and sustainable development.

Congratulating IPS on its 50th anniversary, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was quick to applaud IPS’ “relentless focus on issues of concern to the developing world – from high-level negotiations on economic development to on-the-ground projects that improve health and sanitation.

“I thank IPS for raising global public awareness about matters at the heart of the U.N.’s agenda, and I hope it will have an even greater impact in the future,” he added.

IPS U.N. Bureau Chief Thalif Deen

In its advocacy role, IPS was in the forefront of a longstanding campaign, led by world leaders, activists and women’s groups, for the creation of a separate U.N. entity to reinforce equal rights for women and for gender empowerment.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of U.N. Women, last week praised IPS for its intensive coverage of sustainable development and gender empowerment.

She said IPS has been “a leader” in realising a more democratic and equitable new information, knowledge and communication order in the service of sustainable development in all its dimensions: social, economic and environmental.

“Its enterprising role has also been evident in the way it championed the creation of U.N. Women: a new gender equality and women’s empowerment and rights architecture within the U.N. system.

“We have partnered with IPS to advance this most important project for humanity in the 21st century,” said Puri. “IPS joined our political mobilisation drive for a stand-alone gender equality and women’s empowerment goal through sustained engagement and compelling content.”

She said IPS has demonstrated “its unwavering commitment to development issues through supporting our efforts to mainstream gender perspectives in the G77, particularly via the Declaration of Santa Cruz ‘For a New World Order for Living Well’ of June 2014, and the historic pre-summit international meeting on Women’s Proposals for a New World Order.”

She also said IPS has joined the public mobilisation campaign – “Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture It”- as a Media Compact partner, and is throwing its full support behind Beijing+20.

“I wish IPS 50 more years of dynamic evolution, courageous reporting of truth, built on the foundations of reportage from the front-lines of ground experiences, and of providing game changing third-eye wisdom and policy perspectives on all endeavours of humanity and of imagining a better world for women and girls,” Puri declared.

Over the years, IPS has also given pride of place for coverage of disarmament and development – and specifically nuclear disarmament.

Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. under-secretary-general for disarmament affairs, said last week there is special significance in the fact that this anniversary is being celebrated together with the Group of 77 and UNCTAD, highlighting the umbilical link with the developing world of the global South.

Giving voice to these important trends, IPS emerged to challenge the monopoly of the news exchange system and its dominance by the developed world, he added.

Drawing on the vast reservoir of hitherto globally unrecognised journalistic talent in the global South, Roberto Savio and Pablo Piacentini co-founded an organisation that has braved challenges of resource mobilisation and unfair competition, said Dhanapala.

“Having spent many years in the area of peace and disarmament with the United Nations, I am personally grateful to IPS for espousing the cause of disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament, and for identifying the priority of a nuclear weapon-free world where weapons of mass destruction must be eliminated and conventional weapons reduced from current levels in achieving general and complete disarmament,” he said.

“Only then can we have peace and security with development and human rights flourishing in collective and co-operative global security,” said Dhanapala, president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs (1995 Nobel Peace Laureate) and a former ambassador of Sri Lanka.

When the United Nations launched a new series in 2004 drawing attention to the “10 Most Under-Reported Stories of the Year”, IPS was far ahead of the curve having covered at least seven of the 10 stories in a single year: AIDS orphans in Africa; Women as Peacemakers; the Hidden World of the Stateless; Policing for Peace; the Girl Soldier; Indigenous Peoples and a Treaty for the Disabled.

Dr. Shashi Tharoor, a former U.N. under-secretary-general and head of the Department of Public Information (DPI), who originated the series, recounted the role of IPS in covering under-reported stories.

Reiterating his comments, Tharoor said last week: “I have followed IPS’ reporting for three decades, and worked with them at close quarters during my media-related assignments at the United Nations.

“I found IPS an excellent source of news and insight about the developing world, covering stories the world’s dominant media outlets too often ignore,” said Tharoor, currently a member of parliament for Thiruvananthapuram in India’s Lok Sabha.

He said IPS reporters marry the highest professional standards of journalism to an institutional commitment to covering stories of particular concern to the global South.

“They are indispensable to any reader who wishes to stay abreast of what’s happening in developing countries around the world,” said Tharoor, a prolific writer and author of ‘The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone’.

In recent years, IPS has been a three-time winner of the annual awards presented by the U.N. Correspondents’ Association (UNCA), having won a bronze in 1997 (shared with the Washington Post) and two golds in 2012 and 2013 (one of which it shared with the Associated Press) for “excellence in U.N. reporting”.

Additionally, IPS’ Gareth Porter was also honoured in 2012 with the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, whose past winners included the Guardian, the Independent, the Sunday Times and Wikileaks.

The Washington-based Population Institute, which gave its annual media awards for development reporting, singled out IPS as “the most conscientious news service” for coverage relating to population and development.

IPS won the award nine times in the 1990s, beating out the major wire services year in and year out, conceding occasionally to Reuters and the Associated Press (AP).

Barbara Crossette, a former U.N. bureau chief for the New York Times (1994-2001) and currently U.N. correspondent for The Nation and contributing writer and editor for PassBlue, said, “I am among those many journalists who follow the IPS reports daily, not only for insight into events and people at the United Nations, but also — and maybe more so — for coverage of global news from the perspective of the developing world.”

She said she also looks forward to some of “the controversial commentary from IPS writers with different perspectives than those we hear most in the Western media, where reporting from the U.N. itself has generally sunk to a new low in American and numerous European publications and broadcasts.

“As for news from inside the U.N., IPS’s close attention to the issues of women in the organisation and in its work internationally has been consistently stellar,” said Crossette, who cited the Vittachi anecdote in the 2007 ‘Oxford Handbook on the United Nations’ published by the Oxford University Press.

“No other news service has covered so reliably the establishment, the people and the ongoing challenges of U.N. Women and what that all means to the level of commitment member states really have to making the new U.N. agency strong and effective at a time when it is clear how central a role women must play in development,” said Crossette, who was also the Times’ chief correspondent in Bangkok (for Southeast Asia from 1984 to 1988) and in Delhi (for South Asia, 1988-1991.

Described by some as a “socially responsible” media outlet, IPS has consistently advocated the cause of civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) worldwide.

James Paul, who monitored U.N. politics for over 19 years as executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, said IPS has made a tremendous contribution to the movement for global justice over the past 50 years.

It is hard today to imagine the world as it was then, in 1964, a moment when colonialism was ending, when the democratic spirit was running strong, when there was a worldwide movement to seize the institutions and transform them, he added.

“IPS arose to confront the information monopolies and to bring a fresh approach to news that would reflect and nourish the spirit of those times,” Paul said.

He said IPS immediately won a place of honour and inspired those working for democracy, justice and peace: people who needed an alternative to the arid journalism of the powers-that-be.

“In the five decades that have followed, it has held true to that vision serious investigation of global developments, honest thinking, engagement for justice, the very best journalism day in and day out”.

He added: “I am always impressed by the commitment of IPS to reporting the underlying issues, to drawing on historical memory, to bringing to events a sense of humor, hope and possibility, even in the darkest of times. We can count on IPS to use proudly the optic of human rights, economic justice and peace.”

Though news is not so monopolised today, its purveyors in both South and North are still too often the mouthpieces and propagandists of power, he noted.

“Clearly, then, IPS is more important than ever. A luta continua! I salute the founder, Roberto Savio, and the hundreds of talented journalists who have worked with him over the years,” Paul said.

“In particular I salute the remarkable IPS U.N. correspondent, who has embodied the IPS spirit and kept us all so well informed about what is happening. We need a collection of his dispatches. Happy Birthday, IPS!”

Cora Weiss, International Peace Bureau, Hague Appeal for Peace, said: “Every day IPS’ (electronic newsletter) TerraViva, brings news I cannot find any place else. It’s news that matters.”

And it’s news that gives voice to people who are under recognised, news that covers issues critical to our well being and survival, she added.

“I appreciate your coverage of women, of threats to peace, of nuclear weapons and policies to abolish them, of climate change affecting islands and islanders, and so much more. Keep it coming!” Weiss said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Excerpt:

Members of Cote d'Ivoire's armed forces march during the country's Independence Day celebrations on Aug. 7. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Sep 22 2012 (IPS)

In his black boots and green fatigues – complete with arm patches bearing the name of the national army, Forces Republicaines de Côte d’Ivoire – Ousmane Kone looked every bit the soldier as he stood guard over an electricity and water distribution company one Tuesday afternoon in Abidjan.

But his appearance was somewhat misleading. The 22-year-old received no formal training before he was handed his first Kalashnikov rifle last year, and he has never been registered with the Côte d’Ivoire army.

What is more, the building he was guarding was not state property, but rather a private company owned by his “commander,” a former insurgent from the New Forces rebel group or Forces Nouvelles de Côte d’Ivoire (FNCI).

Kone is one of an untold number of fighters who took up arms during Côte d’Ivoire’s recent post-election conflict, which unfolded after former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede office despite losing the November 2010 election to current President Alassane Ouattara.

Distraught over reports that fellow members of his Dioula ethnic group were being burned alive at Abidjan roadblocks manned by pro-Gbagbo fighters, Kone did not hesitate to join the pro-Ouattara faction during the decisive battle in the commercial capital in April 2011 that culminated in Gbagbo’s arrest. 

“Our friends were being massacred, and we weren’t powerful because we didn’t have weapons,” he said. “Every day we were hiding until pro-Ouattara fighters launched the attack on Abidjan (in April 2011).”

Today, he faces an uncertain future. As Côte d’Ivoire gears up for a long-awaited disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, to be conducted in concert with broader reforms to the security sector, thousands of young men are worried that they may have their weapons taken from them.

Analysts say these anxieties could have partly fuelled a recent spate of attacks on military positions that killed at least 12 soldiers in August, marking some of the most significant violence since the conflict ended more than a year ago.

The new DDR campaign, which was reviewed by Ouattara’s cabinet last month but has not yet begun, will not be the first for Côte d’Ivoire. Following a failed coup attempt against Gbagbo in 2002, the country was partitioned for eight years, with the FNCI controlling the north.

Though disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration were attempted during that period, the effort failed for a host of reasons, not least of which was that the conflict had not been resolved.

Alain-Richard Donwahi, Ouattara’s defence and security adviser and secretary of his national security council, told IPS that, prior to the recent conflict, the government estimated around 70,000 combatants needed to be disarmed – 32,000 from the FNCI and 38,000 from what he described as “pro-Gbagbo militia groups.”

He said the government did not yet have good figures for the number of fighters who joined warring factions during the conflict.

Arthur Boutellis, senior policy analyst at the International Peace Institute, said that pro-Gbagbo militia groups would raise the number needing to be disarmed considerably. “Right now, given the numbers, we’re talking potentially about 100,000 people,” he said. “We don’t know exactly, but the numbers are huge.”

Donwahi acknowledged that several key questions still needed to be answered before the disarmament process could begin. One is determining who will actually be eligible for the job training programmes that he said would form the crux of the scheme’s reintegration component.

Describing who might not qualify, Donwahi said: “Some people who come to be disarmed say they’re part of an independent group of combatants. But we know we didn’t have independent combatants here. We had clear chains of command.”

But that analysis does not square with most accounts of the violence. In addition to parallel chains of command within the FNCI, Côte d’Ivoire’s conflict also featured foreign mercenaries and various other militia groups. In addition, the dozos, traditional hunters who have long assumed informal security roles, were active in the fighting and retain a strong presence in large parts of the country, according to observers such as Human Rights Watch.

Though these groups are not likely to be part of the disarmament process, Boutellis said they could serve as potential “spoilers,” and could discourage other combatants from handing over their weapons.

A separate government body set up to disarm civilians, the National Commission for the Fight against the Proliferation of Light and Small Arms, estimates that there are some three million weapons still in circulation. Côte d’Ivoire’s population is roughly 20 million.

