Implementing the Convention on Cluster Munitions
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Victims Assistance Factsheet
FACTSHEETS How to implement victim assistance obligations? UNDER THE MINE BAN TREATY OR THE CONVENTION ON CLUSTER MUNITIONS Concrete actions to improve the quality of life of victims and persons with disabilities VICTIM ASSISTANCE FACTSHEETS INTRODUCTION Assistance to victims of mine/explosive remnants of war (ERW) is an obligation for States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). The Cartagena Action Plan and the Vientiane Action Plan include specific commitments that States Parties have agreed on to implement their victim assistance (VA) obligations effectively, in particular to improve the quality of life of victims. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides the most comprehensive framework to address the needs & advances the rights of all persons with disabilities (PwD), including mine/ERW survivors. Regional frameworks on disability and development are also relevant, such as the Incheon Strategy to “Make the Right Real” for Persons with Disability in Asia and the Pacificand the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities. OBJECTIVE OF THESE FACTSHEETS The Victim Assistance Factsheets were developed by Handicap International (HI) as a tool to provide concise information on what victim assistance (VA) is and on how to translate it into concrete actions that have the potential to improve the quality of life of mine/ERW victims and persons with disabilities. The factsheets target States Parties affected by mine/ERW, States Parties in a position to provide assistance, as well as organizations of survivors and other PwD, and other civil society - and international organizations. METHODOLOGY The factsheets build on a review of existing literature on VA, Disability and Inclusive Development, including publications such as the WHO Community-Based Rehabilitation Guidelines, sector and country-specific publications by HI, as well as others by the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention Implementation Support Unit, the ICRC and other organizations. -
Landmine Monitor 2014
Landmine Monitor 2014 Monitoring and Research Committee, ICBL-CMC Governance Board Handicap International Human Rights Watch Mines Action Canada Norwegian People’s Aid Research team leaders ICBL-CMC staff experts I © December 2014 by International Campaign to Ban Landmines – Cluster Munition Coalition (ICBL-CMC). All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-2-8399-1160-3 Cover photograph © Jared Bloch/ICBL-CMC, June 2014 Back cover © Werner Anderson/Norwegian People’s Aid, November 2013 Cover design by Rafael Jiménez Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor provides research and monitoring for the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). For more information visit www.the-monitor.org or email [email protected]. Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor makes every effort to limit the environmental footprint of reports by pub- lishing all our research reports online. This report is available online at www.the-monitor.org. International Campaign to Ban Landmines The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) is committed to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (or “Ottawa Conven- tion”) as the best framework for ending the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of antipersonnel mines and for destroying stockpiles, clearing mined areas, and assisting affected communities. The ICBL calls for universal adherence to the Mine Ban Treaty and its full implementation by all, including: • No more use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines by any actor under any circumstances; • Rapid destruction of all remaining stockpiles of antipersonnel landmines; • More efficient clearance and destruction of all emplaced landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW); and • Fulfillment of the rights and needs of all landmine and ERW victims. -
Bower Entrapping Gulliver SS Final No Copyedits
Bower, Adam. 2020. “Entrapping Gulliver: The United States and the Antipersonnel Mine Ban.” Security Studies 29 (1): forthcoming. Accepted for publication 15 August 2019 In 2014, the Obama administration announced that the United States would almost entirely adopt the global ban on antipersonnel mines, despite longstanding military and political opposition. To explain this puzzling outcome, I expand upon recent accounts of rhetorical entrapment in which norm-promoting actors seek to compel change in a target actor by exploiting tensions between the target’s words and actions. Tracing US policy change over the past 25 years, I show how transnational civil society and domestic political elites strategically deployed factual and normative claims to draw US officials into an iterative debate concerning the humanitarian harm of antipersonnel mines. Successive US administrations have sought to mitigate external critique by gradually conceding to the discursive framing of pro-ban advocates without endorsing the international treaty prohibiting the weapons. These rhetorical shifts stimulated a search for alternative technologies and incremental changes to military doctrine, tactics, and procurement that constrained US policy choices culminating in the effective abandonment of antipersonnel mines despite ongoing military operations around the globe. In 2014, the United States announced that it would eliminate antipersonnel (AP) landmines from its military arsenal, with the exception of its ongoing security commitments on the Korean Peninsula.1 President Obama further committed “to continue to work to find ways that would allow us to ultimately comply fully and accede to the Ottawa Convention,” the 1997 international legal instrument eliminating the weapons also known as the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT).2 With these acts, the administration sought to reverse long-standing US opposition to the global landmine prohibition. -
