Spring 2014 | Volume 35 | Issue 1

The Nobel lecture Cluster Munitions Act South Sudan Saudi arms deal Working for a world free Bill-C6 awaits third Shattered peace leaves Export win raises questions of chemical weapons reading in Commons more than 10,000 dead on human rights The Ploughshares Monitor SPRING 2014 | VOLUME 35 | ISSUE 1 Viewing nuclear weapons through a humanitarian lens by Cesar Jaramillo A quarterly publication of Project Ploughshares • Available online: www.ploughshares.ca Contents The Ploughshares Monitor Volume 35 | Issue 1 PROJECT PLOUGHSHARES STAFF Spring 2014 John Siebert Executive Director Kenneth Epps Cesar Jaramillo Debbie Hughes Matthew Pupic Charmila Ireland Wendy Stocker The Nobel Peace Prize lecture Tasneem Jamal Barbara Wagner The 2013 prize went to the Organisation for the Prohibition The Ploughshares Monitor is the quarterly journal of Project Ploughshares, the peace 3 of Chemical Weapons. centre of The Canadian Council of Churches. Ploughshares works with churches, by Ahmet Üzümcü nongovernmental organizations, and governments, in Canada and abroad, to advance policies and actions that prevent war and armed violence and build peace. Project Ploughshares is affiliated with Problems with Bill C-6 the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, An Act to Implement the Convention on Cluster Munitions Conrad Grebel University College, University 6 awaits third reading in the House of Commons. of Waterloo. by Project Ploughshares staff Office address: Project Ploughshares 57 Erb Street West Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6C2 Canada 519-888-6541, fax: 519-888-0018 South Sudan at odds with itself [email protected]; www.ploughshares.ca A shattering of the peace has led to more than 10,000 deaths. 10 Project Ploughshares gratefully acknowledges by John Siebert the ongoing financial support of the many individuals, national churches and church agencies, local congregations, religious orders, and organizations across Canada that ensure that the work of Project Ploughshares continues. Is a nuclear weapons ban in sight? cover story Recognition is growing that the possession and use of nuclear We are particularly grateful 12 weapons is inconsistent with International Humanitarian Law. to The Simons Foundation in Vancouver by Cesar Jaramillo for its generous support. All donors of $50 or more receive a complimentary subscription to The Ploughshares Monitor. Annual Hope for Liberia subscription rates for libraries and institutions Trauma healing and reconciliation in the war-torn country. are: $30 in Canada; $30 (U.S.) in the United 16 States; $35 (U.S.) internationally. Single copies by Aloysius B. Nyanti are $5 plus shipping. Unless indicated otherwise, material may be reproduced freely, provided the author and source are indicated and one copy is sent Arms export win is human rights loss to Project Ploughshares. Return postage 20 Deal with Saudi Arabia raises human rights concerns. is guaranteed. by Kenneth Epps Publications Mail Registration No. 40065122. ISSN 1499-321X. The Ploughshares Monitor is indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index. Books etc. Photos of staff by Karl Griffiths-Fulton 23 A debut novel by Ploughshares staffer Tasneem Jamal. Printed at Waterloo Printing, Waterloo, Ontario. Printed with vegetable inks on paper with recycled content. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage. COVER: This iconic photograph, first published in Life magazine, shows a mother and child in Hiroshima in 1945. Getty Images Nobel Peace Prize lecture 2013 Working together for a world free of chemical weapons, and beyond By Ahmet Üzümcü or sixteen years now, the ity. But chemical weapons have, by of 1899. OPCW [Organisation for any measure, an especially nefarious The fact that this treaty was not F the Prohibition of Chemical legacy. observed during the First World Weapons] has been overseeing the Almost one hundred years since War prompted immediate efforts to elimination of an entire category of their first large-scale use on the negotiate a stronger norm. These weapons of mass destruction. Our battlefields of Flanders, it is worth efforts resulted in the 1925 Geneva task is to consign chemical weapons reminding ourselves of the reasons Protocol. While it prohibited the use to history, forever—a task we have why these weapons invoke such hor- of chemical weapons, the Protocol been carrying out with quiet deter- ror, right up to our own time. Chemi- did not ban their production or pos- mination, and no small measure of cal weapons stir the deep-rooted and session. success. pathological fear all humans share of History, alas, did not bear out its Under the terms of the Chemical being poisoned. They do not discrim- robustness. Chemical weapons con- Weapons Convention, the OPCW inate between combatant and civilian, tinued to be used across the globe, has so far verified the destruction nor between battlefield and village. including against civilian populations. of more than 80% of all declared You cannot