More than one year after the conflict ended, Côte d’Ivoire remains highly polarised. Efforts to restart political dialogue between the government and Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front political party have amounted to little. Divisions have only been sharpened by a justice process that many view as one-sided.

More than 100 Gbagbo loyalists have been detained in connection with post-election violence crimes, while no Ouattara allies have been arrested or credibly investigated, according to information provided by prosecutors.

These factors, combined with lingering security concerns, would make it “unrealistic” for the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process to focus on weapons collection from the beginning, Boutellis said, as many combatants view their weapons as a kind of “insurance policy.”

“You have to start with reintegration programmes that could lead to a better climate, which could then lead to weapons collection,” he said.

More work needs to be done to develop reintegration programmes, especially when it comes to job training, Donwahi said. “We are not going to create jobs by magic,” he said. “It’s important to match job opportunities to the skills of demobilised fighters.”

Asked which areas the government might prioritise, Donwahi mentioned agriculture and mechanical work as examples.

Even if the remaining steps are done well, the disarmament process remains fraught with danger, Boutellis said. “The problems will come, and I think that already some of these attacks are linked to the fact that combatants don’t know where they will fall,” he said, referring to the attacks on military positions in August. “Some people are scared they will be left out. Some people are scared that they won’t get what they want.”

This holds true for Mohamed Bakayoko, a 20-year-old combatant who, like Kone, joined the national army during the battle for Abidjan and remains unregistered.

He told IPS that he likes the stability of the army – though he does not have a salary at present, he does receive shelter and regular meals, no small thing in a country where unemployment for young men was at 57 percent in 2010, according to the World Bank. Bakayoko wants to be fully integrated into the army so that he can provide for his family.

“Personally, I want to be a soldier, as my family is depending on me,” he said. “I’m thinking about nothing else.”

He said he believed, however, that many unregistered soldiers actually had no appetite for military service and would be amenable to participating in a well-run DDR programme.

“Most of them are waiting for the DDR programme,” he said of his peers. “During the recent attacks, most of them … didn’t want to fight, so they went back to the village.”

The key, Kone said, would be to convince combatants like himself that they can have a viable future outside the army, which means giving them skills beyond what they currently have.

“The only thing I’ve learned since the beginning of the conflict is how to use a weapon,” he said. “So I don’t want to give up my weapon now.”

Members of the Murle ethnic group wait to receive food aid after attacks from a rival tribe that the U.N. says affected at least 120,000 people. Credit: Jared Ferrie /IPS

By Jared Ferrie
JUBA , Aug 25 2012 (IPS)

South Sudanese soldiers are allegedly beating and torturing civilians in the midst of a disarmament campaign in Jonglei state, and many have been unable to access justice because of a lack of prosecutors and judges, according to the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. 

“Justice and accountability in Jonglei seem to have fallen by the wayside,” HRWs Africa director, Daniel Bekele, said in a statement to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir as HRW called for him to intervene.

“Authorities should investigate the cycle of violence in Jonglei, immediately put a stop to violations committed in the course of civilian disarmament, and ensure that those responsible are held accountable.”

The alleged abuses are taking place in Pibor County, which is about 273 kilometres from Juba, South Sudan’s capital. The area is the traditional homeland of the Murle, an ethnic group involved in clashes with the Lou Nuer that lasted throughout 2011 and into early 2012.

The U.N. said more than 1,000 people were killed in Jonglei in 2011. In addition, at least 900 people – mostly Murle – were killed in attacks and counterattacks from December to February, according to a report released on May 25 by the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

In the wake of the clashes, South Sudan’s government began a statewide disarmament campaign and launched a peace process aimed at reconciliation between the Murle and Lou Nuer.

But the disarmament campaign has been plagued by allegations of abuse. On Apr. 30, a coalition of civil society groups including Washington DC-based Pact and the South Sudan Law Society released a report documenting violence during to the voluntary phase of disarmament. The report warned that violence was likely to increase as disarmament moved into the enforcement phase at the beginning of May.

Elizabeth Ashamu, a research fellow with HRW, told IPS that access to justice is a problem in much of South Sudan, which is one of the world’s poorest countries and has an underdeveloped legal system. But she said special efforts should be made to ensure that civilians have access to justice in the context of a disarmament programme being carried out by the army that has a history of committing abuses against civilians.

Ashamu said there is no civilian prosecutor or judge in Pibor County where HRW focused its research. While complainants can take their case to the police, if there is no prosecutor in the county, the case will not be heard in a local court. So victims would have to travel by land to the Jonglei state capital, Bor, where there is a prosecutor. But Bor is unreachable during the current rainy season when roads are flooded.

“It’s just physically difficult for anyone to file a complaint,” she said in an interview. “There’s also fear of coming forth and filing a complaint, which is exacerbated when the abuse is committed by soldiers.”

Between Jul. 19 and 26 Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed victims and witnesses who accused soldiers of shooting at civilians and beating them. A woman said about five soldiers beat her while she had her baby strapped to her back. One man had visible scars from ropes he said were used to tie him to a tree and sticks used to beat him. Another man said he and six others were subjected to water torture.

“They took us to a pool of water and pushed our heads under water. Then they lifted us up, beat us, and asked for guns. Then they pushed our heads into the water again,” he told HRW. “There were five soldiers (each) holding each of us — one for each leg, and each arm, and one person to push our heads into the water.”

The U.N. peacekeeping mission also released a statement on Aug. 24 documenting alleged abuses including rapes, abductions and simulated drownings.

“The majority of the victims are women, and in some cases children,” the mission said, calling on the authorities to hold perpetrators accountable while noting that the army has taken steps to investigate rape cases. The mission added that the army says it has ordered senior officers to conduct investigations and has recalled patrols allegedly involved in “criminal incidents”.

Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) told IPS that from mid-March to Aug. 20 it treated 90 people with violent trauma injuries in Pibor town, and surrounding villages. Of those, three died of their injuries. The organisation’s medical team also treated 16 rape survivors and eight survivors of attempted rape over the same period.

“These are just the patients that came to MSF to seek treatment, and MSF is concerned that there may be other people with trauma injuries who have not come forward to seek medical care,” said Stefano Zannini, MSF’s head of mission.

The U.N. mission, UNMISS, said on Aug. 24 there have been “significant improvements in the security situation in Jonglei state” since the clashes early this year, but incidents of abuse have spiked recently.

“UNMISS is concerned by the recent increase in serious human rights violations allegedly committed by some undisciplined elements within the South Sudanese Army (SPLA) in Pibor County.”

The mission said that between July 15 and Aug. 20 its monitoring teams recorded one killing, 27 allegations of torture or ill treatment, 12 rapes, six attempted rapes and eight abductions.

Researchers with HRW said they received credible reports of rape, and reports from local officials that more than six civilians were killed in the village of Likuangole after a soldier was killed on Aug. 16.

“Such reports likely represent a small fraction of the actual total number of incidents, as many victims do not travel to Pibor to report the crimes,” Bekele said in the letter to Kiir, referring to the county capital, which is also called Pibor.

The U.N. mission noted that the government sponsored a conference in May that brought together tribal leaders who agreed on steps to be taken to foster peace in Jonglei.

“Failure to identify those suspected of human rights abuses, carry out full investigations in all cases, and demonstrate that justice is being done for the victims, will undermine the confidence and collaboration of local communities in the disarmament process, and risks derailing the peace process,” the mission said.

South Sudan’s government spokesman, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, directed questions to the country’s human rights commission chair, Lawrence Korbandy, who was unable to comment.

Even as Côte d’Ivoire gradually recovers from the bloody events of the 2010-2011 post-electoral crisis, massacres in the western part of the country and the frequent sound of gunfire in the economic capital, Abidjan, are signs of the long road ahead.

More than a year after Alassane Ouattara became president, heavily armed men are still a common sight in the streets of Abidjan and other parts of the western, central and eastern regions of the country.

In Abobo, Adjamé and Yopougon, three large districts of Abidjan, soldiers wearing a variety of uniforms – presented variously by the authorities as demobilised fighters or regular army troops – control traffic and carry out routine checks.

But these soldiers also unnerve residents with their uncontrolled use of weapons. For example on Jul. 24, a confrontation between military police and members of the FRCI, the regular army, led to three deaths. And in March, a young man was murdered in the street in the same areas by soldiers demanding 600 CFA francs (equivalent to around 1.20 dollars).

During a traffic stop in Yopougon on Jul. 27, FRCI troops fired on a taxi whose driver had refused to follow their orders. Three passengers were seriously injured, according to witnesses.

Two days later, in Abengourou, in the east of the country, another taxi was shot at by armed men, leading to five casualties, according to hospital sources.

These fighters carry out systematic raids, make arrests, and detain people for long periods, says the Ivorian Human Rights League (LIDHO), a non-governmental organisation based in Abidjan.

“What’s worrying is that these soldiers don’t seem to answer to a chain of command. Their actions can no longer be considered isolated incidents, since such things have occurred repeatedly,” said René Hokou Legré, president of LIDHO.

Since December 2011, the FRCI and the dozos – traditional hunters who have supported the regular army – have been blamed by many for killing innocent people.

The FRCI killed six people following an altercation between a soldier and a civilian last December in Vavoua, in the west central region of the country. A week later, soldiers killed four in the southern town of Sikensi, in nearly identical circumstances.

In mid-February 2012, confrontations between the FRCI and residents of the eastern county of Arrah led to a dozen deaths, of mainly civilians; community members are now demanding that the soldiers leave the area.

“Everyone must understand that private justice is unacceptable in a state of law. Recourse to the legal authorities remains the legitimate way to resolve all differences, no matter their nature,” said Yacouba Doumbia, interim president of the Ivorian Human Rights Movement (MIDH), based in Abidjan.

Perhaps the most worrying single incident took place in the western town of Duékoué on Jul. 20. In apparent reprisal for the murder of four people during a robbery in an ethnic Malinké neighbourhood of the town, a group launched an attack on a displaced persons camp mostly inhabited by members of the Guéré ethnic group. Officially, 11 people were killed, several of them shot to death.

Human rights organisations have blamed dozo traditional hunters, FRCI soldiers and a lack of a response by United Nations peacekeepers stationed in the town.

On national television on Jul. 22, the defense minister, Paul Koffi Koffi, said that ex-members of a militia that supported the former president, Laurent Gbagbo, were living in the camp, and regularly left it to commit abuses.

Abidjan-based political scientist Marcellin Tanon said he sees a kind of “carelessness” on the part of the authorities. “Each time, the government has tried to justify abusive acts and clear the armed forces of blame. So the soldiers act with complete impunity and the events in Duékoué must be considered the culmination of a series of impunities.”

Tanon believes the situation is due to the failure of a disarmament process for combatants in various conflicts going back to the 2002 rebellion which divided the country for nearly a decade.

His view is shared by Maurice Zagol, another political scientist based in Abidjan. “The problem presented by these soldiers, who helped President Ouattara to come to power, is a complex one. To use force to fight them would open the way for another rebellion,” Zagol told IPS.

“Still, we must carry out a complete disarmament of ex-combatants, because in the long term we have to fear the population will become fed up and start to doubt the legitimacy of the new regime,” said Zagol.

Interviewed by phone, defence ministry spokesperson Captain Léon Allah insisted that the army high command was taking all necessary steps to resolve the problem of circulation of arms and the strong presence of soldiers in the streets.

After a week of tense negotiations, a United Nations preparatory committee concluded a final round of talks on Friday to define the rules of procedure for a global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which is expected to be finalised in July this year.

The iconic statue of a knotted gun barrel outside U.N. headquarters was created by Swedish artist Fredrik Reuterswärd and is titled "Non-Violence". Credit: Tressia Boukhors/IPS

The ratification of the report by committee chair Ambassador Roberto Moritan of Argentina closed the last of four prepcoms held since 2010 to lay the groundwork for the ATT negotiations.

The report includes a “non-paper” by Moritan that will be the basis of this summer’s talks.

Human rights groups expressed cautious optimism about the outcome.