Informal Summary of Proceedings
Santiago Global Conference on the Cluster Munitions Convention – Summary of Proceedings “The Oslo Convention on Cluster Munitions Universal Meeting in advance of the First Meeting of State Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Cooperation and International Assistance". 7-9 June 2010 MONDAY, 07 JUNE 2010 2. Inaugural statements Chile – Minister of Defense H.E. Mr. Bounkeut Sangsomsak, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lao PDR Ms. Mine Gerhardsen, State Secretary of Norway Mr. Enrique Ganuza, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Chile Mr. Thomas Nash, Coordinator & Mr. Soraj Ghulam Habib, Ban Advocate and Representatives of the Cluster Munition Coalition 4.- Process and timeline to the First Meeting of State Parties in Lao PDR Chair: Chile – Mr. Alfredo Labbe, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Berlin Conference on the Destruction of Cluster Munitions , June 2009, Mr. Jörg- Alexander Albrecht Santiago Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean , September 2009, Mr. Camilo Sanhueza Bali Regional Conference for Asia and Pacific , November 2009, Ms. Rofita Djamawar Pretoria Regional Conference for Africa , March 2010, Mr. Ofthan Sengan Film "The Ban Advocates: From Victims to Champions", introduced by Ms. Lynn Bradach, Ban Advocate, Cluster Munition Coalition. 5.- Universalisation of the Convention and preparations for its Entry Into Force Chair: Japan - Mr. Tomosaburo ESAKI, Principal Deputy Director of the Conventional Arms Division, Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Science Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Presentation by Japan (Ms. Chisa Sato, Conventional Arms division, MFA Japan: Universalisation focus Presentation by the UN MAS Mr. Gustavo Laurie Presentation by the ICRC Mr. Lou Maresca Presentation by the CMC Ms. -
Human Security and the Mine Ban Movement I: Introduction
1 Human Security and the Mine Ban Movement I: Introduction RICHARD A. MATTHEW The Age of Global Issues OR MOST OF HUMAN HISTORY, THE EARTH’S PARTS HAVE APPEARED TO BE FAR more important than its whole. Since the first humans evolved some Fone to five million years ago, countless people have been born and educated in the same place in which they eventually would work, worship, raise families, and die. Most of them had no direct contact with the world beyond a fifty-mile radius of their birthplaces, and the indirect contacts that touched on their worlds were typically—although not always— diffuse and rare. While over the millennia there were massive movements of people from one region to another, the peopling of the planet was gen- erally a slow and cumulative process, in that most individuals had little or no personal experience of dislocation or change. Indeed only a thousand years ago, small communities could plan enormous projects—such as the great cathedrals of medieval Europe and the towering temples of South- east Asia—that would take centuries to complete, secure in the belief that their small villages and their descendants would always be available to continue the labor and, one day, to appreciate its hard-won fruit. This situation began to change five hundred years ago when ad- vances in maritime technologies made it possible to lose sight of the coast- line, explore the vast domain of the oceans, visit new lands, and still have a reasonable chance of finding one’s way back home months or years later. -
Gender Sensitive Victim Assistance: What Is It
ANNUAL REPORT 2014 © UNMAS Somalia GMAP’s vision: A world in which gender and diverse groups benefit from and contribute to mine action on an equal basis, resulting in more sustainable developmental outcomes. 1 Table of contents ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................................................................. 3 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................. 4 RESEARCH AND DISSEMINATION ....................................................................................................................... 6 OUTREACH, TRAINING AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE ....................................................................................... 7 PROMOTION OF THE INCLUSION OF GENDER DIMENSIONS IN THE WORK AROUND RELEVANT DISARMAMENT TREATIES (APMBC and CCM) ................................................................................................. 12 MONITORING AND EVALUATION..................................................................................................................... 17 FUNDING .......................................................................................................................................................... 18 INSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE SET UP ............................................................................................... 18 COORDINATION AND COOPERATION WITH PARTNERS ................................................................................. -
