Remarks to the Informal Meeting on Cluster Munitions and the Oslo Process
for representatives of core governments, CMC, ICRC, and UN
By Steve Goose, Human Rights Watch Arms Division
On behalf of the Cluster Munition Coalition
Oslo, Norway
19 September 2007

[Note: These were extemporaneous oral remarks from which this written text was subsequently re-created.]

Let me first say congratulations and thank you to the United Nations, to the UN family, for their new statement on cluster munitions that they read out this morning.  This new UN position is fully consistent with and wholly supportive of the Oslo Process.  It should allay any concerns that anyone might have about the Oslo Process being “outside of the UN.”  It is outside of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), but not the UN.

As many of you know, I have been around since the earliest days of the landmine ban movement.  During the events of the past few days related to the 10th anniversary of the Mine Ban Treaty negotiations, I have been pleased that many people—many diplomats—have approached me to say that the landmine work has been the most important and satisfying work of their careers.  This is another such moment.  This work on cluster munitions can be the most important and satisfying work that you will ever do.  That is because it is work that will make a real difference in the world, that will save countless lives for generations to come.  So embrace it fully, dive into it with great enthusiasm, bring along your governments, your agencies, your organizations.  And feel a sense of responsibility, because the success of the cluster munition effort will depend largely on the people in this room.

As the Norwegian Foreign Minister said, there is no longer any question about whether we will be able to achieve a new cluster munitions treaty.  That has also been made abundantly clear by all of the updates we have had today about the activities that are taking place on the governmental and civil society fronts.  Indeed, the question is not if we will have a treaty, but how good it will be.

I have heard a number of people talking about the “trade-off” between a strong treaty and the need to bring as many countries on board as possible, or talking about the need to “balance” these two elements.  The lesson that we learned 10 years ago with Ottawa Process on antipersonnel mines is that it is the integrity of the treaty that matters most.  If you set the bar low to appeal to certain nations, they will only drag the bar down to a lower level, if they deign to join at all.  If you set the bar high, most nations will, over time, rise up to that level and embrace it, as the international community more broadly does so.  If there are governments that will not accept the humanitarian standard that we are aspiring to with this treaty, we should not want them to be part of the process.

The landmine experience has also shown us that a good, strong treaty will have a powerful effect even on those that do not join right away.  It will set a new standard of behavior that nearly every government will adhere to, and even non-state armed groups.  In the past year, only two governments used antipersonnel mines, even though 40 are not party to the Mine Ban Treaty.  We will likely see a similar situation with cluster munitions.  The weapon will be stigmatized to such an extent that governments will be increasingly reluctant to use it.  Once the treaty is in place, very few will want to endure the international condemnation that will accompany any use of clusters anywhere in the world.      

So what constitutes a good, strong treaty on cluster munitions?  We have a pretty clear picture of that in the Cluster Munition Coalition.  We know that it will be a bad treaty if it includes an exception for submunitions with self-destructing devices.  As we saw in Lebanon, far too many self-destructing submunitions do not in fact self-destruct.  We know that it will be a bad treaty if it permits submunitions with a certain arbitrary failure rate.  Pick a number, 10%, 5%, even 1%, none are acceptable because none will function as advertised.  There is simply no relationship between the failure rates promised under test conditions and those found in actual combat conditions. 

These are red lines for the CMC.  Of course there will be many things to negotiate in the new treaty, but these should not be among them.  The CMC will not be able to support a treaty that exempts self-destructing submunitions or that allows cluster munitions with a set failure rate that in reality cannot be met.

We understand that governments are going to have discussions about various types of cluster munitions, and whether they should be prohibited by a new treaty.  The ICRC earlier today mentioned two categories that some governments believe should fall outside the treaty: sensor fuzed weapons and those with a small number of submunitions.  The CMC believes that the mindset from the start should be that all cluster munitions cause unacceptable harm to civilians, and that all cluster munitions are inaccurate and unreliable.  The burden of proof should then be on governments and militaries to demonstrate that there is such a thing as a cluster munition that will not cause unacceptable harm, that is indeed accurate and reliable. 

If governments want exceptions, they must make the humanitarian case and prove that such weapons do not have the same indiscriminate and long-lasting effects as other cluster munitions.  We should not start with exceptions for weapons about which we have little information—sensor fuzed weapons for example have only been used once, in the invasion of Iraq, and there is no publicly available data about their performance, there is no truth from the ground. 

There should not be so much worrying about what states are not yet on board the Oslo Process.  Again, the mine ban treaty experience shows us that many states are likely to join in only very late, but that some of those states then become the most active and ardent supporters.  The notion that the CCW is a more appealing forum because it has “all the stakeholders” is just not accurate.  The CCW only has half the world’s nations, is notably weak in participation from developing countries, and does not have many of the countries affected by cluster munitions.  The Oslo Process already has half of the producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions, and many more will join in the coming months, if we continue to press hard.    

We should stop pretending that the CCW and the Oslo Process are “complementary.”  It sounds nice and makes people feel more comfortable, but it is not true.  The Oslo Process is aimed at a prohibition on cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.  The CCW is for those nations that want to continue to use cluster munitions that have already been proven to cause unacceptable harm to civilians.  The CCW is for those nations that want to continue to use cluster munitions that caused so many civilian casualties in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo in recent years.  These are not complementary approaches, they are contrary approaches.

The CCW track will only legitimize cluster munitions, not stigmatize them.  The CCW Amended Protocol II on landmines is instructive.  While the Ottawa Process led to a ban on antipersonnel mines now embraced by 155 nations, the Protocol has resulted in increased production of mines by states like India, Pakistan, Russia, and China—mines that meet the requirements of the Protocol but which the rest of the world has prohibited. 

There is also a practical problem: how many governments have the diplomatic capacity to prepare for and participate in a CCW cluster meeting in November, an Oslo Process meeting in December, a CCW cluster meeting in January (as is now being planned), an Oslo Process meeting in February, and so on for the next year or more?

There is only one way to get to a treaty that will stop the unacceptable harm caused by cluster munitions, and that is the Oslo Process.  Governments and civil society will have to work very hard to ensure we have the strongest possible treaty, but we can do it together.  Thank you.