“This document fits 70 percent of our recommendations,” Aymeric Elluin of Amnesty International told IPS.

But the agreement on a vote by consensus, meaning that every state has veto power, may deeply compromise the adoption of a comprehensive treaty, he warned.

“There is a real risk for the final text of ATT not to be adopted in July,” he added. “Negotiations on the content will be extremely difficult.”

Need for a legally binding instrument

The current crackdown on protesters in Syria and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa has underlined the absence of any global regulation on the conventional arms trade, allowing arms to end up in the hands of human rights abusers, according to human rights groups.

“The ATT concerns the biggest treaty negotiation in the field of control arms, excepting the nuclear weapon,” Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s manager for arms control, told IPS. “It is all about saving lives and human rights.”

According to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, “The global trade in conventional weapons – from warships and battle tanks to fighter jets and machine guns – remains poorly regulated. No set of internationally agreed standards exist to ensure that arms are only transferred for appropriate use.”

“Many governments have voiced concern about the absence of globally agreed rules for all States to guide their decisions on arms transfers. That is why they have started negotiating an Arms Trade Treaty.”

Nearly every country in the world has some degree of involvement in the arms trade, as an importer or exporter, or in permitting arms shipments to transit through their territorial waters.

The United States is by far the biggest weapons manufacturer, followed by Russia, the “Big Three” in Europe – Germany, France, Britain – and China.

India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are all leading importers – but so are some of the major producers, such as the United States.

Concerned about the unchecked proliferation of weapons, in 2009, the U.N. General Assembly decided to convene a Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty in 2012 “to elaborate a legally binding instrument on the highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional arms”.

Political chess game

“As we have seen in the case of Syria, veto power leads to inaction and hampers the ability of the international community to prevent conflict,” said Jeff Abramson, coordinator of the Control Arms Coalition, referring to the recent paralysis in the U.N. Security Council.

“The will of the majority here who wants to see the arms trade brought under control must not be thwarted by a minority set on delaying and confusing the process,” he stressed.

He added that countries that were the most supportive of veto power over the final draft document included Syria, Cuba, Iran and the United States.

“Lives and livelihoods continue to be destroyed by an arms trade that is out of control, and the majority of governments that want to see a truly ‘bulletproof’ treaty must not be blocked by a small minority with vested interests,” he said.

Russia, China and the United States are all pushing their own agendas and oppose the integration of human rights into the treaty.

The U.S. opposes the inclusion of munitions, China wants to exclude small arms, and Russia wants a treaty regulating the illicit arms trade only.

“It is also deplorable that Russia argues it is responsible to continue sending weapons to a regime (Syria) that is bombarding its citizens,” said Abramson.

“A strong ATT with robust human rights criteria would make clear that arms transfers must not occur when there is a substantial risk of them being used to kill civilians and commit human rights abuses,” he said. “The sale of any arms to Syria right now is simply appalling.”

Mounting call for human rights protections

Civil society groups are urging strong rules that protect human rights and bar arms from being sent to those who likely to use them against civilian populations.

“It is about regulation and prevention based on risk assessment,” Wood told IPS.

“All types of arms should be included,” he said, including small arms and munitions.

On Feb 14, a group of Nobel Peace Laureates also called for the broadest possible criteria, scope and implementation mechanisms for an effective Arms Trade Treaty.

At a press conference held at United Nations headquarters, the former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias Sanchez, said, “The challenge before us is not just to get a document signed. The challenge before us is to do justice to victims of violence. The challenge before us is to ensure that our goal becomes reality. These men and women and children deserve nothing less than swift and effective action.”

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Sep 12 2008 (IPS)

Two Russian Tupolev TU-160 strategic bombers landed at Venezuela’s main Libertador military airbase, 60 kilometres from the capital, “to carry out training flights” in the region, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

“Yes, eat your heart out, ‘pitiyanquis’ (little Yankee imitators),” said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, in two lengthy nationwide radio and television broadcasts Wednesday. “What’s more, I’m going to pilot one of those insects (planes),” he added jokingly, while confirming that the bombers are at the airbase for training flights.

Russia announced a few days ago that a naval task force would be sent to the Caribbean, and military spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo said the vessels “would carry out a series of exercises, including joint search and rescue manoeuvres, as well as telecommunications trials” with their Venezuelan counterparts.

Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andréi Nesterenko, said the navy would send four ships in November, including the nuclear-powered cruiser Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great) and the anti-submarine frigate Admiral Shabanenko. Russian anti-submarine fighter planes are also to take part in the exercises and will be “temporarily stationed” at one of Venezuela’s air bases, he said.

“We want to calibrate our defensive capability with that of our strategic allies, one of which is Russia,” said Chávez, calling for applause in response to the arrival of the TU-160s.

Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said the United States would “watch” the Russian bombers’ manoeuvres “very closely.”

Although he said that he still had no official confirmation, if Russia intended to send ships to the Caribbean, he quipped that “then they (the Russians) found a few ships that can make it that far,” making light of the announcement, according to the Venezuelan government’s Bolivarian News Agency.

Martha Lucía Ramírez, who was Colombia’s Defence Minister in 2002-2003, the first year of the rightwing President Álvaro Uribe’s administration, asked her country “to consult, as necessary, with international bodies such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Organisation of American States (OAS).”

Now a senator, Ramírez said this should be done “to discuss the convenience of bringing to Latin America the global tensions between powers, which are being transferred into the Andean and Caribbean scenarios and constitute a threat to the security and stability of the region.”

The possibility of war between Colombia and Venezuela has been studied for decades, as a hypothetical conflict with a foreign nation, at the military academies of both countries.

Ramírez called to mind that “Chávez reacted angrily when there were rumours that a U.S. anti-drug base might be installed in Colombian territory (on the peninsula of La Guajira, along the Venezuelan border), and threatened imminent war (with Colombia) if the base was actually built.”

“Why should we now accept a foreign power’s military exercises, and presence of its warplanes in Venezuela? We must sound the alarm about the imbalance this will cause. The tensions between two military powers (Russia and the U.S.) could have tragic consequences for the region, like those experienced in Georgia,” Ramírez said.

In August, war broke out between Russia and Georgia, a former Soviet republic on the Black Sea in the Caucasus region in August, over the secession of the Georgian region of South Ossetia, causing a heavy toll of deaths and damages among the civilian population.

In response, Poland and the Czech Republic, which are members of the Western military alliance NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), accelerated their plans to instal NATO missile and radar systems.

According to Thomas Gomart, an analyst with the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), sending Russian military units to Venezuela “is a double move by Moscow: increasingly open questioning of U.S. hegemony, and support for energy nationalisation, in which President Chávez is a standard-bearer.”

Dmitry Orlov, of the Russian Agency for Political and Economic Communications (APECOM), said the plans for military cooperation with Venezuela indicate that Russia may opt to increase its military presence in different parts of the world. While Moscow does not necessarily have an aggressive anti-U.S. policy, it is taking steps to defend its geopolitical interests, he said.

Chávez mocked his critics, repeatedly calling them “pitiyanquis” and accusing them of “seeing the ghost of Soviet Union-style communism appear, which no longer exists; instead, a sovereign and independent Russia is rising.”

He defended the procurement of weapons from Russia and China for over 4.5 billion dollars in the past three years, including Sukhoi fighter jets, Mi helicopters, Kalashnikov assault rifles, radar and missile systems, patrol boats and reconnaissance planes. Submarines and other equipment may be added to the list.

“The ‘pitiyanquis’ criticise the manoeuvres with Russia, but they say nothing about the United States redeploying its Fourth Fleet after an interval of 60 years, and having a base right there in Curaçao (one of the Netherlands Antilles islands, 50 kilometres off the Venezuelan coast),” Chávez said.

Teodoro Petkoff, an opposition leader who is fiercely critical of Chávez in the columns of his newspaper Tal Cual, complained that the president “wants to get mixed up in the mini-Cold War between the United States and Russia,” and quoted a popular saying meaning, roughly, “when predators fight, their prey should stay out of the way.”

Chávez “accuses Georgia, with reason, of being a pawn of (U.S. President George W.) Bush, but he is thoughtlessly offering himself for free, in the context of a quarrel that has nothing to do with us, as a pawn for (Russian Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin,” Petkoff criticised.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 8 2008 (IPS)

The international community, which successfully negotiated treaties outlawing anti-personnel landmines and cluster bombs, has made little headway in drafting a U.N. convention to control the proliferation of illicit small arms.

"Unfortunately, the world community is still far away from this goal," says Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Centre for Peace and Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Despite the availability of over 600 million small arms in open and underground markets, there is no international treaty to control the reckless spread of these light weapons, according to the United Nations.

"Governments have a clear choice," Goldring told IPS. "They can either continue with business as usual, which costs an estimated 1,000 deaths each day due to gun violence, or in the alternative, reach legally binding agreements to restrain the illicit trade," said Goldring, who is also adjunct full professor in the Security Studies Programme at Georgetown University.

The U.N. argues that small arms – including assault rifles, grenade launchers, pistols and sub-machine guns – are primarily responsible for much of the death and destruction in conflicts throughout the world.

After protracted negotiations, an international treaty banning anti-personnel landmines was signed in Canada in Dec. 1997, while a new cluster munitions convention will be ready for signature at a ceremony in Norway in early December this year.

Judy Isacoff of the Washington-based Africa Centre for Strategic Studies says the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW) remains one of the most pressing security challenges in the Great Lakes Region in East Africa.

"Not only do these weapons prolong violent conflicts, but their uncontrolled spread also poses a grave danger to long-term stability and development, both domestically and within the region as a whole," she added.

The Centre is conducting a workshop on "Small Arms and Light Weapons" in Kampala, Uganda, from Aug. 17-22, to examine the factors that sustain the spread of small arms and to design strategies for curtailing the supply of, and demand for, these weapons.

Addressing the biennial meeting on small arms last month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that member states have made "considerable progress" in combating the illicit trade in small arms, "but many challenges still remain."

Perhaps the biggest single challenge is the creation of a new international treaty on illicit small arms.

While U.N. member states were locked in negotiations for five days last month, at least 5,000 people were shot, says Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).

"This illustrates the severity and scope of the problem," she said, pointing out that gun violence is a global problem "that can only be tackled if all countries work together, with common guidelines across the world."

Both the 2005 biennial meeting and the 2006 review conference on small arms failed to reach "consensus" on a final document. In effect, consensus had been defined as "unanimous agreement", so that even a single country could block progress.

A Third World delegate told IPS that the U.S. has frequently played this role in recent years – hampering agreements – though it was by no means the only country doing so.

At last month's meeting, he said, Iran was the primary impediment to progress. The U.S. delegation was absent during most of the meetings, ironically, enabling the conference to make significant progress.

When unanimous agreement proved impossible, participants in the meeting called for a vote on the outcome document. Voting had not previously occurred as part of this process. In the end, the vote was nearly unanimous, he added. Of the 136 countries voting, 134 supported adoption of the substantive report of the conference and no countries voted against its adoption. Only Iran and Zimbabwe abstained.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Goldring said the U.N. took an important step forward, by agreeing on more substantial measures to control the global trade in small arms and light weapons. She said member states focused on increasing international cooperation to build national capacity and to help prevent illicit brokering.

They also worked to provide standards for more effective stockpile management and disposal of surplus weapons – with a preference for destroying surplus weapons.

Delegates discussed roughly two dozen additional issues, including the need for legally binding commitments on these issues. "In the end, substance won out over process," said Goldring.

Ambassador Dalius Cekuolis of Lithuania took a huge risk by refusing to accept line-by-line edits of the draft report, according to Goldring. No one claimed that the document was perfect, but participants understood that it was far stronger than any document likely to be produced through the usual negotiations, Goldring added.

Ambassador Cekuolis' innovative approach prevented the document from being weakened. It also helped ensure inclusion of gender issues and endorsement of civil society's important role in the small arms process, she pointed out.

Meanwhile, the 63rd session of the U.N. General Assembly, which begins in mid-September, will consider a resolution on small arms that will provide for a continuing process of review and consultation on national, regional and global levels.