see them. You cannot And, alarmingly, large and more so- chemical weapons. We have also im- smell them. And they offer no warn- phisticated arsenals were developed plemented a wide range of measures ing for the unsuspecting. during the Cold War. It was not until to prevent such weapons from re- But their effects are devastating— the 1980s that negotiations for a emerging. And with 190 states now burning, blinding or suffocating their more comprehensive chemical weap- members of this global ban, we are victims. Death is rarely instant and ons treaty got under way in earnest. hastening the vision of a world free never painless. And when they fail to Chemical attacks being perpetrated of chemical weapons to reality. kill, as they often do, these weapons at that time by the former regime inflict lasting damage on people and in Iraq added to the urgency of this ********** their environment, denying them the process. opportunity to repair and rebuild in Fortunately, it was not only the There can be no doubt about the the wake of conflict. brutal effects of chemical weapons value of this work. For chemical that focused minds. What drove the weapons have been used with brutal ********** negotiators was also the imperative to regularity over the twentieth cen- ensure the effectiveness of the future tury—and, tragically, in our own cen- The first attempt to ban the use of norm to ban these weapons. tury as well. No weapon, of course, chemical weapons under interna- States were adamant that chemical has a monopoly on cruelty or lethal- tional law was the Hague Convention weapons had to be made a thing of The Ploughshares Monitor | Spring 2014 3 NOBEL LECTURE It is high time to move towards a different, more durable security in keeping with the extraordinary opportunities that globalisation has brought—a security that accommodates human development, economic cooperation and mutual prosperity. the past—by deeds, not just words. of the Chemical Weapons Conven- such compressed timeframes. But, as What they strove for was a treaty that tion. much as this mission is testing our all but enforced compliance, coming With the entry into force of the capacities and resources, our progress closer than any predecessor to guar- Convention in 1997, we have thus so far has only strengthened our con- anteeing adherence to its provisions. been able to cross, and link, the wide fidence that we can succeed. And, after almost two decades of dif- space in disarmament between pas- ficult negotiations, they succeeded. sion and practicality, between senti- ********** Their efforts gave birth to the full ment and action, between noble global ban that came to be known ambition and concrete achievements. International consensus on the elimi- as the Chemical Weapons Conven- And, for the first time in the history nation of chemical weapons in Syria tion—and to an entirely independent of multilateral diplomacy, we were has as its basis the same consensus organisation, the OPCW, to oversee able to show that consensus-based that drove the Chemical Weapons its implementation. decision-making can yield practical, Convention to conclusion. The chal- effective and, above all, verifiable re- lenge now is to persuade those six ********** sults in disarmament. countries1 still outside the Conven- tion to join it—without delay or con- It was out of these negotiations that ********** ditions. the crucible of the unique success There has long been no reasonable of the Chemical Weapons Conven- The Convention’s achievements make defence for not doing so—all the tion was forged—a comprehensive the recent chemical attacks in Syria, more now in the wake of the robust international verification mechanism. which shocked us all, even more international reaction to recent use A mechanism that had no prior tragic. For they highlight the manifest of chemical weapons. No national model and had to be developed from security advantages that states adher- interest can credibly outweigh either scratch. A mechanism that obliges ing to the Convention enjoy. In the the security or economic benefits of every one of the Convention’s 190 sixteen years that the Convention has adhering to the global chemical ban. Member States, without discrimina- been in force, no Member State has It is my fervent hope that this tion, to destroy its chemical weapon experienced an attack with chemical award will spur on efforts to make stocks and production facilities—and weapons. the Chemical Weapons Convention to lay bare, through inspection, any Thankfully, the international re- a truly universal norm. Universal ad- industrial facilities that could be used sponse to those attacks set in motion herence to the Convention would be for purposes prohibited by this treaty. an extraordinary series of events. the most enduring investment in its A mechanism that brooks no excep- These resulted in Syria’s accession integrity—and the best guarantee of tions, and can conduct inspections to the Convention and a front-line its reach.

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