Advocacy Victims
ADVOCACY with Good Practice and Lessons Learned in Influencing Policy VICTIMS April 2013 ©M.L. Lesaffre ABOUT HANdicaP INTERNatioNAL Handicap International is an international aid organisation working in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster. Working alongside people with disabilities and vulnerable populations, we take action and raise awareness in order to respond to their essential needs, improve their living conditions and promote respect for their dignity and fundamental rights. Since its creation in 1982, this international solidarity organisation has set up deve- lopment programmes in over 60 countries and works in various emergency contexts. The network of 8 national associations (Germany, Belgium, Canada, France, Luxem- bourg, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States) works relentlessly to mobilise resources, co-manage projects and promote the organisation’s principles and actions. Getting a child, man or woman back on their feet in a difficult environment, aggrava- ted by poverty, exile or famine, is simply a question of giving them the resources they need to find their own way out. In emergency contexts, and in situations of conflict or natural disaster, Handicap International provides relief and assistance to vulnerable populations, people with disabilities, displaced persons and refugees. We carry out development work in the field, promoting health, preventive care and social and economic inclusion (access to education, professional training, and employment). Handicap International also supports local disabled people’s organisations. The knowledge and expertise the association has gained from its work in supporting vulnerable people have led it to campaign at national and international level to ensure that people with disabilities are taken into consideration in development projects and policies. -
Fhsmun Xxviii
FHSMUN SARASOTA 15 GENERAL ASSEMBLY FIRST COMMITTEE LANDMINES, CLUSTER MUNITIONS, AND UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE REMOVAL Author: Brian D. Sutliff “The problem of land mines is a global tragedy. In all probability, landmines kill more children than soldiers, and they keep killing after wars are over.” Former US President Bill Clinton “Landmines are amongst the most barbaric weapons of war, because they continue to kill and maim innocent people long after the war itself has ended. Also, fear of them keeps people off the land, and thus prevents them from growing food.” Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan “The vision of the United Nations is a world free of the threat of landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW), where individuals and communities live in a safe environment conducive to development and where the needs of mine and ERW victims are met and they are fully integrated into their societies.”1 Introduction While some areas of the world are still plagued by the infestations of landmines that were often planted many years ago, enormous progress has been achieved in many countries, including Cambodia, El Salvador, and Mozambique.2 Previous estimates listed the number of landmines at anywhere from approximately 50 million mines scattered across 70 different countries3, but the good news is that contemporary totals are likely significantly lower than the above figures. While some technological advances have been made and there are more complicated landmines available, most militaries, rebel groups, 1 Inter-Agency Coordination Group on Mine Action (IACG-MA), “Mine Action and Effective Coordination: The United Nations Inter-Agency Policy” June 6, 2005 p. -
Cluster Bombs As Indiscriminate Weapons Under International Humanitarian Law
Michigan Journal of International Law Volume 22 Issue 1 2000 Footprints of Death: Cluster Bombs as Indiscriminate Weapons Under International Humanitarian Law Virgil Wiebe Georgetown University Law Center Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil Part of the International Humanitarian Law Commons, International Law Commons, and the Military, War, and Peace Commons Recommended Citation Virgil Wiebe, Footprints of Death: Cluster Bombs as Indiscriminate Weapons Under International Humanitarian Law, 22 MICH. J. INT'L L. 85 (2000). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol22/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Journal of International Law at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Journal of International Law by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FOOTPRINTS OF DEATH: CLUSTER BOMBS AS INDISCRIMINATE WEAPONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW Virgil Wiebe* INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 87 I. WHAT ARE CLUSTER BOMBS AND WHY Do MILITARIES WANT THEM IN THEIR ARSENALS 9 ................... .. .. .. .. .. .. 89 II. WHERE HAVE CLUSTER BOMBS BEEN PRODUCED AND USED? ...... 91 III. CLUSTER BOMBS AND THE PRINCIPLE OF DISCRIMINATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW ............................................................ 96 A. Basic -