The next biennial meeting on small arms is scheduled to take place in 2010.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
ASUNCION, May 21 2008 (IPS)

Making the old saying “cheaper by the dozen” their motto, a group of women in a poor neighbourhood of Asunción created a cooperative to buy food in bulk, in order to combat the rise in food prices.

Mujeres Unidas leaders Ramona Pérez, Petrona Pereira and Benigna Román. Credit: David Vargas/IPS.

The cooperative was created in 2006, when the first effects of global food price inflation began to be felt in Paraguay. That year, the cost of the products making up the basic consumer basket of goods rose 26 percent, according to the Central Bank of Paraguay. And in 2007, prices rose 40 percent, while overall inflation went up 12 percent over the last 12 months.

Once a month, the women organise a shopping trip to the big markets on the edges of the capital, 10 km from Limpio, where they shop around for the lowest prices, look for products that are on sale, and bargain with shopkeepers and vendors.

“The prices are sky-high,” Ramona Pérez, president of Mujeres Unidas, told IPS, throwing up her hands in a gesture of desperation. “The only way to ease the impact on our pocketbooks is by buying in bulk.”

The main products purchased by the women are staple foods like rice, sugar, cooking oil, flour, eggs, beans, salt and yerba mate tea (a traditional infusion). And “if there’s money left over,” they buy additional products like vegetables and soap, said Pérez.

She said beef and dairy products are not included on their shopping list because they are too expensive. “It’s exasperating how much prices have gone up, and the fees we pay no longer stretch far enough,” she complained.

The food shortages are affecting all sectors of society in Paraguay, but they hit the poor the hardest, according to a report by three United Nations agencies.

The “Invertir en la gente” (Invest in People) project, carried out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), reported that the rise in food prices pushed 270,000 Paraguayans into extreme poverty last year, and could do the same with another 140,000 this year.

The extreme poor are those who are unable to afford an adequate diet.

According to the study, if food price inflation amounts to 20 percent this year, the extreme poverty rate will go up from the current 19.4 percent – equivalent to some 1.3 million people in this country of 6.2 million – to 21.3 percent.

According to the Central Bank, inflation in the first four months of the year was 4.4 percent, 1.4 percent higher than in the same period of 2007.

“Food prices explain 65 percent of the inflation seen in April, which is part of an international phenomenon. To that is added the rise in the prices of petroleum products,” said Miguel Mora, director of the Central Bank’s domestic market division.

The rise in extreme poverty represents a setback with respect to the commitment assumed by Paraguay to cut the rate to eight percent by 2015, in order to meet the target set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the international community in 2000, which is to halve the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty, from 1990 levels.

“Our prediction is that things will only get worse, because food production costs are on the rise,” Julio Fernández, coordinator of the “Invertir en la Gente” project, told IPS.

The increase in international prices of oil – which Paraguay does not produce – and agricultural inputs, added to shortages of some food products, like rice from Brazil, and the ongoing conflict between farmers and the government in neighbouring Argentina over a tax on grain exports, combine to form an explosive cocktail, whose consequences will affect the entire economy, said Fernández.

Paradoxically, the rise in extreme poverty has gone hand in hand with exceptional growth of the Paraguayan economy, which last year grew 6.8 percent, the highest rate in 26 years.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the construction of the enormous Itaipú hydroelectric dam built by Paraguay and Brazil was the main factor fuelling growth, which peaked in 1981, when gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 9.2 percent.

The chief elements in the country’s current economic growth are the expansion of soy exports (Paraguay is the world’s fourth-largest producer of soybeans) and beef, as well as the growth of the construction industry and the communications sector.

Unemployment has also gone down over the last year. The 2007 household census by the General Office of Statistics, Surveys and Censuses found that the unemployment rate dropped from 11.1 percent to 8.5 percent.

“But this auspicious scenario was counteracted by the steady increase in food prices, which eroded a large part of the incomes of the extreme poor,” said Fernández.

Families living in extreme poverty dedicate more than 70 percent of their incomes to food, a proportion that grows along with food prices.

The study by the U.N. agencies concluded that growth combined with high levels of inflation “is not a desirable combination.”

The statistics bear that out. In 2004, 4.1 percent GDP growth accompanied by virtually zero inflation in food prices helped reduce extreme poverty by three percent.

The following year, 2.9 percent GDP growth, with a 5.5 percent rise in food prices, brought a 1.6 percent reduction in extreme poverty.

But last year, a historic rise in GDP combined with high inflation led to a four percent increase in extreme poverty.

This scenario, although it benefits producers, generates worries among consumers, whose buying power is shrinking as a result.

The members of the Mujeres Unidas cooperative in Limpio are all too familiar with the phenomenon. They recently had to increase their monthly fees from 100,000 to 110,000 guaranis, just to be able to buy the same amount of food they were already purchasing.

The women are now taking a bakery course, in order to produce their own bread and other baked goods. They have also contacted fruit and vegetable growers, to purchase fresh produce from them directly, without having to go to the markets.

“That’s the only way we can survive,” said Pérez.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JERUSALEM, Apr 22 2008 (IPS)

In the clearest indication yet that Israel now believes Iran’s nuclear aspirations will be curbed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that efforts being undertaken by the international community will ensure that Tehran does not acquire nuclear capability.

In a series of interviews on the eve of the Passover holiday, Olmert sounded the same message: Iran will not get the bomb. “I want to tell the citizens of Israel: Iran will not have nuclear capability,” he told the daily Haaretz newspaper in one of the interviews.

“The international community is making an enormous effort – in which we have a part, but which is being led by the international community – so that Iran will not attain non-conventional capability. And I believe, and also know, that the bottom line of these efforts is that Iran will not be nuclear.”

Until now, Israeli leaders have been far more equivocal when quizzed about Iran’s nuclear programme. A common reply has been that “all options” are on the table – a reference to the possibility that Israel might employ military means in trying to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is civilian in nature and is meant to generate power. But Israel believes Iran is bent on developing nuclear weapons. Threats by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to “wipe Israel off the map” have further heightened fears in the Jewish state.

In the past, some U.S. leaders have suggested that Israel might launch a strike against Iran in a bid to destroy or severely damage its nuclear facilities. “Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards,” U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney once cautioned.

Twenty-seven years ago, Israel did just that when its fighter jets bombed a nuclear reactor Saddam Hussein had built, wiping out the Iraqi leader’s nuclear ambitions with a single pin-point strike. A repeat performance in Iran would be much more complicated. The Iranians have learned from the Iraqi experience and have spread their nuclear plants around the country. They have also built them deep underground and behind thick shields of reinforced concrete.

With the Bush administration, chastised by its experience in Iraq, having seemingly lost its appetite for another military escapade in the Middle East, efforts by the U.S. and Europe to deter Tehran from going nuclear are focused largely in the diplomatic realm.

Talks in China last week looked not just at sanctions against Iran, but also “incentives” aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear pursuit. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that officials from the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, Germany, China and the EU were looking “at the incentive side of the equation.”

If Olmert now believes that the efforts of the international community will bear fruit, then his comments seem to reflect an Israeli conviction that diplomatic means will be central in stopping Iran from going nuclear.

In the Passover interviews, he also counselled behind-the-scenes actions over the type of public breast-beating one of his ministers recently engaged in. If Iran attacked Israel, Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said, Israel would respond with such force that it would result in “the destruction of the Iranian nation.”

“The less we talk, the better,” Olmert told the daily Ma’ariv. “We mustn’t issue threats, like the things I heard recently.”

The Prime Minister also hammered home another message: Iran does not pose a threat to Israel alone. Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel and “his suggestions that we move to Alaska or Germany, constitute a direct threat,” the Prime Minister said. “But this is not just a threat to us, but to all of Western civilisation. To its values, its culture, its freedom.”

The official Iranian news agency IRNA reported earlier this month that Iran had begun operating several hundred new uranium-enriching centrifuges at its main nuclear plant in Natanz. Ahmadinejad said Iran was working to install 6,000 more centrifuges in the plant, but did not say how many of them were operational.

Iran has already installed around 3,300 centrifuges at the Natanz plant, according to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But ElBaradei also said that Iran’s progress in uranium enrichment “has not been very fast.”

Asked about the reports that Iran had begun operating new centrifuges, Olmert said he didn’t want to “get into reports or argue over details.”

“I say again, that on the basis of everything I know and read, Iran will not be nuclear,” the Prime Minister emphasised. “We are doing everything possible, along with the international community, at a level of intensity and scope that are beyond all imagination, to prevent the Iranian threat.”

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 2007 (IPS)

Human-rights and humanitarian groups are hailing provisions of a major appropriations bill approved by Congress this week that bans the export of most U.S.-made cluster bombs and U.S. military aid for foreign governments that use child soldiers.

The two provisions – which were tucked into a mammoth 560-billion-dollar 2008 omnibus spending bill – marked important victories for the groups, which have made both issues a major legislative priority.

On child soldiers, the bill provides that no military aid can be provided to governments whose "…armed forces or government supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defence forces… recruit or use child soldiers."

Governments that could be denied aid under the bill include Colombia – which receives several hundred million dollars’ worth of U.S. military aid each year – Chad, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda, all of which have been accused by the most recent State Department annual human rights Country Reports of recruiting children as soldiers.

As for cluster bombs, the bill bans their transfer to any foreign nation unless they have at least a 99-percent reliability rate and the importing country has pledged in writing that it will not use the weapon in civilian areas.

This ban was prompted by Israel’s planting of hundreds of thousands of cluster munitions in populated areas of southern Lebanon in the last days of its 2006 war against Hezbollah. The U.N. denounced Israel’s action – which has reportedly caused more than 200 civilian casualties since the end of the war – as "completely immoral".

"An export moratorium is a good first step," said Lora Lumpe, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and a lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. "We will work in the coming year to make the export ban permanent and to prohibit the U.S. military’s use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians."

The omnibus bill, which covered everything from bridge repair to financing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, was approved by both houses of Congress earlier this week and is expected to be signed by President George W. Bush within the next few days.

The bill, which extended a 1992 ban on the export of anti-personnel landmines through 2014, also provided nearly 80 million dollars for humanitarian de-mining programmes around the world and another four million dollars for projects to protect the rights of persons with disabilities resulting from landmines, cluster munitions and other weapons.

The ban on U.S. military aid to governments that use child soldiers could have its greatest impact on Colombia, which receives far more U.S. military aid than any other Latin American country. Worldwide, it is currently Washington’s sixth biggest recipient of military aid, behind Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, and Afghanistan.

With such a large investment, the administration is likely to resist cutting off military aid to its closest ally in the Andean region. The provision’s wording offers two major loopholes.

Under its terms, the aid could go forward if the secretary of state certifies to Congress that the government "has implemented effective measures" to demobilise child soldiers from its ranks or from those of government- supported militias, and to prevent their future recruitment. In addition, the secretary of state may waive the ban if she determines that it is in the U.S. "national interest" to do so.

In the case of Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe, who has sought to demobilise all right-wing paramilitary groups, has vowed to eliminate the use of child soldiers. But, the problem persists, according to human-rights monitors.

Despite the loopholes, rights advocates say they see passage of the ban as an important step forward. "It certainly gives the U.S. another tool to fight the use of child soldiers around the world and it also gives the Pentagon and the State Department a greater stake in doing so," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Malinowski also praised the provision on exporting cluster munitions, saying that its language "reflects the growing consensus around the world that this weapon needs to be banned."

Indeed, passage of the legislation came just two weeks after representatives of 138 governments gathered in Vienna to work out a global treaty that – like a similar 1997 agreement, the so-called Ottawa Convention on anti- personnel land mines – would prohibit the production, stockpiling, export and use of cluster munitions.

The Bush administration has so far boycotted those negotiations, which are called the "Oslo Process" after the capital of Norway where the initiative was launched earlier this year.

