Today's Fresh Blogs...

• Cluster munitions: the stigma grows

  Published: August 27, 2007, 3:36 am

  Tags: Nystuen, Humanitarian Impacts, Ccw, Oslo Process, Cluster Munitions, Borrie, Financial Investment

  a weapon with unacceptable humanitarian consequences by European publics. Investors see that as a risk, especially as efforts to restrict them gather steam.Certainly, spokespeople from major arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon asked for comment by the Observer seemed quick to deny their involvement in cluster munition

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• Myths about Climate Change and Conflict?

  Published: August 22, 2007, 5:49 am

  Tags: Mer Ay, Global Warming, Salehyan, Humanitarian Impacts, Climate Change, Resource Scarcity, Ipcc, Conflict

  climate change and limit its humanitarian impact as much as possible.Dire predictions instead strengthen the road for strong, effective international institutions and flexible, collective action, because no state can deal with the impacts of climate change on its own.If, with this paper, Salehyan's intent is to provoke controversy, he's

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• 0800-HOW-IS-MY-DIPLOMACY? Technology and humanitarian action

  Published: August 6, 2007, 5:47 am

  Tags: Humanitarian Impacts, Humanitarian Action, Disarmament As Humanitarian Action, Decision Making, Borrie, Human Security, Altruism, Civilians, Accountability

  technology is transforming humanitarian relief - and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients.It all sounds great. But the Economist conceded that - beyond anecdotal evidence - there isn't a definitive verdict yet on how much of a difference such new technologies have made in achieving more effective humanitarian aid

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• Is there a Geneva / New York divide?

  Published: July 8, 2007, 10:30 am

  Tags: United Nations, New York, Civil Society, Mc Carthy, Negotiators, Humanitarian Impacts, Disarmament, Arms Control, Geneva, Multilateral Negotiations, Bob Dylan, Diplomacy

  with a history of promoting humanitarian causes. These contrasts must translate into quite different experiences for diplomats posted to each place.But what if it goes further than that? It seems to me that differences between the political environments and ways of working in Geneva and New York is opening up a divide between the two UN centres

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• Landmines: Disarm!

  Published: September 3, 2007, 10:29 am

  Tags: Mine Ban Treaty, Humanitarian Approaches, Humanitarian Impacts, Wareham, Borrie, Anti Personnel Mines, Weapons

  volume, Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: From Perspective to Practice, and the film-maker Brian Liu.I first saw 'Disarm' on the margins of the Nairobi Summit toward a mine-free world in late 2004. In the two-and-a-half years since word has spread and buzz has built about the documentary, and recently a 25 minute edit was broadcast on

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• Systematic rape in Congo: a weapon of war

  Published: September 12, 2007, 4:09 am

  Tags: Mer Ay, Humanitarian Impacts, Sexual Violence, Human Rights Watch, Holmes, Ihl, Prosecution, Drc, Conflict, Civilians, Systematic, Rape

  Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, spent four days in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as part of the UN's efforts to assess the humanitarian situation in the region.Quoted in a Washington Post article published on 9 September 2007, he described the prevalence and intensity of sexual violence

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• Children's drawings describing Darfur atrocities

  Published: September 24, 2007, 3:53 am

  Tags: Mer Ay, Sudan, Humanitarian Impacts, Darfur, Human Rights Watch, Chad, Refugee, Drawings, Children, Rape

  Human Rights Watch (HRW): What's happening here? 13-year-old artist: These men in green are taking the women and the girls.HRW: What are they doing?Boy: They are forcing them to be wife. The houses are on fire.HRW: What's happening here?Boy: This is an Antonov. This is a helicopter. These here, at the bottom of the page, these are dead people.Last

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• When is it acceptable to harm civilians?