Israel's Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006
Lebanon HUMAN Flooding South Lebanon RIGHTS Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon WATCH in July and August 2006 February 2008 Volume 20, No. 2(E) Flooding South Lebanon Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006 Acronyms..................................................................................................................i Map of Lebanon .......................................................................................................ii Summary ................................................................................................................. 1 Methodology..................................................................................................... 14 Recommendations............................................................................................16 To the Government of Israel .........................................................................16 To the Secretary-General of the United Nations ............................................ 17 To the Government of the United States....................................................... 17 To all governments ...................................................................................... 17 Cluster Munitions and International Humanitarian Law.......................................... 19 Background on Cluster Munitions .....................................................................19 International Humanitarian Law ........................................................................ 21 International -
Cluster Munition Monitor 2018
CLUSTER MUNITION MONITOR 2018 Monitoring and Research Committee, ICBL-CMC Governance Board Danish Demining Group Human Rights Watch Humanity & Inclusion (HI) Mines Action Canada Research team leaders ICBL-CMC staff experts © August 2018 by International Campaign to Ban Landmines – Cluster Munition Coalition (ICBL-CMC). All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-2-9701146-3-5 Front cover photograph © Sean Sutton/MAG, March 2017 Back cover photographs © Sean Sutton/MAG, March 2017 and Blaise Kormann/HI, July 2017 Cover, text design, and layout by Lixar I.T. Inc. Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor provides research and monitoring for the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and is a formal program of the ICBL-CMC. For more information visit www.the-monitor.org or email [email protected]. Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor makes an effort to limit the environmental footprint of reports by publishing all of our research reports online. This report is available online. Detailed country profiles are available online at www.the-monitor.org/cp CLUSTER MUNITION COALITION The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) is an international civil society campaign working to eradicate cluster munitions and prevent further harm from these weapons. The CMC works through its members to change the policy and practice of governments and organizations and to raise awareness of the devastation that cluster munitions cause The CMC is committed to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions as the best framework for ending the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions and for destroying stockpiles, clearing contaminated areas, and assisting affected communities. -
A Historical Argument for a Cluster Munitions Convention
The Time Is Now: A Historical Argument for a Cluster Munitions Convention Bonnie Docherty* I. INTRODUCTION While traveling through Italy in June 1859, Swiss businessman Henri Dunant happened upon the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino. He found "despair unspeakable and misery of every kind."' Mangled bodies, dead and alive, littered the field, and the cries of the wounded filled the air. "The poor wounded men . were ghastly pale and exhausted," he wrote, describing the scene: Some, who had been the most badly hurt, had a stupefied look as though they could not grasp what was said to them .... Others were anxious and excited by nervous strain and shaken by spas- modic trembling. Some, who had gaping wounds already begin- 2 ning to show infection, were almost crazed with suffering. Dunant's recollections, A Memory of Solferino (1862), became a catalyst for the first modern instrument of international humanitarian law CIHL"), the 1864 Geneva Convention.' This treaty provided protection for the wounded on the battlefield, and it also showed that nations had the legal power to ameliorate suffering in war. The first Geneva Convention in turn spawned a branch of IHL that seeks to minimize war's effects by controlling the weap- ons used. Since the late nineteenth century, the international community has regu- lated or banned weapons it found caused undue harm to soldiers or civil- ians. Some of these treaties are out of date. For example, an 1899 Hague Declaration prohibiting bombs dropped from balloons seems archaic in the * Clinical Instructor, Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School; researcher, Arms Division, Human Rights Watch.