"With this law, Congress helps move the U.S. closer to the position of most of its NATO partners and other U.S. allies," according to Ken Rutherford, co- founder of the Landmine Survivors Network.

The U.S. exports cluster bombs – munitions that, when exploded, saturate a specific target area with hundreds of sub-munitions, "bomblets" – to 28 countries, including Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel.

Washington has a stockpile of nearly one billion sub-munitions, according to HRW. One system widely used and exported by the U.S. is the M26 rocket, which is fired by the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). One MLRS volley launches 12 M26 rockets that eject nearly 8,000 sub-munitions over a 200 x 400 metre area in which any living thing exposed at the time of fire would almost certainly be killed or gravely wounded.

Moreover, the M26 rocket, like many other kinds of cluster munitions, has a failure rate of 16 percent. Thus, one volley could result in more than 1,000 "duds" or unexploded sub-munitions – which, due to their size and bright colouring, may be attractive to children – littering the area long after the volley has been fired or hostilities have ceased.

Such unexploded munitions have caused thousands of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Laos, Lebanon, and Vietnam, as well as southern Lebanon, in recent years.

"This law recognises the need to prevent cluster bombs from being used in civilian-populated areas," said Colby Goodman, who directs the Child Soldiers and Arms Transfers programme at the U.S. section of Amnesty International (AIUSA). "Congress has taken an important step to protect innocent lives and to demonstrate respect for international humanitarian law," according to AIUSA.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 20 2007 (IPS)

A slew of co-operation agreements emerged from the second IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) summit in Pretoria, South Africa, this week.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio da Silva and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were on hand in the South African capital Wednesday to initial the accords, which cover a broad range of issues: wind resources, health and medicines, culture, public administration, higher education, and customs and tax administration.

Certain analysts were critical of the summit’s achievements, saying it failed to make real headway with matters central to trade between the three regional powers – such as tariffs.

However, Tom Wheeler, a fellow at the Johannesburg-based South African Institute of International Affairs, said it was still early days for the trilateral grouping – and that the summit was a “political endorsement” of future co-operation plans.

Greg Mills – head of the Brenthurst Foundation, a policy research institute based in Johannesburg – further noted that boosting commerce and investment in the IBSA bloc was a daunting task, not least because South Africa and Brazil had economies with similar trade profiles.

Established in 2003, IBSA aims to promote South-South links, mainly through trade and investment. It operates by way of regular, high level gatherings and bi-annual summits. The next IBSA summit will take place in India, in 2008.

The 52-point declaration issued by the three governments Wednesday indicates their intention to double intra-IBSA trade to 15 billion dollars by 2010.

The group re-affirmed its goal of achieving a free trade agreement between India, the MERCOSUR bloc of South America and the Southern African Customs Union, while noting that “significant progress” in this regard was made in negotiations earlier this month.

Observing that the Doha round of global trade negotiations was entering a “crucial stage”, the summit also called for the removal of barriers in world-wide agricultural trade that undermine production in developing nations. (The round takes its name from the Qatari capital where it was initiated in 2001.)

Other issues dealt with by the summit include human rights, counter terrorism and the elimination of nuclear weapons, which India possesses. Delegates noted the lack of progress in nuclear non-proliferation.

“Considering that India has signed on, this is an important statement,” Wheeler said. But, “I suppose it’s on condition that others (nuclear powers) do the same.”

Brazil and South Africa are putting greater emphasis on nuclear enrichment for increased commercial use.

The countries identified defence as an area for future co-operation, South Africa revealing that in May next year the three nations’ navies would participate in joint exercises.

Two additional IBSA working groups, on human settlement development and environment and climate change, were established.

Endorsing multilateralism, IBSA nonetheless called for reform of the United Nations, especially an expansion of the Security Council to ensure that it “reflects contemporary realities”. Demands for change at the U.N. have gained currency in recent years. India, Brazil and South Africa all aspire to have permanent seats on the council.

Mills warned that the IBSA states should take care not to “appear like an exclusive club”, and should reach out to other countries in the group of emerging states. These include China, Mexico, Pakistan and Indonesia.

China and Mexico, along with Nigeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, were among the states Mbeki invited to take part in a proposed G8 of the South several years ago – a grouping that has not proved successful. The G8 comprises the world’s eight leading industrialised nations, all in the North.

Mbeki, da Silva and Singh also urged resolution of the crises in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2007 (IPS)

Responding to widespread criticism from developing nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has withdrawn or modified some of his controversial proposals to restructure the U.N. Secretariat – specifically in relation to disarmament, peacekeeping and political affairs.

These proposals included a plan to fold the U.N.’s Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) into the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), and the “downgrading” of DDA, which was expected to be headed by a lower-ranking assistant secretary-general instead of an under-secretary-general, as it exists now.

Ban has dropped what developing nations described as “an artificial deadline” for approval of his proposals, and also abandoned a move to appoint a Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) to head disarmament.

Responding to developing country demands, the secretary-general has also de-linked the ongoing appointments of senior level staff from the proposed structural changes in the Secretariat.

The 130-member Group of 77, the largest single economic bloc of developing nations, warned last month that it “does not wish to have public disagreement with the secretary-general” and it “does not support any artificial deadlines” on Ban’s proposals.

Asked if the G77 was still on a confrontation course with the secretary-general, the G77 chair Ambassador Munir Akram of Pakistan told reporters Tuesday: “The G77 very much wishes to support the secretary-general and see him succeed in his restructuring exercise.”

But he pointed out that developing nations have their own priorities – “Our priorities are developmental priorities.”

Akram said that Ban had modified some of his proposals in light of discussions with member states, political and economic groups and regional groups.

“Our concern is that the established rules in the house should be followed,” including approval by administrative and budgetary committees. “As long as processes are respected, we are willing to go along,” Akram added.

Ambassador Vanu Gopala Menon of Singapore said that as a result of representations from developing nations, the secretary-general has decided that the new Office for Disarmament Affairs will come directly under him, but with a separate budget.

The office will be headed by a high representative, who will have the rank of an under-secretary-general, Menon said. “In short, the secretary-general has taken on board many of the concerns we previously expressed.”

Speaking on behalf of the 117-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest single political bloc at the United Nations, Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz of Cuba told the General Assembly Friday: “The Non-Aligned Movement welcomes with appreciation the decision by the secretary-general to appoint a USG as head of the DDA.”

Ban still hopes to split the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) into two: a Department of Peace Operations and a Department of Field Support.

Ambassador Malmierca Diaz, however, put the secretary-general on notice when he told the General Assembly that since the non-aligned countries provide more than 80 percent of troops to U.N. peacekeeping operations, it is ready to continue to discuss the proposals within the framework of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, the only U.N. forum mandated to review the question of peacekeeping operations, “as has been historically done in the context of U.N. reform.”

“To that end, NAM would like to seek a detailed explanation of the proposal to be submitted to the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations,” the Cuban envoy said, speaking in his capacity as chairman of NAM.

The secretary-general, who was trying to rush through his restructuring proposals for endorsement by the 192-member General Assembly last month, has now agreed to go through the painful inter-governmental legislative processes in the U.N. system, including approval by the U.N.’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee and the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions.

Both committees, viewed as political graveyards for controversial proposals, also have the power to radically change the secretary-general’s proposal, primarily on financial grounds.

An attempt by Ban last month to push through the proposals hurriedly – and without consultations with member states – prompted Ambassador Nirupam Sen of India to chastise him.

Sen famously told a closed door meeting of the G77: “The secretary-general is the senior most civil servant in the Secretariat. He is not a king and the Secretariat is not a king’s court.”

The initial proposals for restructuring were spelled out in two “non-papers” from the secretary-general’s office last month followed by a 21-page “annexe” to a letter from Ban, explaining the proposed restructuring process both in DDA and DPKO.

“While these explanations have shed more light than before, I must say that the Secretariat has taken some time to provide us with the information,” Menon told an informal meeting of the General Assembly last Friday.

“In fact, it has been provided in a piecemeal fashion. This had created the unfortunate perception that the proposals had not been well thought out,” he noted.

Menon also pointed out that “this has given rise to a sense that it was only because of our persistent questioning that the Secretariat was forced to think through the issues and flesh them out in detail. It could have been handled better.”

“I am inclined to give the secretary-general the flexibility that he is asking for. However, as my delegation had pointed out before, flexibility should be accompanied by accountability,” he added.

“If we obstruct him this time around by insisting on all details before agreeing to his restructuring plans, we will delay him and perhaps undermine him as well. If we tie him up in knots, we not only do him a disservice, we also do the United Nations a disservice,” Menon added.

Meanwhile, the secretary-general is planning to have a framework resolution on restructuring finalised shortly. Once this resolution is in place, the next step would be for the administrative and budgetary committees to study the details of the proposals. A final decision on the proposals – whether modified or not – is not likely before May.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 2007 (IPS)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who last month acknowledged the positive role of civil society in the peace process in Africa, is facing the wrath of a formidable coalition of non-governmental organisations opposing his plans to restructure one of the politically sensitive departments in the world body: the Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA).

Turning to U.N. member states for help to block the controversial proposal, the 12 groups say stripping DDA of its departmental status may undermine its capacity to fulfill its present functions and most certainly prevent it from realising its potential.

“A demoted DDA would lack the flexibility, mandate, and resources to play a significant role in emerging issues on the arms control agenda,” the coalition argued in a letter sent Wednesday to all 192 U.N. missions in New York.

The coalition includes the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy; the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Hague Appeal for Peace; Global Action to Prevent War; Global Policy Forum; International Action Network on Small Arms; and the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security.

Representing mostly New York-based civil society organisations, the members of the coalition traditionally work on issues relating to disarmament and security in the U.N. context.

Addressing a closed-door meeting of the General Assembly Monday, Ban formally introduced his proposal to change the status of DDA into an “Office for Disarmament Affairs” – “with a direct line to me, thus ensuring access and more frequent interaction.”

He also proposed that the new office would be headed by a Special Representative of the Secretary-General or a High Representative. But he gave no indication of rank, triggering speculation about the possibility of a downgraded DDA.

The existing DDA is headed by an Under-Secretary-General (USG), the third highest rank in the Secretariat, after the secretary-general and his deputy. The proposed new office is likely to be headed by an Assistant Secretary-General, lower in rank to USGs.

Asked whether the United States is behind the effort to demote DDA, John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, told IPS: “I don’t know.”

But Ban’s proposal, he said, is reminiscent of the successful campaign of U.S. Senator Jesse Helms and other conservatives in the U.S. Congress in the 1990s to dismantle the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

“That laid the groundwork for the retrograde U.S. positions on disarmament in this decade,” Burroughs said.

“It should be recognised that the influence of the anti-multilateralist neo-conservatives is on the decline in the United States; their agenda should not be imitated at the United Nations.”

Last week, the 117-member Non-Aligned Movement expressed reservations over the proposal to downgrade DDA. So have Western nations such as Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Austria and New Zealand.

In its letter to member states, the coalition said that DDA, as an independent department, is shielded to some extent from the intense political pressures that disarmament/non-proliferation issues generate.

“If DDA is more closely associated with the secretary-general, inevitably political pressures from all quarters would impede achievement of objectives,” the coalition pointed out.

Further, the secretary-general himself could be harmed by failure to meet heightened expectations. The secretary-general can find other ways to strategically intervene on important matters where his influence could make a difference, the coalition noted. In a separate letter to member states, Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute, points out that downgrading the head of Disarmament Affairs – regardless of the title – places this person in a position junior to many of the principal officers with whom he or she must work.

This includes the chief U.N. official servicing the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, as are the heads of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the verification bodies for the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

“All these officials have the rank of USG,” said Granoff, “How this person is to exercise any authority when he or she is in fact junior to all other officials (dealing with disarmament) is not explained.”

Burroughs told IPS putting a Disarmament Affairs office directly under the secretary-general would expose disarmament matters to political pressure from the Permanent Five (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia), and also from groups like the Non-Aligned Movement.

Further, he said, the secretary-general would run the risk of failing to meet heightened expectations.