  Published: October 3, 2007, 3:16 am

  Tags: Unacceptable Harm, Mc Carthy, Humanitarian Impacts, Belgrade, Oslo Process, Cluster Munitions, Civilians, Affected States

  guardian of International Humanitarian Law - otherwise known as the Law of War - the International Committee of the Red Cross argues that what leads some cluster munitions to cause unacceptable harm to civilians is their inaccuracy and their unreliability. The ICRC suggests that technical solutions could be found to these problems, such as

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• Re-humanize yourself: The Belgrade Conference of states affected by cluster munitions

  Published: October 5, 2007, 7:26 am

  Tags: Civil Society, Serbia, Humanitarian Impacts, Belgrade, Oslo Process, Humanitarian Action, Cluster Munitions, Borrie, Human Security, Anti Personnel Mines, Civilians, Affected States

  experts are among the unsung humanitarian heroes. Their work is tricky, often tense and - because rendering unexploded munitions safe is an art rather than a science - also sometimes unavoidably dangerous. Disposing of unexploded submunitions is one of the worst jobs because these weapons are anything but "duds": they're unpredictable,

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• Satellites of Love?

  Published: October 19, 2007, 5:48 am

  Tags: Civil Society, Darfur, Sudan, Fas, Violence, Armed Violence, Media Reports, Vertic, Accountability, Myanmar, Humanitarian Impacts, Genocide, Borrie, Human Security, Conflict

  "Satellite's gone up to the skyThings like that drive me out of my mindI watched it for a little while I like to watch things on TVSatellite of love ..."In our third volume of research, Andreas Persbo and Michael Crowley from the London-based Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC) looked at the roles Non-Governmental

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• Cluster munition resources online

  Published: February 7, 2008, 4:39 am

  Tags: United Nations, Humanitarian Approaches, Civil Society, Humanitarian Impacts, Cluster Munition Coalition, Ccw, Oslo Process, Cluster Munitions, Icrc

  "CCW", "Oslo Process" and "humanitarian impacts". UNIDIR's website also has a lot of information on cluster munitions, both in French and English.For basic information about the Oslo Process, there is clusterprocess.org. For information about the CCW, visit the webpages of the Geneva Branch of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs and follow

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• Cluster munitions: the Wellington Conference begins

  Published: February 18, 2008, 5:29 am

  Tags: Wellington, Humanitarian Impacts, Oslo Process, Humanitarian Action, Cluster Munitions

  Conference on addressing the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions commenced - the last milestone on the way to negotiations on a treaty in Dublin in May as the culmination of the so-called Oslo Process we've followed over the last year on this blog.Many delegates arrived this morning at the Wellington Town Hall jet-lagged but wired awake

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• Cluster Munition Fact Sheet: A view from the field

  Published: March 26, 2008, 4:00 am

  Tags: Mine Ban Treaty, Fact Based Analysis, Wellington, Humanitarian Impacts, Ccw, U S, Humanitarian Action, Cluster Munitions, Landmines, Anti Personnel Mines

  be provided purely on a humanitarian basis and not be made conditional upon a state's agreement to any politically motivated international agreement, whether that agreement concerns landmines, cluster munitions or any other conventional weapons."Professionals in Mine Action know how "political" the decisions over where to give humanitarian

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• Global Day of Action on cluster munitions tomorrow

  Published: April 18, 2008, 3:51 am

  Tags: Civil Society, Wellington, Humanitarian Impacts, Cluster Munition Coalition, Ccw, Victims, Oslo Process, Cluster Munitions, Afghanistan, Dublin Conference

  to devise a response to the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions. The elephant in the room at the CCW's expert meeting in Geneva last week, of course, was the Dublin Conference. This negotiating conference, to be held from 19 to 30 May, is anticipated to be the culmination of the Oslo Process's efforts to complete a humanitarian treaty on

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• Cherry Picking at the CCW ?

  Published: April 16, 2008, 8:40 am

  Tags: Humanitarian Impacts, Ccw, Ihl, Cluster Munitions, Icrc, Civilians

  principles of international humanitarian law (IHL) of particular relevance to the use of cluster munitions, and to elaborate new provisions and best practice guidelines to strengthen IHL implementation in this context. The results of this fruitful debate on IHL implementation (as Japan described it) were attached to the meeting's

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