“It is better to have an independent DDA, somewhat shielded from these pressures, and for the secretary-general to intervene strategically when he can make a difference.”

Burroughs said the mission of DDA is too important to play politics with restructuring.

Member states should work with the secretary-general, as he has invited them to do, to create an outcome that preserves DDA’s status as an independent department.

Non-aligned countries should refrain from seeing the head of Disarmament Affairs as a position for one of their nationals or as a platform to pursue particular issues, Burroughs said.

The secretary-general’s proposal affirms that the office would continue to implement existing directives. But in practice it might be different.

“In short, we do not want DDA’s mandate and chief to change from being part of the U.N. secretariat’s institutional framework to being personally linked to changing secretaries-general,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 2007 (IPS)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, whose plans to restructure the U.N. Secretariat have hit a political roadblock, assured the 192 member states he is not heading towards a collision course with them.

“Please rest assured that over the past few weeks, I have taken account of your concerns,” Ban told a mostly sceptical General Assembly on Monday.

“Every one of you has the right to be listened to, whatever the size of your country or budget, or whichever hemisphere you call home,” he declared at a three-hour, closed-door meeting of delegates.

The secretary-general’s assurance came amidst reports he was trying to fast-track his restructuring plans by trying to circumvent administrative and financial committees which rigorously scrutinise such proposals before sending them to the General Assembly for final approval.

“Let me assure you, our informal dialogue on this subject to date has only been the first step in the process,” he told delegates.

He also said he will personally engage in consultations with member states, “and I will ask my senior managers to engage in consultations at expert level with a view to finalising a set of proposals at the earliest possible date.”

In formally announcing his proposals, he said he plans to split the existing Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) into two: Department of Field Support and Department of Peace Operations.

At the same time, he also plans to change the current status of the Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) by replacing it with a new “Office for Disarmament Affairs” to be headed, not by an Under-Secretary-General but either by a High Representative or a Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG).

But there is speculation that the change in status is meant to downgrade DDA.

Allaying such fears, Ban said the new office will have “a direct line to me, thus ensuring access and more frequent interaction.”

Ambassador Munir Akram of Pakistan said he was initially concerned about the proposed downgrading of DDA. But the secretary-general, in fact, was suggesting “strengthening” DDA.

“That’s all fine,” Akram said, “but DDA should not be asked to take on tasks that have not been approved by the U.N.’s legislative bodies”- particularly country-specific issues.

Pakistan, he said, was also opposed to universalisation of certain international treaties.

Ambassador Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi of Iran said he was opposed to the downgrading of DDA and wants to see an independent department headed by an Under-Secretary-General, as it stands now.

“Having an SRSG is not the solution- and not a step in the right direction”. He also asked what necessitated the proposed split of the DPKO with two new USGs.

“Will it increase efficiency and coherence? With the current SRSGs and two USGs and the deputy secretary-general also involved, “I fear it will be awfully crowded at the top,” he declared with a tinge of sarcasm.

Not surprisingly, the strongest support for the secretary-general’s proposals came from the United States, whose current administration does not place high priority on disarmament – either nuclear or non-nuclear.

U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff pointed out that the secretary-general, in his capacity as the organisation’s chief administrative officer, is accountable to the membership.

“But he needs flexibility and authority to do the job. We will judge him by the results,” said Wolff.

He also pointed out that putting DDA directly under the secretary-general “sounds like upgrading, not downgrading”.

Regarding the realignment of the DPKO, he said: “If you ask every one of us, we will have 192 different ideas. We elected you by acclamation. We should therefore leave it to you to restructure DPKO.”

But the two most powerful coalitions in the United Nations – the 130-member Group of 77 and the 117-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – have publicly expressed reservations over Ban’s restructuring proposals.

Speaking on behalf of NAM, Ambassador Ileana Nunez Mordoche of Cuba told delegates Monday it is no secret that NAM gives particular priority to the issue of disarmament, including nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation.

While welcoming the move to bring disarmament directly under the secretary-general, the Cuban envoy said: “We consider it would be extremely important that the DDA remains an independent department, headed by an Under-Secretary-General -” not an “office”, as proposed by Ban.

“In our opinion, this would contribute to a large extent to the objective stated by the secretary-general of giving new emphasis to the essential functions of this department through a high level commitment and appropriate institutional support.”

Meanwhile, the Group of 77 said last week “it does not wish to have public disagreement with the secretary-general.”

In a letter to members, the G77 said it also “does not support any artificial deadlines” on the proposed restructuring.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1 2007 (IPS)

India, the third largest troop contributor to U.N. peacekeeping missions, has expressed strong reservations over a proposal by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to split the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) into two entities.

“If the proposals on DPKO go through, then it is our soldiers who would face great risks and danger,” said Ambassador Nirupam Sen of India, which last year provided 7,340 troops, ranking behind Bangladesh (10,154) and Pakistan (9,516).

Addressing a closed door meeting of the 130-member Group of 77 developing countries, Sen said the DPKO was set up by the General Assembly back in 1992 after detailed examination of its role, tasks and functions.

He said there was “an intensive process” which resulted in drafting the specific functions and mandates of the DPKO.

“We cannot jettison them at the drop of a hat without going through relevant procedures, meticulously and stringently,” Sen said.

Hinting that the Secretariat has no right to dismantle or realign a U.N. Department without proper consultations with member states and budgetary committees, Sen said: “To use a metaphor from a Christian marriage ceremony, those whom the General Assembly resolution has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

According to proposals submitted by the secretary-general in two “non-papers” last week, the DPKO is to be split into two: a Department of Peace Operations and a Department of Field Support, both of which will be headed by an Under-Secretary-General (USG), the third highest ranking post in the organisation.

But there are already unconfirmed rumours and conspiracy theories that one of the peacekeeping departments may be headed by a U.S. national, possibly with a military background.

A G-77 delegate told IPS that “nothing surprises us – particularly after the administration of President George W. Bush pushed for former U.S. deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, responsible for some of the failed policies in Iraq, for president of the World Bank. And Bush succeeded in his quest.”

Wolfowitz worked under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who himself was forced out of his job after growing demands by U.S. lawmakers and ex-military officers for his removal because of the role he played in taking the United States into a military quagmire in Iraq which has continued to suck U.S. resources – both financial and military – over the last four years.

“If Wolfowitz can be president of the World Bank,” said the G77 delegate good-humouredly, “maybe the Bush administration is looking for a U.N. peacekeeping job for Donald Rumsfeld. You never know?”

President of the 192-member General Assembly Sheikha Haya Al Khalifa has held a series of consultations, not only with members of the G77 but also with members of the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement, the largest single political bloc at the United Nations.

She had consultations with 14 delegations, including the European Union, the chairman of the African Group, and also with countries that did not fall within any of the regional groups, including Norway and Switzerland.

Sen said he couldn’t understand the haste to split DPKO because the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services is expected to come up with a report soon which will examine the managerial structure of the DPKO, particularly with a specific focus on the relationship between DPKO and the other departments in the U.N. Secretariat, including the Department of Political Affairs.

“Why the need to jump the gun?” he asked. Sen also expressed the view that any separation of the DPKO could put the lives of soldiers in jeopardy, including Indian soldiers.

“In a military operation, an operational commander needs above all to have this kind of unity of command, he needs to have the ability to deploy resources as he sees fit and to have logistics under it.”

If logistics is separated, Sen argued, then that would “greatly impair functional efficiency and expose our soldiers to great risk and danger.”

“It is not a question of quickly finding some compromise phase. But it is something that affects security and lives of soldiers,” he said. “Hence, this all the more reinforces the point of very careful examination through laid down procedures of the General Assembly.”

Ambassador Ronaldo Sardenberg of Brazil, whose country provided more than 1,270 troops to peacekeeping missions last year, was equally critical of the proposed changes in DPKO.

He said the content of these reforms on disarmament and DPKO are so important that “we would like to have adequate time to study them in detail in a regular report and to have expert advice of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions and the Fifth Committee that deals with financial implications of the new restructuring proposals.”

“My delegation believes that the proposal of the secretary-general should follow established procedures. By adhering to them member states would have time to reach consensus more easily on the merits of the proposal,” Sardenberg said.

Otherwise, he warned, “We will experience once again disputes with member states and between member states and the Secretariat. There is no reason to change established procedures.”

Besides the proposal to split the DPKO, Ban is also peddling a more controversial proposal is to reconstitute the existing Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA) as a separate “Office for Disarmament Affairs.”

The new office is to be brought under a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs or a High Representative.

Since he is trying to keep within the existing budget, Ban is juggling with the post: he is planning to take away the USG post from DDA and give it to newly-revamped DPKO (which will have two USG posts).

This proposal for a downgrading of DDA is being opposed not only by the G77 and Non-Aligned Movement but also by countries such as Norway, New Zealand and Austria, which have expressed reservations.

The General Assembly is expected to meet on Monday to discuss the secretary-general’s proposals.

But in a letter to its members, G77 proposed that if the secretary-general wishes to further elaborate his proposals to member states, he could do so at Monday’s meeting.

But the letter warned the meeting should be “an informal closed meeting than a formal plenary of the General Assembly.”

“This would avoid any embarrassment to the secretary-general in case his proposals require modifications in light of the positions of member states.”

At closed door meetings last week, several member states hinted of possible significant changes, which may water down the secretary-general’s proposals not to his liking.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2007 (IPS)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has been in office for less than a month, is getting an inkling of the hard political realities of U.N. diplomacy: that you cannot ask member states to approve your restructuring plans at short notice – and on a firm deadline.

The 130-member Group of 77 (G77) and the 117-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), two of the largest political and economic blocs at the United Nations, have refused to be pushed into making a quick decision by Feb. 5 when the General Assembly is scheduled to meet to discuss the secretary-general’s restructuring proposals.

The virtual rejection of the deadline was accompanied by a letter from the G77 chairman, Ambassador Munir Akram of Pakistan, who provided a summary of the consultations Monday with the president of the General Assembly Sheikha Haya Al Khalifa of Bahrain.

“The Group (of 77) does not wish to have public disagreement with the secretary-general,” said the letter addressed to G77 members.

And more importantly, it said, “the Group does not support any artificial deadlines.”

Although the G77 expressed its wish to support the secretary-general’s restructuring proposals – as spelled out in two “non-papers'” – “it should be done in a manner that is smooth and non-divisive.”

Taking a shot at Ban’s decision to move rapidly on the restructuring process, the letter said: “The Group wishes that the process should be transparent and open to all member states.”

“Perhaps the secretary-general was wrongly advised,” one G77 delegate surmised. “We want the Fifth Committee to consider the administrative and budgetary aspects of the proposals before a decision is taken by the General Assembly.”

This could take “a long process”, he told IPS, pointing out that some of Ban’s proposals may be drastically amended before reaching the General Assembly.

At Tuesday’s closed-door G77 meting, everyone who spoke expressed reservations or even outright objections to the secretary-general’s restructuring proposals. These included Guatemala, Colombia, India, Brazil, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Costa Rica and South Africa.

One South Asian ambassador was the most hard-hitting: “The secretary-general is not the King, and the Secretariat is not the King’s court,” he declared.

The two “non-papers” on restructuring submitted by the secretary-general recently call for two significant changes in the Secretariat.

The existing Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) is to be split into two: a Department of Peace Operations and a Department of Field Support, both of which will be headed by an Under-Secretary-General (USG), the third highest ranking post in the organisation.

But a more controversial proposal is to reconstitute the existing Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA) as a separate “Office for Disarmament Affairs.”

The new office is to be brought under a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs or a High Representative.

Since he is trying to keep within the existing budget, Ban is juggling with the post: he is planning to take away the USG post from DDA and give it to newly-revamped DPKO (which will have two USG posts).

The same South Asian envoy told G77 delegates: “We should not agree to everything by acclamation, and we should hold the secretary-general accountable.”

He argued that the split of the DPKO would put soldiers on the ground at greater risk and danger.

“How would the force commander ensure that his operations are given full logistical support? There was no compromise solution on this matter, especially when it affected the lives of ordinary soldiers, the envoy warned.

Hence, the need for careful examination of the proposals through the established procedures laid down by the General Assembly.

He asked, “why not two ASGs under one USG for DPKO? This option was not even considered. Instead, we are being asked to take a medicine for a disease that is not diagnosed or may not even be there.”

Under these circumstances, he asked rather sarcastically, how do you treat the “non-papers?” “By non-action?”

James A. Paul, executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, which has produced several papers on U.N. reforms, told IPS: “Like the oil law in Iraq that is being rushed through parliament by the occupiers with little concern about democratic process, U.N. reform suddenly takes on an urgency that is certain to puzzle an outside observer.”

“In the name of greater efficiency, effectiveness, and even strengthening the United Nations for the twenty-first century, drastic changes are being urgently pressed on the new Secretary General by powerful actors behind the scenes, changes that would apparently downgrade the Department for Disarmament Affairs and split up the DPKO,” Paul said.

The G77 is not enthused by this latest move by Washington, and no wonder. The public is bound to ask: “Isn’t the United Nations supposed to be promoting disarmament? So, why downgrade disarmament?” he asked.

Responding to several questions at the noon press briefing, U.N. spokesperson Michelle Montas told reporters the secretary-general is concerned about the need to strengthen the capacities of the organisation to cope with the increased scope of activities in the area of peace and security, as well as to advance the disarmament agenda.

In this connection, she said, “he has been in touch with the president of the General Assembly. The proposals outlined by him seek the realignment of some of the political and security departments.”

Over the past week, the secretary-general has been in touch with member states individually and in groups in order to solicit their views and be guided by them, Montas added.

“The secretary-general has come to the conclusion that this procedure needs to be pursued further before a formal issuance to the General Assembly can be undertaken,” she said.

Montas said the secretary-general, on his return from the current visit to Africa, plans to meet with member states to further share his ideas and hear their views.

“This is an ongoing consultation. On the basis of the reaction he receives from member states he will consider how to take this matter forward,” Montas added.

She also said the secretary-general would respect the legislative process, and that he did intend to move forward with his agenda.

As chief administrative officer of the world body, Ban has the power to make appointments without approval of the General Assembly.

But any plans to restructure the Secretariat have to be approved by the General Assembly. If there are financial implications in the restructuring process, the proposals have also to be discussed by the U.N.’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary).

At Tuesday’s G77 meeting, several delegations also said that appointments of senior staff “should be de-linked from the restructuring exercise.”

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 23 2007 (IPS)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has taken the initial step towards a significant restructuring of the United Nations Secretariat by realigning the organisation’s peacekeeping operations and bringing disarmament directly under his wing.

The existing Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) is to be split into two: a Department of Peace Operations and a Department of Field Support, both of which will be headed by an under-secretary-general, the third highest ranking post in the organisation.

But a more controversial proposal is to reconstitute the existing Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA) as a separate office in the U.N. Secretariat, with a separate budget line item.

The new office, which is currently headed by an under-secretary-general, is to be brought under a Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Disarmament Affairs.

Although the proposed new SRSG will report directly to Ban, there is no indication whether he will have the rank of an under-secretary-general or whether the post will be downgraded to that of an assistant secretary-general.

The creation of a SRSG is being justified on the ground that the secretary-general wants to keep disarmament “closer to him” as he considers it an important issue.

But several delegations, representing the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement, have already warned that the appointment of a SRSG could be construed as a downgrading of DDA – especially given the generally ad hoc manner in which SRSG’s are usually appointed.

The restructuring proposals are laid out in two Secretariat “non-papers” provided this week to various political and regional groups at the United Nations.

An ambassador from the non-aligned group of countries told IPS that “the non-papers were still vague on details and on reporting lines”.

“For example, to whom would the two new arms of the DPKO report to, and which arm would have precedence?” he asked. “And what is the reason for an SRSG for disarmament – and why not keep things as they are?”

After the non-papers were presented by the U.N. Chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar to delegates this week, Non-Aligned Movement members told him to “re-work the paper” to address more specifically the concerns raised at the meeting.

“What is not clear,” said another diplomat, “is whether Ban’s office expects us to merely take note of the non-papers (thereby authorising him to go ahead with his re-structuring plans) or whether his office is prepared to discuss and make changes, as requested.”

Although the secretary-general has the power to appoint his own staff and make administrative decisions in his capacity as the chief administrative officer, he has to get the approval of the 192-member General Assembly for any restructuring of the Secretariat.

Justifying the proposed split in DPKO, the non-papers say the United Nations is experiencing a sustained, extraordinary period of growth in peacekeeping activities in the field.

“While the current figure of field-based peacekeeping personnel is now just under 100,000, maintaining this presence requires that the DPKO actually manage roughly twice that number on an annual basis, given the constant rate of troop/police rotations, personnel transfers, and new mission requirements that must be taken into account.”

The past 36 months alone have seen the start-up or expansion of nine field missions, with three missions currently in start-up or expansion. Currently, DPKO oversees 18 active peacekeeping missions in the field.

According to the non-papers, peacekeeping under the aegis of the United Nations is an activity that relies heavily on coherent and clearly articulated structures, management systems and work processes in order to mount, sustain and oversee multiple complex operations.

“The nature of the challenge is far more than a quantitative one. Qualitatively, many of the newer peacekeeping missions operate at extreme levels of sensitivity, visibility and risk, with complex mandates to assist state-restoration and state-building processes after decades of conflict, in remote, austere and increasingly quite dangerous environments- sometimes with factions outside the peace process totally hostile to a U.N. presence.”

Without restructuring, the non-papers say, the risk of inefficiency, ineffectiveness or abuse is greatly increased.

As the United Nations enters the fourth successive year of a sustained “surge” in peace operations in the field, the notion of putting off reform has become untenable, the Secretariat argues.

Justifying the reconstitution of the DDA, the non-papers say the restructured office “will continue to promote and support multilateral efforts on disarmament, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons, including in the context of global efforts against terrorism.”

Still, several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and peace activists have launched a campaign against the dismantling of the existing DDA.

Last week, John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, said: “This is the wrong move for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to make and would be an inauspicious start to his term.”

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which has launched a project called “Reaching Critical Will”, is already spearheading an NGO campaign to stop the dismantling of DDA.

“Several countries have a shameful record on disarmament and would like to see the department and its institutional memory and activity downgraded,” says a statement on its website.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 2007 (IPS)

A proposal by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to downgrade the U.N.’s Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) – and possibly bring it under the umbrella of the Department of Political Affairs – has sparked a critical reaction from member states, peace activists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

“This is the wrong move for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to make and would be an inauspicious start to his term,” warns John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy.

He said the DDA was established in its current form in 1998 in order to meet post-Cold War challenges of disarmament and non-proliferation.

“Those challenges have grown more, not less, urgent since then,” Burroughs told IPS. He said disarmament NGOs have already started opposing this proposal. “We will be sending letters to the secretary-general and requesting meetings,” he added.

At a meeting of the “troika” of the 116-member Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) – comprising past chair Malaysia, present chair Cuba and future chair Qatar – there was unified opposition to the proposed move.

Worse still, noted one ambassador who was present at the NAM meeting last week, are rumours that the soon-to-be revamped U.N. department of political affairs is likely to be headed by a U.S. national: a nominee of the administration of President George W. Bush, which has strong reservations on arms control and nuclear disarmament.

“Having an American as head,” the ambassador told the meeting “is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.”

The largest single political bloc at the United Nations, NAM is planning to send a letter of protest to the secretary-general.

But the NAM Caucus decided to hold back the letter until an upcoming meeting with Chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar, who is expected to provide details of Ban’s merger proposal.

The DDA, which was once headed by an assistant secretary-general (ASG), was downgraded during the five-year tenure of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali (1992-1996).

But his successor Kofi Annan, who gave high priority to arms control and nuclear disarmament, upgraded the DDA with an under-secretary-general (USG), a higher rank than ASG, as its head.

“I think the dismantling of DDA as a U.N. department is a retrograde step irrespective of whether an American is to head DPA or not,” an Asian diplomat told IPS. “We will only be repeating the blunder that Boutros Ghali made and which Kofi rectified.”

He said the problems of disarmament and nuclear proliferation are mounting, particularly in the context of the failure of the 2005 U.N. summit to reiterate disarmament in its outcome document; the collapse of the 2005 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference; and the deadlock at the U.N. small arms conference last year.

“This is all the more important why the United Nations should not abdicate its leadership role in this vital field in which it has played an influential role since the very first General Assembly resolution of January 1946,” he said.

“Burying disarmament in the department of political affairs will kill it, and especially so under a U.S. national as its head,” he added.

There has also been an unwritten rule at the United Nations that the department of disarmament should not be headed by any one of the five declared nuclear weapons states: the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

Cora Weiss, U.N. Representative, International Peace Bureau, and president of the Hague Appeal for Peace, told IPS: “It is most unfortunate that the new secretary-general has made this a priority move – to decimate the most important raison d’etre of the United Nations and to repeat Boutros Ghali’s mistake.”

She said it is pretty difficult to “prevent the scourge of war” with a world awash in weapons. “Removing (the existing) under-secretary-general from DDA removes a direct voice to the secretary-general, and also undermines the DDA to the department of political affairs, presumably under a U.S. designated chief.”

Weiss said such a move also removes the organisation’s independence to pursue work on elimination of nuclear weapons; fighting the illicit trade in small arms; and providing support for the implementation of so many international disarmament treaties and agreements that the United States once supported and now eschews.

“It’s a disaster,” said Weiss, adding that “naming some fine women for high posts, although a good move, does not compensate for this most unfortunate move.”

Since he assumed office on Jan. 2, Ban has been praised by women’s groups for appointing two women to high-level posts in the Secretariat: Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro of Tanzania and Under-Secretary-General for Management Alicia Barcena of Mexico.

“How can the secretary-general promote the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (aimed primarily at eliminating poverty and hunger) – which will cost lots of money – while the world spends well over a trillion dollars a year on war and preparation for war?” Weiss asked.

“We can’t have it both ways. Keeping the DDA is a reminder of the need to reduce military budgets,” she noted.

Burroughs said DDA also houses technical and policy expertise and institutional memory built up over many years. All of this is invaluable to governments and civil society.

But this legacy and DDA’s potential to do much more could be damaged or lost if DDA is subsumed in DPA. The proposal is similar to the actual absorption of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency into the State Department in the late 1990s, he added.

Technical expertise and institutional memory has been lost since then, as has advocacy within the U.S. government for disarmament.

Meanwhile, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which has launched a project called “Reaching Critical Will”, is already spearheading an NGO campaign to stop the dismantling of DDA.

“The Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA) is the United Nation’s institutional memory and stronghold of expertise on disarmament at the international level,” says a statement on its website.

“Several countries have a shameful record on disarmament and would like to see the department and its institutional memory and activity downgraded.”

Disarmament was recognised from the outset of the United Nations as an essential condition for global peace and security. The U.N. Charter recognised that an armed peace was not going to be a just peace, and that preparation for war was not going to bring peace.

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 United Nations fulfilling its mandate, and servicing inter-governmental meetings and treaty bodies,” the statement continued.

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 U.N. decisions is the wrong course, the League added.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 2006 (IPS)

When mortars and rockets fall silent in the world’s battle zones, the killings do not necessarily end with ceasefires and peace talks.

The reason? Myriads of unexploded ordnance – including deadly cluster bombs, booby traps and anti-personnel landmines – left behind by warring parties.

According to the United Nations, up to one million pieces of unexploded ordnance are “leftovers” from the war in southern Lebanon last August. And, so far, more than 58,000 cluster bomblets have been cleared and destroyed.

The death toll from cluster munitions – more than three months after the conflict – is 22, six of them children, while 134 injuries have been reported from all types of unexploded ordnance.

“Wars do not always end with the last gunshot or the signing of a peace agreement,” says U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Long after hostilities cease, he points out, the human consequences continue because people continue to be killed or injured by abandoned explosive ordnance.

“These remnants of war, some of which can remain in place for decades, are a threat to civilians and military personnel alike, and impede humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, post-conflict reconstruction and development,” said Annan, as he welcomed the entry into force of a new international agreement on unexploded ordnance.

The new agreement, titled Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War, requires member states “to take remedial measures to clear, remove or destroy unexploded ordnance or abandoned explosive ordnance as early as possible after the end of hostilities.”

An integral part of the 1980 U.N. Convention on Conventional Weapons, the new agreement entered into force on Sunday.

But Steve Goose, director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, is sceptical. He said the protocol – which is really an amendment to the existing Convention – should reinforce the urgent need to clean up the deadly leftovers of war.

“But because the text is so weak, the success of the protocol will depend on aggressive and thorough implementation by governments,” he added.

The protocol was adopted in November 2003, but became part of international law only on Sunday after it received the necessary ratifications by 20 countries.

Annan said the entry into force of a legal instrument is not an end in itself, but rather the beginning of a long series of actions.

“I urge those states that have not yet done so to adhere to this instrument,” he said, pointing out that “this is a matter of survival for millions of civilians.”

According to Annan, one of the most “horrendous consequences” of armed conflict is the legacy left behind by “silent killers”: landmines, booby traps, cluster bombs and other improvised explosive devices.

Both during and after hostilities, he said, they kill indiscriminately and maim vulnerable civilians, especially women and children.

Max Gaylard, director of the U.N. Mine Action Service, said the protocol calls on states parties and parties to armed conflicts to provide information on the location of explosive remnants of war to humanitarian missions and organisations. “This is welcomed by all of us at the United Nations,” he added.

Last month, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland denounced Israel’s use of cluster bombs during its conflict with Lebanon last July-August.

Describing the use of these weapons as “immoral”, Egeland said that U.N. teams had identified some 359 separate cluster bomb strike locations that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets dropped by Israeli forces inside Lebanon.

“What’s shocking and I would say completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a (Security Council) resolution, when we knew there would be an end (to the conflict),” he said.

Every day, he said, people are maimed, wounded and are killed by these ordnances.

“As a matter of urgency, I call on all states to implement an immediate freeze on the use of cluster munitions. The freeze is essential until the international community puts in place effective legal instruments to address urgent humanitarian concerns about their use,” Egeland said.

In a statement released last week, Human Rights Watch said the protocol – in addition to making a state responsible for clearing all explosive remnants of war in territory under its control – calls on states to provide warnings, risk education and other measures to protect the civilian population.

Moreover, a state that uses weapons that leave behind explosive remnants must provide assistance for clearance even if the territory is not under its control.

Amnesty International, which is calling for a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs, has accused both British and U.S. military forces of using these deadly weapons in Iraq.

The London-based human rights organisation said the use of cluster bombs on civilian targets is a “grave violation of international humanitarian law”.

The United Nations said last week that engineers of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have conducted 58 “controlled demolition(s) of pieces of unexploded ordnance”.

At the same time, U.N. de-mining officials have expressed concern over nearly one million pieces of such ordnance left behind in southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF has warned that children in Lebanon face “a terrible situation” because of the presence of large number of unexploded ordnance in fields from across schools.

According to Human Rights Watch, states parties now gathered in Geneva for the Third Review Conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) are debating the possibility of regulating cluster munitions. The meeting began Nov. 7 and will conclude Nov. 17.

At a meeting last month, six CCW state parties (Austria, Holy See, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and Sweden) asked that member states give consideration to a legally binding instrument that addresses the humanitarian concerns posed by cluster munitions.

The proposal was endorsed by 12 additional states (Argentina, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland), “and many others are signaling their intention to do so,” Human Rights Watch said.

“We have reached a tipping point on cluster munitions”, said Goose. “It’s no longer a small group of isolated states calling for a new treaty. Many countries realising that negotiations not only should happen, but will happen, want to be on board from the start.”

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 17 2006 (IPS)

The United Nations is responding positively to a call from peace activists and human rights organisations for a new international treaty to monitor the world’s growing 1.1-trillion-dollar global arms trade.

A resolution calling for the creation of a group of governmental experts to explore the feasibility of starting work on such a treaty has been gathering strong support.

As of last week, “more than 80 governments (out of 192) have co-sponsored the resolution, and many more are telling us they will support it,” Anna Macdonald, the manager of the Control Arms Campaign for Oxfam International, told IPS. “The momentum behind the arms trade treaty is building.”

The lobbying is being led by Oxfam International, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). The campaign, which is supported by 20 Nobel Peace laureates, has been working towards this vote for three years.

The world’s major arms manufacturers – described as the “worst culprits” – are also the most powerful in the United Nations, namely the five permanent members (P-5) of the Security Council: the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

Asked what support the campaign has from the P-5, MacDonald said: “The permanent five are split on the treaty.”

She pointed out that Britain and France are “100 percent behind the treaty.” Although Britain has been described as the world’s second biggest arms exporter after the United States, it is also one of the resolution’s co-sponsors.

“However, Russia, China and the United States are among the key sceptics on the treaty,” she added.

Macdonald also said that three emerging arms exporters – Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania – have come out in support of the arms trade treaty for the first time.

Other first time supporters include countries that have been devastated by armed violence, including Colombia, East Timor, Haiti, Liberia and Rwanda, she added.

The resolution will come up for a vote sometime next week in the U.N.’s committee on disarmament and international security, and will later go before the 192-member General Assembly for ratification, perhaps by late November or early December.

“Clearly, there’s another week of discussions to go,” Macdonald told IPS, “But as it stands, the groundswell of support for the resolution is growing with every day that passes.”

In a statement released Monday, IANSA’s U.N. Representative Mark Marge said: “Since we started the Control Arms Campaign three years ago, it is estimated that over a million people have been killed by guns and other small arms. Governments must get behind the Arms Trade Treaty.”

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in June this year that U.S. military spending in both Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to push global military expenditures to a new high in 2006: far above the current 1.1 trillion dollars..

According to SIPRI, the United States accounted for 48 percent of total military spending worldwide in 2005.

The United States, France and Britain, three of the big powers at the United Nations, are all involved in costly overseas military operations, while the fourth big power, namely China, is modernising its armed forces.

“In these circumstances, there is a strong likelihood that the current upward trend in world military spending will be sustained in 2006,” SIPRI said.

Meanwhile, in a report released Monday, the London-based Amnesty International said that lax arms controls fuel conflict and suffering worldwide.

“U.N. arms embargoes are like dams against tidal waves; alone they cannot stop weapons flooding in. Only a tough global Arms Trade Treaty could stem the flow of arms to the world’s war zones,” said Jeremy Hobbs, Director of Oxfam International.

The study points out that bullets from Greece, China, Russia and United States have been found in rebel hands in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“This is believed to be the first time that U.S. and Greek bullets have been recovered from rebel groups in eastern DRC, highlighting the global sources of the arms fuelling fighting in the region,” AI said.

AI’s research, conducted last month, also reveals the origins of a sample of arms and ammunition recovered from rebel groups since the imposition of the U.N. arms embargo in 2003. Small arms made in Russia, China, Serbia and South Africa were also found.

The study also said an estimated 3.9 million people have been killed as a result of conflict in the DRC since 1998. Fighting continues in eastern DRC despite a peace deal in 2002, fuelled by weapons and ammunition from around the world.

Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, said that rebel groups in the eastern DRC have “an appalling track record of rape, torture and killing of civilians as well as a history of using children as soldiers.”

“That bullets from so many countries have fuelled these abuses is yet another indication that an Arms Trade Treaty must become a reality,” Khan added.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2006 (IPS)

A coalition of human rights organisations and anti-war activists has renewed its campaign for a new international treaty to regulate the world’s fast-growing 1.1-trillion-dollar global arms trade.

The campaign is timed to coincide with a meeting of the 192-member U.N. committee on disarmament and international security which will discuss later this month whether or not to start work on such a landmark treaty.

“There are far too many vested interests in the arms trade firmly entrenched in the United Nations,” says one Third World diplomat, “and they will do their utmost to protect their lucrative trade.”

The world’s major arms manufacturers – described as the “worst culprits” – are also the most powerful in the United Nations, namely the five permanent members of the Security Council: the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

A report released Monday by Amnesty International, Oxfam and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) says global military spending this year is estimated to reach more than 1.1 trillion dollars, outstripping the highest figure reached during the Cold War, in real terms, and roughly 15 times the current international aid expenditure.

This growth in military budgets has caused a boom for the arms industry, with the top 100 arms companies increasing their sales by almost 60 percent: from 157 billion dollars in 2000 to 268 billion dollars in 2004, according to the study.

And while the world spends more on weapons, the number and scale of conflict-related food crises is also growing. Last year, conflict became the leading cause of hunger, according to the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The report, titled “Arms Without Borders: Why a globalised trade needs global controls”, calls on U.N. member states to support an Arms Trade Treaty during the current 61st session of the General Assembly which concludes mid-December.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Centre for Peace and Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, says a global arms trade treaty would set an important baseline for controlling the global trade in weapons.

“It is critical to have global common standards, rather than the current patchwork of measures that can easily be undermined,” Goldring told IPS.

“An arms trade treaty would be an important confirmation that weapons are not simply another commodity, to be traded in the same fashion as toasters or video games,” she added.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in June this year that U.S. military spending in both Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to push global military expenditures to a new high in 2006: far above the current 1.1 trillion dollars..

According to SIPRI, the United States accounted for 48 percent of total military spending worldwide in 2005.

The United States, France and Britain, three of the big powers at the United Nations, are all involved in costly overseas military operations, while the fourth big power, namely China, is modernising its armed forces.

“In these circumstances, there is a strong likelihood that the current upward trend in world military spending will be sustained in 2006,” SIPRI said.

Goldring told IPS that the United States continues to dominate the global arms trade, as it has done since the breakup of the Soviet Union 15 years ago.

“The U.S. government and weapons manufacturers persist in arming unstable regimes with extraordinarily capable weapons,” she said.

They then argue that the proliferation of these weapons makes it necessary to develop and produce a new generation of even more expensive, more capable weapons. This establishes a self-perpetuating, vicious circle, Goldring added.

She also said that weapons suppliers frequently argue that their sales are consistent with international human rights standards and international humanitarian law.

“But then they look the other way when their weapons are used to commit human rights abuses. It’s past time to set a higher standard.”

While the arms trade is a global phenomenon, Goldring argued, the vast majority of the trade in major conventional weapons is accounted for by just six countries: the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China and Germany.

“The proposed arms trade treaty gives these countries a reason to exercise true leadership, by setting standards for this pernicious trade. It will not be easily achieved, but it is vitally important,” she added.

The London-based international aid agency Oxfam, a member of the arms control coalition, said in a statement released Monday that unregulated arms sales are continuing to fuel poverty, conflict and human rights abuses.

Africa is particularly affected: 61 percent of African countries affected by food crises are in the grip of civil wars.

In Afghanistan, Oxfam said, about 2.5 million people currently don’t have enough food to eat and conflict is hampering relief efforts.

During the past few months in Gaza, the ongoing conflict has left hundreds of U.N. food containers stranded at border posts, leaving Palestinians short of essential supplies such as bread.

The United States and countries in the Middle East are responsible for the bulk of the growth in military spending, but some of the world’s poorest countries have also increased spending, Oxfam noted.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Sudan, Botswana and Uganda all doubled their military spending between 1985 and 2000. And Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan spent more on their military than on health care during 2002-2003.

“Year on year arms spending escalates and year on year conflicts are causing more hunger and suffering. Arms sales do not start conflicts, but they certainly fuel and lengthen them. It is time the world stemmed the uncontrolled flood of weapons into the world’s war zones,” Oxfam added.

“The world must agree to start work on an Arms Trade Treaty this October,” said Bernice Romero, Oxfam International’s campaigns director.

Excerpt: