Are Rulers above Law?

(A fresh look at point of law, evidence and facts to show whether the war on Iraq and occupation of Iraq is legal or not by the backing of International Law)

Vijay Mehta

E-mail: vijay@anglo-sphere.com

1. International Law, United Nations and International Courts
2. Definition of War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and War Criminals under newly formed International Criminal Court
3. The reasons for going to war on Iraq
4. Facts, evidence and points of law formulated by International Law experts on War on Iraq undertaken by UK Inquiry in London and World Tribunals on Iraq in different parts of the world.
5. Citizens Law in relation to war, International Law, and advancement of Human Society
6. Grassroots Interview with Luis Moreno-Ocampo Chief Prosecutor of International Criminal Court.
7. Role of International Law and United Nations in making governments live up to their legal obligations and set the course for the rule of law among nations
   
   Conclusion
   For further information and websites

Comments of Hans Corell – UN legal Under-Secretary General

"The impressive body of international law that United Nations Member States have developed can be handed down to coming generations, but some governments are trying to belittle international efforts, the UN Legal Counsel said today on the eve of his departure from the job.
"The contribution to the body of international law of the past 10 years has been remarkable. Landmark events include the entry into force of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1994, the establishment of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, the introduction of new aspects of international commercial law and the increased focus on treaty law, he said. One of the most significant developments was the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
Sometimes international law is violated because of a lack of resources, "but all too often violations are intentional and committed with contempt," he observed.
"Today there is a threat to our common endeavor of a different kind: the attempts by some to belittle our efforts at the international level," Mr. Corell said. "There are those who even maintain that international law does not exist – unless it suits their interest to invoke it in a particular situation."
If these opinions are not vigorously rebutted, they risk damaging all that the UN stands for, said Mr. Corell, who has served 10 years as the world body’s top legal official.
To suggest that international law does not exist or is a threat to democracy "is an insult to all the many, past and present, who have contributed to the development of a rule-based international society," he said.
Taking a broad view, the Under-Secretary-General found cause for optimism. "With the founding of the United Nations, the course for the rule of law among nations was set," he pointed out. "And if we stay this course, the prospects are favorable."

’What is international law?’

• The UN Charter, endorsed by the 191 countries of the United Nations.

• UN agreements which regulate all kinds of useful international functions, from postal services to civil aviation and public health.

• The humanitarian laws of war – such as the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Conventions and Protocols. These protect civilians from attack, forbid the use of weapons that cause unnecessary suffering, and protect the rights of the wounded and prisoners of war.

• Treaties which exclude certain weapons (such as poison gas) or certain areas (such as Outer Space, or the Sea-bed) from use in war.

• Agreements at regional level which protect the environment, or human rights – such as the European Convention on Human Rights.

• Provision for trial and punishment for crimes which violate international law. For example, the Nuremberg Trials after World War II established the principle that obedience to higher orders was no defense for committing war crimes.

• The International Court of Justice (World Court) has adjudicate in many disputes between nations.

• The special Tribunals set up by the UN Security Council to try individuals for crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.

• The International Criminal Court, which started work in 2003, has the power to prosecute individuals

The idea of a permanent international court to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression was first considered at the United Nations in the context of the adoption of the Genocide Convention of 1948. Further development was forestalled through differences of opinion for many years. In 1992, the General Assembly directed the International Law Commission to prepare a draft Statute for the Court.

A plenipotentiary conference, held in Rome in June/July 1998, adopted the Statute, which calls for the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court with power to investigate and bring to justice individuals who commit the most serious crimes of international concern, including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Court will also have jurisdiction over "the crime of aggression" once a provision is adopted defining the crime and setting out the conditions under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction. It also gives precedence to national courts. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, as the formal document is called, was adopted by a vote of 120 in favor to 7 against, with 21 abstentions, and was then opened for signature. The ICC is now operating from Hague in Netherlands.

Mass violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda (see also Chapter 2, pages 105 and 85) led the Security Council to establish two international tribunals to prosecute persons responsible for such violation. Both tribunals were established under Chapter VII of the Charter, which deals with enforcement measures, and are subsidiary organs of the Security Council.

•The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established in 1993, is composed of three chambers (two Trial Chambers and an Appeals Chamber), a Prosecutor and the Registry. The seat of the Tribunal is located in The Hague, the Netherlands.

•The International Tribunal for Rwanda, established in 1994, is composed of three Trial Chambers, a Prosecutor and the Registry. The seat of the Tribunal is in Arusha, Tanzania; the Office of the Prosecutor is in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Tribunals have a common Appeals Chamber and a common Prosecutor, and are engaged in a number of trial proceedings.

PRINCIPLE I

Was the war based on false claims?

4. Facts, evidence and points of law formulated by International Law experts on War on Iraq undertaken by UK Inquiry in London and World Tribunals on Iraq in different parts of the world.

A searching UK inquiry and broader world view of Iraq situation. Comments from

John Roberts and Vijay Mehta



UK’s LEGAL INQUIRY INTO ASPECTS OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST IRAQ. 2003

PEACERIGHTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. On 20 March 2003, the USA, the UK and supporting nations ("the coalition") commenced a full-scale military invasion of Iraq. The invasion was sought to be justified by the perceived threat of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the need for it to comply with various UN Security Council Resolutions relating to disarmament, dating back to November 1990. The invasion lasted until 1 May 2003 and involved various methods of attack and weapon systems that had inevitable consequences in terms of civilian casualties. There are estimates that these include at least 20,000 civilian injuries and over 8,000 deaths.1

2. Non-governmental organized (NGOs), other groups and individual politicians from around the world have expressed numerous serious concerns about the number of civilian casualties and about the weapons and methods of warfare used by the coalition forces in the light of clear obligations under international humanitarian law. These concerns are intensified in the light of the wide-ranging definitions of "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" in Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute).

3. Various NGOs and groups in the UK, USA, Canada and elsewhere sought to establish by means of an independent inquiry whether, in the light of available evidence about the attacks, crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed. Fully respecting these initiatives and accordingly an independent panel of eight leading academic international lawyers met in London on 8-9 November 2003, the panel heard oral evidence from eye-witnesses and expert witnesses were presented with two volumes of written evidence and were assisted by written and oral submissions by Leading and Junior Counsel to the Inquiry. After due deliberation during the inquiry and afterwards, the panel’s main findings are represented in this report. It should be stressed that it was not the panel’s function to determine the legality of the war or whether those responsible for alleged war crimes should be prosecuted. Its function was limited to providing a prima facie answer to:

‘Is there sufficient cause and evidence for the International Criminal Court Prosecutor to investigate members of the UK Government for breaches of the ICC Statute in relation to crimes against humanity and/or war crimes committed during the Iraq conflict and occupation 2003?’

4. The panel has answered this question in the affirmative. It has analysed facts and evidence concerning various matters, including the use of weapon systems using depleted uranium, damage to civilian infrastructure and in particular electricity supplies, the conduct of the occupation and the preservation of the cultural heritage of Iraq. Not all of these matters are the subject of the call for an investigation,

5. It should also be noted that the panel was concerned only with the possible criminal liability of members of the UK Government, given that, unlike the UK, the USA is not a party to the ICC Statute. The panel’s view is that the ICC Prosecutor should initiate a preliminary investigation under Article 15(1) of the Statute and that the matters to be investigated should include:

a. In circumstances where the USA may have led attacks that involve the commission of war crimes (or otherwise be the main perpetrator of any such crimes) (i) did the UK Government have sufficient prior knowledge of US intentions to engage its responsibility for the commission of an international wrongful act and the individual criminal responsibility of members of the UK Government and military? Command and (ii) specifically in the light of the Rules of Engagement and detailed knowledge arising from any investigation as to the planning, design and implementation of these operations, did the UK have common purpose with the US in criminal activities?

b. Did attacks on the media violate any provisions of Article 8 of the Statute and specifically Article 8(2)(b)(i)(ii) and (iv)?

c. Were attacks launched on locations, or civilian means of transport, which were not "military objectives" in circumstances where there were civilian casualties so as to breach Article 8(2}(b)(i) or (ii)?

d. Were methods of warfare or weapon systems used, or locations of attack chosen, such that

•adequate assessments of "the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" within the meaning of Article 8(2)(b)(iv) were made given the risks to civilians?

•impermissible military objectives were excluded (for example, those concerned with "regime change" rather than the elimination of any existing WMD)?

•the proportionality requirement was at all times respected and in particular all feasible precautions were taken to avoid and in any event minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects; and

•there was not "incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects" which was "clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated."

e. Given the use of sub-munitions ("cluster bombs") in urban areas by the UK,

• is the intent requirement of Article 30 satisfied?

• did single or cumulative uses of cluster bombs violate the principles of discrimination and proportionality (Article 51(5)(b) of Additional Protocol 1977}?

• was such use otherwise prohibited under Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute?

6. Finally, the panel notes that under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which enables the UK to meet its obligations under the Rome Statute by incorporating the offenses in the Statute into domestic law, proceedings shall not be instituted except with the consent of the Attorney General (section 53(3)). In the first instance, therefore, Peacerights will submit this report to the Attorney General as well as the ICC Prosecutor,

7. The matters raised in this report are urgent and demand rigorous scrutiny by those responsible for the prosecution of these alleged offenses. States and individuals must not deviate from the standards set by international humanitarian law and enforced by the ICC Statute. In so far as these obligations have been violated and excessive civilian casualties have resulted, those responsible must be held to account.


At the London School of Economics on 8 November a panel of distinguished academic lawyers took on the task of undertaking a Legal Inquiry and investigating "Aspects of the Military Operations against and subsequent Occupation of Iraq during 2003". This proved to be a very successful enterprise, with several particular points illustrating the illegality of what has gone on in Iraq during the past eleven months.
There will be a ruling issued by the panel of eight professors of international law in a few weeks time, which will cover many issues connected with the invasion and its aftermath.  However, the coming into force of the statute of the International Criminal Court in the summer has marked a change in what remedies may be available if law has been breached and that is mightily important.

Despite that change, the panel recognized that there were other, domestic; channels open to litigants against war-crimes, for example, in the US the Proxmire Act making genocide illegal and other acts supporting international law which date back to the Second World War and even before. The significant step forward made by the Inquiry is to gather together a number of such remedies and assess their particular values and opportunities, as well as indicating where there is most likelihood of law being a suitable action to prevent or punish aggression.  The fact that the post-war Nuremberg judgments were spoken of as Victors’s Justice was mentioned, but not the subsequent ratification by the United Nations and inclusion in the body of international law.
But we need to await the findings of the Inquiry in anticipation of useful legal argument and discussion that will forward the moves against illegality and war-crimes.  It was never a task of the Inquiry to charge anyone, although it may forward recommendations and findings to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.  However it is conceivable that that official may be inhibited by adverse political power – the US has already spent much effort in trying to sabotage the establishment of the Court and is continuing efforts to frustrate its working. Therefore "the interests of justice", i.e. discretion being the better part of valour, may make it politic not to tackle the leading criminals first of all.  A new-born court may need to exercise its powers on lesser fry, such as the British, until its routines and administration are practiced and shown to be working well.

But what other work of inquiry remains to be done?  When one considers that in Britain an enormous manhunt has been conducted recently for traces of the murder of two schoolgirls, no expense spared, it is worth comparing the British government’s lack of concern to discover its true position in international law.
The Prime Minister, tossing off the assurance in the House of Commons that Britain will always observe international law, took the perfunctory step of ascertaining what that was from the paid government lawyer, the Attorney-General. The lawyer, naturally enough, read the law so that it suited the PM, who had already determined to follow the lead of George Dubya Bush, and Britain went to war. Despite protestations that the allied aggressors had no choice but to attack, recent reports indicate that Saddam Hussein was at the end making desperate attempts to surrender sufficient power in order to avoid any military attack, but he was ignored.  One need spare no sympathy for the fallen dictator, but the burden of the criminal acts of the American and British forces have fallen upon his unfortunate subjects.
Peacerights, which is headed by a committee of activists and leading academic and practicing lawyers, is already planning a further Inquiry, which may be concerned with British nuclear weapons and, after its notable success with the LSE event that should also be well worth following. So what remains to be done? At Istanbul it was suggested that London might be the venue for another Tribunal of Inquiry which would consider in detail the period up to and including the attack on Iraq, i.e. the period before the International Criminal Court was set up.  This of course is an even hotter potato, since it concerns the biggest question that the British government, particularly fears – was the attack illegal? But a recent request from Kofi Annan to all members of the United Nations for proposals to strengthen the safeguards against war is a reminder that wider issues should also be addressed.

A new Tribunal of Inquiry could study the present state of international law preventing war and international violence; including its defects in constitution and administration;   and consider framing any possible charges of war-crimes against British ministers arising from the years from 1992 to 2003.  Particular areas of concern should be:

1. The United Nations Charter and proper functioning from its inception.
2. NATO and the legality of military alliances under the Charter.
3. The legality of extending NATO military action beyond Europe.
4. A ‘democratic deficit’ in international institutions and law.
5. The legality of American and British bombing of Iraq after the first Gulf War without continuing Security Council authorization
6. The legality of U.N. sanctions against Iraq without explicit Security Council authority.
7. Legal meaning and implications of Security Council Resolution no.1441.
8. Extent and legal limitations of the ‘right of self-defense’ for member-states.
9. The legality of the attack on Iraq by Britain and the US in 2003.
10. The rights, if any, to take ‘pre-emptive action’, including military measures and the whole question of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

That would be a very substantial task to be undertaken and it goes a good
deal further then Kofi Annan has suggested. Nevertheless, the governments
that can splash out billions to wage a dangerous and illegal war could
certainly afford to pay for lawyers to determine the legality of their
actions. If, that is, they declare, as Tony Blair did, that his country
will always abide by international law.

US told UK Attorney General to alter legal advice on Iraq war

By James Cusick – Westminster editor

The attorney general initially told Tony Blair that an invasion of Iraq would be
illegal without a new resolution from the United Nations and only overturned his
advice when Washington ordered Downing Street to find legal advice which would
justify the war.
The devastating claim will be made by eminent QC and Labour peer Baroness Helena
Kennedy in a television interview today.
It is one of a series of attacks which put Blair under renewed and increasing
pressure to reveal full details of the legal backing for the war against Iraq.
Lawyers, including one from Cherie Blair’s legal chambers, Matrix, will demand
improved compensation and an inquiry into the deaths of Iraqi civilians killed
by British troops, which could raise the specter of the government being forced
to disclose its advice on the legality of the war.
It is widely believed that the government’s reluctance to do this was behind its
decision to drop all charges against GCHQ whistleblower Katherine Gun last week.
The environmental group, Greenpeace is also demanding access to Lord Goldsmith’s
advice in order to defend 14 activists due to appear in court in connection with
anti-war protests carried out last year.
Former cabinet minister Clare Short continued her relentless attack on Blair
when she described the way attorney general Lord Goldsmith’s "truncated opinion
authoraising war appeared at the very last minute" as "very odd".
Together, the new developments signal that the legal case for the allied
invasion of Iraq without a specific UN instruction authorizing them to do so has
become the most dangerous threat to the Prime Minister and is unlikely to go
away.
Kennedy’s claims, which will be made this morning in an interview on GMTV, are
arguably the most damaging. Her position as a member of the highest echelons of
the legal community will add credence to her claims that the British government
could find only two senior lawyers in the UK prepared to back the case for the
invasion.
Baroness Kennedy points out that Lord Goldsmith was a commercial lawyer with no
experience of international law and initially relied heavily on the advice of
lawyers within the Foreign Office in the months before the war. It is widely
believed that advice overwhelmingly warned against invading without a UN
resolution.
She claims that when Washington was told of this advice their response was
succinct: find a new lawyer.
Goldsmith then turned to Professor Christopher Greenwood of the London School of
Economics, who was known to support the invasion. Greenwood was already on
record as stating: "It would be highly desirable to have a second UN resolution
because that puts the matter beyond serious question. But if that’s not
possible, I would support the use of force without the resolution.’’
After consulting Greenwood, Goldsmith told the cabinet an invasion could take
place within international law without the new UN resolution.
However, sacked Labour MP George Galloway insisted yesterday that Goldsmith
warned ministers that his advice relied on the accuracy of intelligence
information that Saddam posed a serious threat to British interest – information
which has since been discredited.
Baroness Kennedy says Blair is being "haunted" by the fallout of a war "that
will just not go away".
Clare Short yesterday said Foreign Office lawyers disagreed on the legality of
war and that senior officials in Whitehall were "worried that they were being
asked to prepare for illegal action".
After her disclosure that she had seen transcripts of material taken in bugging
operations conducted inside the office of the secretary general of the UN, Kofi
Annan, it remained a possibility she would either be prosecuted under the
Official Secrets Act or even be thrown out of the Labour Party.
Yesterday the chairman of the Labour party, Ian McCartney, appeared to rule out
any party censure. "I’m not going to make her a martyr," he told BBC Scotland.
Lord Alexander of Weedon QC, a leading peer and lawyer, yesterday described the
content of Lord Goldsmith advice as "the most important legal opinion of the
last 50 years". He said without it the war would not have gone ahead and 20,000
Iraqis would not have been killed.


Hans Blix: Iraq war was illegal

Blair’s defence is bogus, says the former UN weapons inspector

By Anne Penketh in Stockholm and Andrew Grice
05 March 2004

The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the
war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony
Blair.

Mr Blix, speaking to The Independent, said the Attorney General’s
legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for
military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification.
He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution
explicitly authorising the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last
March to have been legal.

His intervention goes to the heart of the current controversy over
Lord Goldsmith’s advice, and comes as the Prime Minister begins his
fight back with a speech on Iraq today.

An unrepentant Mr Blair will refuse to apologise for the war in Iraq,
insisting the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in
power. He will point to the wider benefits of the Iraq conflict,
citing Libya’s decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction,
but warn that the world cannot turn a blind eye to the continuing
threat from WMD.

But, in an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said: "I don’t buy the
argument the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier
resolutions."

And it appeared yesterday that the Government shared that view until
the eve of war, when it received the Lord Goldsmith’s final advice.

Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, revealed that the
Government had assumed, until the eve of war in Iraq, that it needed
a specific UN mandate to authorise military action.

Mr Blix demolished the argument advanced by Lord Goldsmith three days
before the war began, which stated that resolution 1441 authorised
the use of force because it revived earlier UN resolutions passed
after the 1991 ceasefire.

Mr Blix said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had
breached the ceasefire by violating UN resolutions adopted since
1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-
member Security Council and not with individual states. "It’s the
Security Council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and US
individually, and therefore it is the council that has ownership of
the ceasefire, in my interpretation."

He said to challenge that interpretation would set a dangerous
precedent. "Any individual member could take a view – the Russians
could take one view, the Chinese could take another, they could be at
war with each other, theoretically," Mr Blix said.

The Attorney General’s opinion has come under fresh scrutiny since
the collapse of the trial against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine
Gun last week, prompting calls for his full advice to be made public.

Mr Blix, who is an international lawyer by training, said: "I would
suspect there is a more sceptical view than those two A4 pages," in a
reference to Clare Short’s contemptuous description of the 358-word
summary.

It emerged on Wednesday that a Foreign Office memo, sent to the
Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the same day that Lord
Goldsmith’s summary was published, made clear that there was
no "automaticity" in resolution 1441 to justify war.

Asked whether, in his view, a second resolution authorising force
should have been adopted, Mr Blix replied: "Oh yes."

In the interview, ahead of the publication next week of his book
Disarming Iraq: The search for weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blix
dismissed the suggestion that Mr Blair should resign or apologise
over the failure to find any WMD in Iraq.

But he suggested that the Prime Minister may have been fatally
wounded by his loss of credibility, and that voters would deliver
their verdict. "Some people say Bush and Blair should be put before a
tribunal and I say that you have the punishment in the political
field here," he said. "Their credibility has been affected by this:
Bush too lost some credibility."

He repeated accusations the US and British governments were "hyped"
intelligence and lacking critical thinking. "They used exclamation
marks instead of question marks."

"I have some understanding for that. Politicians have to simplify to
explain, they also have to act in this world before they have 100 per
cent evidence. But I think they went further."

"But I never said they had acted in bad faith," he added. "Perhaps it
was worse that they acted out of good faith."

The threat allegedly posed by Saddam’s WMD was the prime reason cited
by the British government for going to war. But not a single item of
banned weaponry has been found in the 11 months that have followed
the declared end of hostilities.

Mr Blair will argue that similar decisive action will need to be
taken in future to combat the threat of rogue states and terrorists
obtaining WMD.

 

Blair faces war crimes accusations

By Frances Gibb

Legal Editor

A TEAM of leading lawyers urged the International Criminal Court yesterday to investigate whether the Prime Minister and other politicians are guilty of war crimes in Iraq.

The lawyers, led by Michael Mansfield, QC, want the court to examine the actions of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Defense Secretary and the Attorney-General over claims that the invasion broke international laws. They say that the reasons given for the war, from weapons of mass destruction to the violation of UN resolutions, are not justified under the UN Charter. Mr Mansfield said: "The consensus of international legal opinion suggests the basis for the war was illegal."

He said that the war would have been legal only with UN backing. Even then the coalition could not have used more force than was necessary, which meant that it was illegal to use cluster bombs.

The possibility of what if there had been no war can barely be imagined. I believe Bush, followed by Blair, had predetermined war in any event. If not at the time when it happened, then certainly later in the year.-The prospect of bringing back thousands of US troops who had been stationed on the borders of Iraq for more than six months was unthinkable. Bush, followed by Blair, would have maintained that the more weapons of mass destruction Hans Blix did not find, the more Saddam must be in violation of UN resolutions. Consequently, Bush, followed by Blair, would have intensified eavesdropping on both Kofi Annan at the UN and Hans Blix as the UN’s chief weapons inspector. Even if the war had been averted, the coalition – particularly the US and Britain –would merely have continued its regular bombing raids over Iraq, which had already seriously affected the civilian population and which had received minimal publicity in the west Nevertheless, in these circumstances, it is to be hoped that the UN would have reasserted itself, and restored the rule of law as the prime method for the settlement of undoubted mass crimes committed by Saddam Hussein and his ilk. The UN could have decided whether the ultimate resort to war was justified and legal and if not, what other measures within the UN charter could be entertained, short of armed aggression. If, for example, the UN were to consider that Saddam Hussein’s continued actions against ethnic minorities constituted a threat to the stability of the region, or that the existence of any weapons or plans for weapons discovered by Blix constituted a threat to the stability of the region, they could then, within the rule of law, have authorised armed intervention for specific purposes.

This has been the whole raison d’etre of successive attempts by renowned international jurists to wrest the concept of "might is right" away from nation states – starting with the League of Nations after the first world war, through the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928, the UN and international court of justice after the second world war, and now the Treaty of Rome 1998 and the international criminal court in The Hague.

The group, Legal Action against War, submitted a petition to the court the main charge is intentionally launching an attack knowing that it would kill or injure civilians.


Dates for world Tribunals on Iraq and List of events as of 31.12.2003

Confirmed:

• London Nov. 8^th, 2003: By INLAP, Peacerights, CND. A Legal Inquiry into the invasion and military occupation of Iraq .

• Munich – Germany December 12-13^th : By Buendnis Muenchen gegen Krieg,

Informationsstelle Militarisierung (IMI) e.V., Tuebingen, Attac Muenchen, Muenchner Friedensbuendnis. Hearing on German role in the war against Iraq.

• Monterrey-Mexico January 12^th, 2004 : Against war crimes in Iraq and against the militarization of the world

• Mumbai-India January 18^th, 2004 : By El Taller, Asian Women’s Human Rights Council. World Court on War as Crime focusing on US war crimes

• Osaka – Japan February 1^st, 2004 : By ICTI. First public hearing of ICTI. ICTI will be holding several other hearings throughout the year.

• Istanbul – Turkey March 2004 : Symposium on Crimes against Cultural Heritage

• Brussels-Belgium April 15-17^th, 2004: Hearing on ideological blueprint of the war against Iraq and the ‘Project for the New American Century’ (PNAC).

• Barcelona forum – Spain 23^rd of June 2004; Room: C3, Time: 15:00 -16:30,

Title: World Tribunals on Iraq – what they hope to achieve?

The aim of the workshop is to concentrate on point of law, evidence and facts to show whether the war in Iraq and occupation of Iraq is legal or not by the backing of International Law.

It is rganized by Institute for Law and Peace (INLAP). / Contact Vijay Mehta: vijay@angle-sphere, com.

At the stage of proposal with groups working on them:

• Hiroshima-Japan July 2004 : Tribunal session on use of uranium weapons and illegal WMDin 1991 and 2003

• Hiroshima-Japan July 2004 : Tribunal session on the effects of UN sanctions, investigating accusations of genocide.

• Istanbul – Turkey March 2005 : Final session bringing the whole picture together. There will be an international commission of investigation working on occupation crimes all year round.

• Copenhagen-Denmark : Commission of inquiry/hearing on the involvement of the Danish government in the aggression against Iraq New York – USA



International People’s Tribunal on Iraq, a project involving a number of organizations around the world. The idea was proposed by the International Tribunal Initiative from Turkey which receives the support of all the anti-war coalitions in Turkey — parallel with many other proposals around the world. It was endorsed during the Jakarta Global Peace Movements’ Conference and was eventually supported by the Bertrand Russell Foundation. It has now gained the cooperation of many individuals, anti-war movements, and other organizations committed to peace and international law.

The aim of all these Tribunals is to establish the legality of war and occupation of Iraq and bring rule of law.

The final session of these Tribunals is to be held in Turkey in 2005.

The progress of the hearings and conclusions of various world tribunals can be obtained at their website.

To get involved in this global campaign please contact

Website – http://www.worldtribunal.org/

Ayse Berktay

ayseberktay@superonline.com

 

5. Citizens Law in relation to war, International Law, and advancement of Human Society

International Law is not like a set of rules for assembling a construction kit. It is a human construct built up painstakingly over centuries by jurists, politicians, academics, and citizens. Although still incomplete it attempts to serve and reflect the complex features of international society. The UN Charter is an important source of law which pays respect to individual citizens as well as to states.

A political community of some sort is a necessary precondition of law. The members of this community must grant common consent to the law and accept the means of enforcing it. International law is built on the customs of states and ratified treaties. But an important consensual tool is The Public Conscience, the almost instinctive sense of right and wrong we all share even if some communities emphasise certain aspects differentially. This concept is enshrined in the 1907 Hague Convention and the Protocols Additional to the Geneva Convention. Its status as a source of law was confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1996. The fact that International Law develops through custom as well as through formal documents, such as treaties, provides an important niche for the Public Conscience.

Recent years have seen important developments in Citizens' Law. For example, the World Court Project collected 3.8 million Declarations of Public Conscience in 37 languages and presented them to the ICJ in 1996 when it considered the legality of nuclear weapons. These Declarations did not try to argue that nuclear weapons are illegal. They said that they are wrong and should therefore be pronounced illegal. The Project has now launched a new initiative to further the full implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which binds all states to abolish nuclear weapons. The Project will collect Declarations for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World from citizens worldwide for display at the NPT Review Conference in 2005. These state that nuclear weapons violate the values we stand for. The Declarations are therefore not petitions. They are not simply political tools. They are personal commitments in- tended to contribute towards the development of international law.

In 2001 Peacerights, a coalition of legal experts and peace activists came together to deal with issues of international human rights and humanitarian law. Working with other groups, Peacerights decided to contest the legality of the Invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. In October 2002 there was a Citizens' Legal Inquiry into the Legality of use of force against Iraq. It involved eminent lawyers and legal academics. The event took place at Grays Inn, London. It concluded that the use of armed force against Iraq, in the absence of a clear UN Security Council mandate, would be in breach of international law. Ordinary citizens raised £8,000 to help pay for the Legal Inquiry. In addition the BBC programme "Today" soon followed up the Inquiry with an investigation of its own. The programme makers expressly acknowledged that it was directly inspired by the Citizens' Legal Inquiry at Grays Inn. Professor Vaughan Lowe, Fellow of All Souls College, and a barrister practicing from Essex Court Chambers, acting as judge, was persuaded that no attack on Iraq could be legal without a further Security Council resolution. BBC listeners had a rare opportunity to hear a legal analysis of the Iraq crisis.

In November 2002 lawyers working for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) asked for a judicial review to decide whether the UK could legally use armed force against Iraq without a further United Nations Security Council Resolution. However, the court did not allow the case to come to trial. Lord Justice Simon Brown said that "English courts will not rule upon the true meaning and effect of international instruments which apply only at the level of international law." Even so, the challenge yielded considerable media coverage and put pressure on the Government.

In January and March 2003 Rabinder Singh QC & Charlotte Kilroy provided CND with further opinions on the potential use of armed force by the UK. Just before the outbreak of hostilities the Attorney General issued a written Parliamentary answer to outline his view on the legality of military action. The next day this was contested by a letter from lawyers acting for CND who also provided further opinions in the summer of 2003 on the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and on the legality of the occupation of Iraq by UK Armed Forces.

Legal actions prior to March 2003 concerned the legality of initiating the war. With the outbreak of war a new question arose - the legality of how it was actually conducted. A high quality team of international law professors met at the London School of Economics in November 2003. If the panel finds that there have been breaches of International Humanitarian Law it will present a report to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the basis that individual members of the UK Government are responsible, at the highest level, for decisions on how force was used against Iraq and its civilian population. Such a report will comprise a reasoned analysis of the relevant legal principles applicable to hi-tech warfare and the best evidence available from eye witnesses and weapons experts as to what weapons were used, what the effects of those weapons were, and, therefore, whether the weapons or methods of attack used in the war came within the definition of war crimes so that the Prosecutor is duty bound to investigate.

Citizen Law is burgeoning. All over the world Citizens' Investigations are considering the legality of the Iraq War. Their conclusions will gradually help to establish a norm which filters into the body of International Law and truly serves our needs as citizens.

The Office of the Prosecutor is an independent organ of the Court responsible for receiving referrals of situation* and information mi crimes within the jurisdiction of the court.

The mandate of the Office is to conduct investigations and prosecutions of crimes [hat fall within the jurisdiction of the Court. The Prosecutor start an investigation upon referral (by a State Party or by the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations; of .situations in which (here is a reasonable basis to believe that such crimes have been or are being committed.

The Prosecutor may also receive information on such crimes provided by other sources, and, after a preliminary examination of the material received and following an authorisation by the Pre-Trial Chamber, may start investigations.

Any Party believing such crimes may have been committed is requested to lay such information or a Dossier of Case Stated at the Office of The Prosecutor within 90 days hereof.

Contact: _The Office of The Prosecutor. ICC International Criminal Court Maanweg, 174 2516 AB the Hague The Netherlands.

Telephone: 0031 70 515 8515

Fax: 0031 70 515 8555

E-mail: otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int

More information can be found at the website of the ICC: www.icc-cpi.int

ANNAN CALLS FOR THE CREATION OF UN ADVISER ON PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE
New York, Mar  9 2004  3:00PM
As the 10-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide approaches, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today proposed the establishment of a Special Rapporteur or Adviser on the prevention of genocide.

In an <"http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=811">address to both houses of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, Mr. Annan said "we can no longer afford gaps in existing capacity to provide early warning of genocide or comparable crimes."

He said a reporter would "compel us to reflect on how to avoid similar atrocities [to Rwanda in 1994] in the future," adding the post would make clear the link "between massive and systematic violations of human rights and threats to international peace and security."

Genocide Remembrance http://www.gen-net.org/genconv.htm

John Burroughs

Executive Director

Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, New York (www.lcnp.org)

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is a global process, with multiple hearings and other events in cities around the world, culminating in a final session in Istanbul, beginning March 20, 2005. A schedule of events is appended. To learn about WTI, I recommend that you visit www.worldtribunal.org, and websites for the individual sessions listed there, including for the New York session held May 8, 2004, www.world-tribunal-nyc.org. In this talk, I will not attempt to give a comprehensive picture of WTI, but just to highlight some points, and to give some sense of how the New York session came about and was structured. For the substance of the issues covered in New York and elsewhere, again I refer you to the websites. My organization, the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, was one of the core organizers of the New York session, and LCNP president Peter Weiss and I also made presentations at that session.

The aims of WTI, in brief, are to act against the crime of silence; to create a counterhistory; and to strengthen the global anti-war movement.

The legitimacy of WTI, as described in the Platform Text, derives from:

Let me add regarding the failure of official institutions that the intent of the inquiry held in London in November 2003 was to bring alleged crimes committed by British forces to the attention of the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC). Britain is a party to the ICC Statute, and therefore, in principle, is subject to investigation and prosecution. The United States is not a party to the Statute, nor is Iraq, so absent a Security Council referral (which of course could be blocked by a US veto), there is no present basis for jurisdiction of the Court over alleged US crimes. However, there is one interesting possibility: if an Iraq government became independent of the United States, it could on an ad hoc basis accept the jurisdiction of the ICC over alleged crimes committed by both sides since July 2002 when the Statute entered into force.

In any circumstance, the ICC could not consider the crime of aggression, since that crime cannot be prosecuted under the Statute until states parties have agreed upon its definition and an amendment including the definition has entered into force. The earliest a definition could be acted upon is the first Review Conference in 2009. It would take some time thereafter for an amendment to enter into force, and then it would only apply to states parties which have ratified the amendment (and to states not party to the treaty where jurisdiction can be established! - an incentive to join the treaty).

The New York sessions had its beginnings early in the autumn of 2003, when activists and students affiliated with such groups as the Turkish Peace Initiative, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, and others began meeting. At the outset, a number of us privately felt doubts about whether the ad group, almost entirely lacking (except to a limited extent LCNP) in paid staff, money, and other resources, could pull off this audacious project. Nonetheless, half a year later, we held an all-day event at the historic Cooper Union (where Abraham Lincoln delivered a famous speech) in Manhattan, attended by perhaps over one thousand people over the course of the day, with 500-600 people present at the peak.

The presentations were powerful, accompanied by large screen projections of text, photos, and videos, as well as a few live witnesses and audio tapes of persons in Iraq. The topics were violation of the UN Charter, and of the will of the global anti-war movement, in the initiation of the war; violations of international humanitarian law (war crimes) committed during the period of the declared military hostilities; and violations of international humanitarian and other law committed during the occupation. The presentations were made by the impressive young lawyers Jennifer Ridha and Asli Bâli; eloquent graduate student and organizer Ayça Çubukçu; Roger Normand of the New York-based Committee on Economic and Social Rights (www.cesr.org), which has been monitoring the effects of sanctions and other aspects of the Iraq situation for more than a decade; and Peter Weiss and myself of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, which tracked and commented on international law aspects of the buildup to and initiation of the war. There was press coverage (limited, not surprisingly given the nature of the US press, but still significant); an excellent website; videotaping (a video will be available in fall 2004); and a jury made up of activists, writers, lawyers, and academics, some of them well known and all accomplished, which made a statement of their findings at the end of the session.

In a press release, one of the jurors, playwright Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues," commented on the impact of the session: "The images of bombs falling like grapes from the sky and children playing in barrels of uranium, the language of not calling it torture, and the failure to provide security, water, health and the ancient cultural property of Iraq shatters my heart: I hold a human shame, a sorrow that is so vast and so deep there is a physical aching in all of me."

How did this come about? The lesson to me is that when you get a critical mass (perhaps a dozen people worked really hard on this project, and many others made contributions) of dedicated, energetic, and talented activists, much can be accomplished. Having graduate students able to carry out extensive research helped, as did having organizers totally adept at technical tasks like website creation, listserv maintenance, video projection, powerpoint presentations, etc. Quick and ongoing communication via a relatively open listserv (but subject to control by moderators as needed) was crucial. A fluid, democratic approach to organizing worked well; there were key organizers who took the lead, but no rigid hierarchy. Also important was having a couple of organizers with the ability and connections to raise a modest amount of money (in the thousands of dollars, not the tens of thousands), prior to the event; thousands were then collected at the event itself, so the project has a small surplus to devote to video distribution, possible production of a book, etc.

It was crucial that in several long meetings at the outset, we hashed out the basic concept of the session: that it would be a legally informed moral and political inquiry into the initiation and conduct of the war and occupation. While we would employ an international law framework for the inquiry, we would not seek to create a mock tribunal. Thus there was no "defense counsel", nor were formal procedures employed for examination of witnesses or introduction of evidence, nor did we call the outcomes of the session a judgment or indictment. While advocates and the jury acknowledged that the Baathist regime committed crimes for which responsible individuals should be held accountable, it was expressly only the actions of the United States and allies which were at issue. There was some debate about whether to select a impartial jury, but in the end, partly by choice and partly by chance, the jury as chosen was clearly predisposed to be sympathetic to - even to want to go beyond - the arguments of the advocates. Given all of this, the session did not have the "objective" tone of either a court or an academic symposium. Rather it was infused with passion, yet based upon facts and arguments.

One must ask, of course, what difference does it make? How will the New York session affect politics in Iraq, the region, the United States, the world? In the nature of things, its effects are hard to discern yet, I think, consequential. Certainly the session contributed to the making of a record regarding the Iraq war. On the issues, it educated those who made it happen, those who attended, those who see the website or the video. It empowered its organizers. It contributed to the global WTI process, whose outcome remains to be seen..

Copenhagen March 2004

Public hearing on the legality of war, legality of putting Iraq’s public enterprises and resources on sale, legality of keeping over 20,000 people under arrest in camps and prisons in the absence of any legal procedure.

Brussels April 2004

Session on the Project for New American Century – ideological blueprint of the war against Iraq.

New York 8 May 2004

Session on the legality of the war – violation of international law and the UN – violation of the will of the peoples of the world as manifested on February 15th, war crimes and crimes under occupation.

Japan Hearings throughout the year in various cities, two courts in July and December 2004.

International Criminal Tribunal on Iraq (ICTI)

Germany Series of hearings around Germany.

June 19th – Berlin.

Focus on violations of international law and complicity of German government—covering sanctions, war and occupation.

Istanbul June 2004

Symposium on crimes committed against cultural heritage.

New York August 2004

Joint declaration of findings until this point.

Hiroshima October-November 2004

Session on depleted uranium and complicity of Japanese government.

London Autumn 2004

Peacerights

A Peoples’ Inquiry into the occupation of Iraq by Coalition Forces

Italy December 2004. 2 sessions.

Session on the politics of misinformation and the complicity/ responsibilities of media and other information systems.

Session on the legality of the war and the occupation and the complicity of the Italian state.

Stockholm November 2004

Session focusing on the changing of laws in Iraq, the constitution – the transition.

Tunis December 2004

Coordinated by El Taller

Arab Court on Iraq.

Istanbul 20 March 2005 – Culminating session

The Istanbul session will serve as the culmination of the WTI process, taking into account the entirety of the above tribunal sessions. Based on this also, the session will take the further step of examining and exposing the implications of WTI findings.

 

Sessions yet under preparation / discussion in Spain, Portugal and South Korea.

CITIZENS LEGAL ACTION: BARCELONA FORUM 2004, 23 JUNE
George Farebrother, Secretary World Court Project UK, Treasurer Peacerights

 
In October 2002 Peacerights, a coalition of lawyers and peace activists, organised a Citizens' Legal Inquiry at Grays Inn, London into the war against Iraq.  It concluded that the use of armed force, without a clear UN Security Council mandate, would breach international law. Ordinary citizens raised £8,000 for the Inquiry. 
In November 2002 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament asked for a judicial review to decide whether the UK could legally use armed force against Iraq without a further  Security Council Resolution. However, the High Court  did not allow the case to come to trial because  "English courts will not rule upon the true meaning and effect of international instruments which apply only at the level of international law."  Even so, the challenge yielded considerable media coverage and put pressure on the Government.
In early 2003 Rabinder Singh QC & Charlotte Kilroy provided CND with opinions on the potential use of armed force by the UK.  Just before the war the UK Attorney General issued a written Parliamentary answer to outline his view on the legality of military action. The next day this was contested by a letter from lawyers acting for CND who also provided further opinions in the summer of 2003  on the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and on the legality of the occupation .  
 With the outbreak of war a new question arose - the legality of how it was actually conducted.  Peacerights held a War Crimes Inquiry in London on 8-9 November 2003. A panel of eight eminent lawyers  heard evidence from eyewitnesses and experts on aspects of the military operation against Iraq in.    Their report cited the use by the British military of cluster bombs in civilian areas and said that Britain was complicit in the actions of the US military. The panel concluded that there was sufficient evidence for the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to investigate members of the UK government in relation to crimes against humanity and/or war crimes committed during the Iraq conflict and occupation.  The ICC Prosecutor is bound to consider whether to initiate a formal investigation.  If he does he must report to the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC which makes the decision whether to prosecute.
These UK initiatives are only part of a global development in Citizens' Law with legal inquiries being set up in several countries.  Their conclusions will gradually help to establish a norm which filters into the body of International Law and truly serves our needs as citizens.  An important consensual tool available to citizens is The Public Conscience, the almost instinctive sense of right and wrong we all share even if some communities emphasise certain aspects differentially. 
Recent years have seen important developments in Citizens? Law.  For example, the World Court Project collected 3.8 million Declarations of Public Conscience in 37 languages and presented them to the International Court of Justice  in 1996 when it considered the legality of nuclear weapons. These  Declarations did not try to argue that nuclear weapons are illegal.  They said that they are wrong and should therefore be pronounced illegal. World Court Project UK  has now launched a new initiative to further the full implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which binds all states to abolish nuclear weapons.  The Project will collect Declarations for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World from citizens worldwide for display at the NPT Review Conference in 2005. These state that nuclear weapons violate the values we stand for.   They are personal commitments intended to contribute towards the development of  international law.

An interesting Question / Answer session followed with number of proposals to go forward from this document.

There where five speakers at this panel:

Cristophe Barbey – Alternatives to militarism – Switzerland

Christina Alexander – Peace Arch Park – USA/Canada

Vijay Mehta – Arms Reduction Coalition UK

Lucy Carolan – Stop the War Dorset Branch UK

Lesley Docksey - Stop the War Dorset Branch UK

If the other participants have sent you their presentations please slot them here.

My presentation is as follows:

E-mail: vijay@anglo-sphere.com

Terrorism and weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, biological and chemical, its prevention and future

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 brought home the willingness of a new breed of terrorists, now sometimes called 'new terrorists', to kill as many people as possible and cause the maximum amount of social and economic disruption. To discuss future terrorism it is useful and important to distinguish between the 'old' terrorists, who are likely to continue with 'business as usual', using conventional weapons to 'kill one and frighten thousands', and the 'new terrorists', who aim to 'kill thousands to frighten the hemisphere' with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). Different types of 'old' terrorism can be identified:

• Political terrorism, usually with separatist or nationalist aims;

• Terrorism by far right- and left-wing political groups;

• Terrorism by single-issue groups, such as right-to-lifers and radical environmentalists; and

• Terrorism by an individual.

Current trends suggest that political terrorism with separatist or nationalist aims is likely to decrease in the future and terrorism by single-issue groups is likely to remain roughly constant, but the other types of terrorism are likely to increase.

Terrorist actions by the 'new' terrorists - religious fundamentalists, particularly Islamic Fundamentalist groups and American Christian white supremacists - are likely to become increasingly frequent and violent. Whereas secular terrorists are likely to exercise constraint, and to avoid killing many when killing a few suits their purposes, religious fundamentalists are unlikely to feel any moral constraint about killing very large numbers of people.

In fact, mass killing by WMDs may fit well into the Armageddon and apocalyptic visions of some religious groups, some of which believe that they are under divine instruction to maximize killing and destruction. The likelihood that terrorist violence by fundamentalist groups will escalate to indiscriminate mass killing is the greatest future terrorist risk, the main consequence of increasing religious terror and decreasing radical political terror.

The best way the new terrorists can achieve their objective is to use a WMD. There is, therefore, clearly a danger, some would say an inevitability that new terrorists will acquire, or develop and fabricate, and use WMDs - chemical, biological or nuclear.

Recent experience - for example, the use of nerve agents by the Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo and of anthrax in the United States - shows that biological and chemical weapons are unpredictable and difficult to use effectively, that is, to cause a large number of casualties. Effective dispersal of both biological and chemical weapons is very difficult, so these weapons may not well serve the purposes of the new terrorists.

To fulfil their aims, therefore, I believe that future new terrorists are more likely to make nuclear attacks; these are not only more likely to succeed, but their Armageddon nature is likely to appeal to fundamentalists. Nuclear terrorism may be the most likely future use of nuclear explosives, replacing the spread of nuclear weapons to countries (nuclear-weapon proliferation) as perhaps the most serious threat to national security. The success of recent attacks against American targets indicates that nuclear weapons do not deter terrorism by protecting countries armed with nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence has no role in dealing with the new terrorism.

Nuclear terrorist groups may become involved in several activities:

• Stealing or otherwise acquiring fissile material and fabricating and detonating a primitive nuclear explosive;

• Making and detonating a radiological weapon to spread radioactive material;

• Attacking a nuclear-power reactor to disseminate radioactivity;

• Attacking the high-level radioactive waste tanks at reprocessing plants to spread the radioactivity contained within;

• Attacking a plutonium store to spread the plutonium contained within;

• Stealing or otherwise acquiring a nuclear weapon from the arsenal of a nuclear-weapon power and detonating it;

• Attacking, sabotaging or hijacking a transporter of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials.

All these actions have the potential to cause large numbers of deaths.

Of these possibilities, terrorists will probably prefer to set off a nuclear explosive, perhaps using a stolen nuclear weapon or, more likely, a nuclear explosive fabricated by them from acquired fissile material. Terrorists would be satisfied with a nuclear explosive device that is far less sophisticated than the types of nuclear weapons demanded by the military. What is the risk that terrorists will fabricate and use a primitive nuclear explosive?

A 100-tonne nuclear explosion would produce a crater about 30 metres across. The lethal area for prompt radiation after such an explosion (1.2 square kilometres) is larger than that for blast (0.4 square kilometre) or heat (0.1 square kilometre). Anyone in the open within 600 metres would probably be killed by these direct effects." For an explosion in Trafalgar Square, London the area would extend from Cambridge Circus to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall. Other deaths would be caused by buildings collapsing or debris falling and by fires from broken gas pipes or petrol in cars; the effects of fires could exceed those from the direct effects of heat. Many square kilometres (in this example, most of central London) would be contaminated by radioactive fallout.

Such an explosion would paralyse the emergency services. Many seriously injured would die from lack of care, from delays to ambulances and releasing those trapped in buildings. In the UK there are only a few hundred burns beds in the whole National Health Service. Panic could affect even trained emergency personnel, especially from awareness of radioactive fallout.

Thermal radiation from an explosion of this size would kill within one minute those outside or near windows up to 200 meters away. Blast would kill up to 800 meters away, prompt radiation up to one kilometre (in this example, all of Soho, the Royal National Theatre and Westminster Abbey). Heat injuries would extend to one kilometre and blast to two kilometres (including the Elephant and Castle, Euston and Victoria stations).

The nuclear electronic pulse would damage communications equipment out to two kilometers and electronic equipment to ten kilometres (Stratford, Streatham and Willesden). This would have severe consequences for fire and police services and hospitals.

Assuming a 24-kilometres/hour wind, fallout would cause acute radiation sickness to those exposed in the open in a cigar-shaped area ten kilometres long and up to two kilometres wide. The risk of cancer long-term would extend about 80 kilometres downwind (with the prevailing south-westerly wind, almost to Colchester). Plutonium would be widely dispersed; depending on how uniformly it was distributed, an even larger area could, according to international regulations, need to be evacuated and decontaminated.

In the short-term, vital measures against nuclear (and other) terrorism include efficient protection of key nuclear (and biological and chemical) materials and facilities, with effective intelligence on the activities of terrorist groups capable of such actions. So far as nuclear terrorism is concerned, special attention should be given to the control of plutonium. This protection must take into account the relatively small amounts of plutonium needed to make a nuclear explosive.

Society may decide that the terrorist risk of acquiring and using a nuclear explosive, and the awesome consequences of such use, are such that some nuclear activities should be given up. An obvious example is the reprocessing of spent nuclear-power reactor fuel to separate the plutonium from it and the use of this plutonium to produce Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel for nuclear reactors. The steps of chemically separating the plutonium oxide from uranium oxide in MOX, converting the oxide into plutonium metal and assembling the metal or plutonium oxide together with conventional explosive to produce a nuclear explosion are not technologically demanding and do not require materials from specialist suppliers. The information required to carry out these operations is freely available in the open literature.

None of the concepts involved in understanding how to separate the plutonium are difficult; a second-year undergraduate would be able to devise a suitable procedure by reading standard reference works, consulting the open literature in scientific journals and searching the Internet. A small number, three or so, of people with appropriate skills could separate the plutonium from MOX and design and fabricate a crude nuclear explosive. All the nuclear-physics data needed to design a crude nuclear explosive device are available in the open literature.

The storage and fabrication of MOX fuel assemblies, their transportation and storage at conventional nuclear-power stations on a scale currently envisaged by the nuclear industry will be extremely difficult to safeguard and protect. The risk of diversion or theft of MOX fuel by terrorist groups is an alarming possibility. The risk is thought by many to be great enough to justify the argument that the reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel and the production and use of MOX fuel should be stopped.

But in the long run, the best, and perhaps the only, way to defeat nuclear - and other - terrorism is to remove people's justified grievances and to improve their social welfare.

As Tom Milne comments, majority public opinion has always opposed this country becoming a non-nuclear-weapons state until all others do likewise. However, the Pugwash report (quoted by Pease) notes that the nuclear threat has not been a matter of public concern for several years and we wonder if their conclusion may be too pessimistic. Scrapping Trident would certainly be a nine-day wonder, but in today's political climate it surely need no longer make a political party unelectable. Rob Green has suggested elsewhere that the UK should announce the decommissioning of the Trident nuclear programme at the 2005 NPT review conference. He believes that doing so would transform the debate on nuclear disarmament - and perhaps earn the Prime Minister of the day a Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, the nuclear powers also have individual reasons for wanting to maintain nuclear capability and there can be no certainty that others would follow our lead. Additionally, as many nuclear apologists have pointed out, knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons will always be with us. This implies an even more radical need - an end to war. The start of the second 50 years surely provides an opportunity to do better.

Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs

• Overview of the terrorist threat to international peace and security Professor Paul Wilkinson University of St Andrews

Ms. Anita Nilsson

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

Mr. Mikhail Berdennikov

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

Ambassador Tibor T6th

Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• Terrorism and small arms and light weapons Dr. Rohan Gunaratna University of St Andrews

Mr. Vladimir P. Salov

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

Moderator: Dr. Randy Rydell

Department for Disarmament Affairs

1. To meet and talk about peace, when others can see only violence as the solution, is no wimpish activity.
2. The support of outsiders is often critical in ensuring the physical and psychological survival of those who dare to do this work.
3. Nearly one half of the interventions were carried out by people with some spiritual basis for their activities.
4. A slow steady process of trust-building is often necessary before official negotiations can start, if they are to succeed.
5. Business has a powerful role to play.
6. Traditional processes can be of key importance in peace making.
7. Women frequently offer the ingredients essential to the establishment of peace, particularly in addressing the feelings involved.
8. For this work to be extended, far more evaluation needs to be done.
9. The effectiveness of NGO work in this field has increased dramatically, but it should not become a replacement for government action.
10. The interventions described above are extraordinarily cost-effective.

However, as weapons Proliferation continues it becomes even more important for us to work harder to find solutions. The following 20 positive steps to kick start the campaign:

1. Make the message simple and short like 'Drop the Debt' Campaign. Choose a name for the campaign, a catchy one.
2. Have a policy statement to explain the issue and Action plan. It will include:

(a) Maintaining an Arms Register that is patents, quantity, future productions and sale records. There is a UN and Arms Register started in 1993, but it only takes into accounts tanks, ships and air planes. Small Arms and Land mines are not included.

(b) A reduction of Arms per year agreement

(c) A verification procedure followed by rewards for compliance and penalties/sanctions for non-compliance.

(d) UN or similar international body to link savings in human and monetary resources to be linked to economic and social development.

(e) ARC is campaigning for the establishment of a secretariat for running this vital campaign. The secretariat will collect and allocate funds for development and peace building projects; it will work on establishment of sites for collection and dispersal of weapons. It will start alternative schemes for conversion and diversification of defence industry and find alternative jobs for people employed in the arms industry. It will also work on changing the political climate for the adoption of ARC proposals to be build in the programme of the key arms exporting countries to phase out production and export of arms and change it to peaceful purposes.

(f) The international community must adopt a global Arms Trade Treaty in time for the next UN arms conference in 2006

3. Form a group or committee to start and maintain the campaign. Include other NGO's, Peace and humanitarian organisations.
4. Make presentation about the campaign at other organisations and public events.
5. Assist in challenging UK, EU (European Union) and policies of other states. On manufacturing, export licensing and illegal trafficking of Arms.
6. Learn from the two most famous and successful campaigns i.e. Land mines and ICC (International Criminal court) There are at present 1900 NGO's working directly or indirectly for Land mines Campaigns in different parts of the world. This shows organisation skills, co-ordination and power of conveying your message to the public. Same is true of the ICC (International Criminal court) which; through diligence and hard work have resulted in the creation of International Criminal Court
7. To start by monthly-newsletter, high -lighting work already done and future plans.
8. To stop glorification of war and military heroes. Make positive peace actions known to the world and establish peace museums, universities and memorials for peace activists.
9. Lobbying Parliament and government ministers, MP and MEP's to bring legislation for the reduction of Arms. Direct it at the government, arms manufacturers and civil society. Campaign for arms collection centre for destroying or burning the hardware. Make civil Society, police, and the state part of a joint effort.
10. Campaign for protocol/convention on 'reduction of arms by set percentage' and link savings to poverty reduction. The convention will be a starting point to discuss and review the finer points of the issue.
11. Networking with other similar organisations to raise the issue in the press and the media. We are publishing the Arms No More discussion booklet which is available on ARC website – www.arcuk.org
12. Speaking to schools, universities, and other educational establishments in order to promote greater understanding, especially amongst young people of the issue.
13. Work on creating Cultures of Peace to end culture of guns. UN has designated 2001-2010 as a decade of culture of Peace and Non-Violence. All our efforts should be driven to fulfill what the UN defines a culture of peace as:

"all the values, attitudes and forms of behaviour that reflect respect for life, for human dignity and for all human rights, the rejection of violence in all its forms, and commitment to the principles of freedom, justice, solidarity, tolerance and understanding between people".

14. We should embrace the "proportional and integrated approach to disarmament and development", which recognises that the security of the individual and freedom from fear, must be crucial guarantees in the development process.
15. The International Community must engage states and civil society to implement sustainable, people-centred development policies in post-conflict environments to consolidate disarmament and demilitarization programmes.
16. The world states should review existing legislation on civilian possession of firearms, following progressive models such as those of the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
17. The world states should raise the level of professional behaviour of the military, police and custom officials, by ensuring that human rights training programmes are an equal part of initiatives to increase the capacity of the security sector.
18. The world states should support programmes aimed at improving the registration and recording of firearms in civilian possession.
19. Start a clean investment campaign by which business, government and local authorities do not invest in weapon manufacturing companies.
20. Start a conversion of arms strategy by which arm factories can be converted for building ships of peace, windmills for sustainable energy creation, rail cars for public transportation and the like. Studies for economic conversion have long shown that the most effective way to create lots of good jobs is to invest in those things that are socially and environmentally beneficial.

FAX: 020 7377 2999 Email: vijay@anglo-sphere.com

 

 

Heide Schütz FROM UNCOPAC - Chair of the Women’s Network for Peace

[A talk given at Barcelona forum on 25h^th of June 2004]

 

E-mail: vijay@anglo-sphere.com

There is an urgent need for change in the mindset to intervene by peaceful methods of non-violence and compassion for the benefits of the whole of the society from individuals in their neighbourhood, to village, city, country and the world as the only hope, for lasting peace.

1. Security Council and General Assembly need to consider how they can effectively curb the threats posed by the proliferation of WMD and International Terrorism. It needs to engage in diplomacy and non-violent intervention without the use of force. The 15 member Security Council should be enlarged to make it more representative. The permanent 5 members of the Security Council should relinquish their veto - wielding power (held for 58 years) in favour of democratic decision making. The Security Council need fairer representation of the geopolitical realities of the present day world in which the UN membership has almost quadrupled to 191. It should include India (With over 1 billion people) and continents of Latin America and Africa should have representation on Security Council. There is a case for Japan and Germany to be included because of their tremendous support and contribution for the UN system. The decisions of Security Council should be made by majority voting and not by veto.

The powers of the General Assembly should be enhanced so that it can play a vital role debating and deciding important international issues including strategic direction in globalisation. At present each autumn it is faced with a daunting agenda and same resolutions year after year are put forward for discussion. Its agenda should be streamlined in order to devote more time to pressing threats and challenges facing the world today.

Another reform of Security Council and General Assembly should be that member states of UN should send elected politicians or peoples assemblies to represent on behalf of their country instead of the present system of appointing bureaucrats.

 

2. The co-ordination between UN agencies and the UN secretariat should be strengthened to make it work better. It needs to shed its image of UN bureaucracy and become into an successful and efficient administration to deliver its priorities.

 

3. The UN should work closely with member states and in partnership with civil society, non-governmental organisations, private sector and active participation of citizens – wider community and world at large. It needs to develop, evolve, and catchup to ensure that it is engaged with everyone and not just national governments.

 

4. Since the 1990's the UN system has hosted a range of major conferences and agreed to important goals, treaties, protocols, targets and policies. The UN should ensure that with the help of its agencies and International Community those agreements and treaties (Nuclear Non-proliferation and other disarmament Treaties, Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Millennium Development Goals) are implemented.

 

5. The most urgent is the requirement for economic co-operation for sustainable development by curbing chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) and green house gasses. We need protection and monitoring of global environment to preserve the earth's scarce natural resources by following agenda 21 and Kyoto Accord.

 

6. UN and other international institutions (International Criminal Court) should see that use of force would be subject to the constraints of International Law, universally upheld rules and norms. A special committee should look into International Law pertaining to military and humanitarian interventions, definition of war crimes, right to use banned weapons (depleted uranium, cluster bombs) and laws of human rights violations. The Security Council should take action against violators of International Law (Governments and Individuals) by referring the cases to International Criminal Court for maintaining peace and security. The conduct of five permanent members of Security Council who use double standards in enforcing international law should be examined by world court.

 

7. The UN budget, for an organisation with such wide range of responsibilities and interests undoubtedly needs adequate funding to carry out those functions. At present UN operations are run on a shoe string, and it spends less per year on peacekeeping worldwide then is spent on the budgets of the New York City Fire and Police Departments. One needs to evolve practical proposals by which contributions to the UN system can be increased. However there should be proper management of UN budgets and certainly linkage between budget and reform should be established.

 

8. All efforts should be made to seek ways of building alliances across regional and political groupings. There should be a reform agenda which should look at forming close associations with European Union, the G8, forums from Africa, Asia, Latin America and other worldwide alliances to ensure that we are all working together constructively as we can for the future of our planet.

 

9. The UN should work towards a more equitable world by allowing poor favourable access to world markets, governments and multilateral organisations. Its most urgent priority should be to give voice to poor (its concerns and problems), disadvantaged and powerless, vast multitude of 2 billion people who live on $1 a day. The UN should help fair trade reforms, debt relief and massive aid to poor countries to reduce socio-economic divide.

 

10. Part of the UN's problems is due to its poor image, distorted by hostile criticism in the perception of the public and media. This disinformation need to be challenged by facts and in-depth analysis of the positive news and its achievement. The UN should create a culture of communication by using Internet and tapping to the latest technology which should target public, media and policy makers.

Aims
The Pro UNCOPAC Initiative aims at stimulating a worldwide debate about the establishment of an international agency which would be responsible for crisis management and conflict prevention and for the coordination of peace building, peace education and research. As a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly, it would consist of leading civil-society figures with substantial relevant experience. The Initiative is thus seeking to contribute to the development of national and international structures which aim to assert and institutionalize civil-society concepts of crisis prevention and constructive conflict management.

Resources
As part of this process, a Statute for a United Nations Commission on Peace and Crisis Prevention (UNCOPAC) has been drafted and justified in detail. The Statute provides for civil-society participation in the Commission’s election process, whereby UN-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) would produce a list of suitable candidates who should be respected public figures with appropriate experience. From this list, the General Assembly would then appoint four Commission members from each of the five UN regions. The Commission would not represent the NGOs. However, the NGOs would have a right to submit proposals and applications for deliberation by UNCOPAC.

The proposal, which has been discussed with leading experts in international law and political scientists (Ernst Otto Czempiel, Klaus Dicke, Horst Fischer, Norman Paech), is currently being distributed in English, Finnish, French, German, Polish and Spanish, e.g. via the Initiative’s homepage (www.pro-uncopac.info). (The texts can also be requested from the Pro UNCOPAC Coordination Office).

The Pro UNCOPAC Initiative is keen to cooperate with civil-society organizations and research institutes working across a range of disciplines and is collecting declarations of support from individuals and NGOs. One immediate objective is to inform and establish contacts with all UN-accredited NGOs whose mission includes peace building or alleviating the impacts of war. A longer-term aim is to form a group of governments and civil-society actors ("Friends of UNCOPAC") in order to submit the proposal to the UN General Assembly. Information on the progress of these efforts can be accessed on the UNCOPAC homepage or requested from the Coordination Office.


Functions and competences of the proposed UN Commission

UNCOPAC would

- undertake analyses of potentially violent (ethno-) political conflicts and develop proposals (detailed "recommendations") on non-military external intervention for the General Assembly, the Secretary-General and the Security Council;

- facilitate early action in order to prevent that these conflicts escalate into violence;

- regularly review the proposed crisis prevention measures; and

- support and coordinate efforts to promote the further institutionalization of peace education and conflict transformation worldwide.

What contribution can UNCOPAC make?
UNCOPAC recommendations would (1) provide an official reason for international non-military "early action" independent of the interests of the governments affected, (2) define the appropriate date of action, which at present is always uncertain, (3) provide a well-founded and well-considered concept and, consequently, (4) generally enhance the often contested legitimacy of early action.

Why now?
In his report „Preventing Armed Conflict" from June 2001, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended "that the General Assembly consider a more active use of its powers, in accordance with Articles 10, 11 and 14 of the Charter of the United Nations, in the prevention of armed conflicts" and encouraged the Security Council "to consider innovative mechanisms, such as establishing a subsidiary organ, an ad hoc informal working group or other informal technical arrangement to discuss prevention cases on a continuing basis." In July 2003, the UN General Assembly responded to these recommendations with a landmark resolution on the prevention of armed conflict, which – although formulated in rather vague terms – nonetheless opens a window for further steps.

What is new about the UNCOPAC idea?
The Commission is a preventive instrument which would formally and regularly operate in conjunction with the 25 or so early-warning systems and projects currently in existence. It would focus exclusively on non-military measures. Due to the method proposed for its election, it would be an independent body, free from current political or government interests, but which would draw on civil-society’s wealth of experience in conflict transformation and prevention. It would adhere rigorously to the principle of gender balance at UN level, both within the Commission itself and in its 50-strong staff (at least 40% representation of each sex). Its regular two-years meetings with NGO delegates (on a rotating basis in the five UN regions) and formal reporting mechanism would ensure that civil society is linked to the UN process.

Structure of the Initiative Pro UNCOPAC
The Initiative, which was launched in January 2003, is an informal group with no registered legal status which operates on the basis of voluntary cooperation. It currently has eight members from a variety of fields, including international law, peace research, conflict transformation, and the peace movement. Its Coordination Office, which was set up with donations and a start-up funding from the Berghof Foundation for Conflict Research, is responsible for administration. The Women’s Network for Peace in Bonn deals with the Initiative’s financial management. The Initiative is keen to attract worldwide support from organizations, groups and individuals in the areas defined in the UNCOPAC Statute. The Initiative’s Speaker is Heide Schűtz, Chair of the Women’s Network for Peace. Her deputy is Michael Bouteiller, former Mayor of the German city of Lübeck. Dr. Franz Leidenmühler, University of Linz, provides expertise on international law. Ute Hegener deals with public relations and project coordination.

Contact: Pro UNCOPAC Initiative/Ute Hegener (Coordination and Press Speaker)
Am Glockenberg 8b, D-45134 Essen, Tel. / Fax: +49 201 2696730

Email: koordination@pro-uncopac.info; Web: www.pro-uncopac.info

Donations to: Pro UNCOPAC / Frauennetzwerk für Frieden e.V. (Women’s Network for Peace) / Sparkasse Bonn (Bank Code 38050000), Account No.: 51006062;

I. The Starting Point

The United Nations Charter emerged from the ruins of the Second World War. The death and suffering of many millions of people, the Holocaust and the destruction of many parts of the world were warnings calling out for a collective security system. The desire of the community of nations to be able to ward off future threats to peace through prompt and appropriate action is clearly reflected in the United Nations Charter (Article 1, paragraph 1). Here, the community of nations commits itself:

"To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace."

This noble goal, to prevent threats to peace, is a great challenge to the community of nations. Thus far, massive domestic violations of human rights and escalations of conflicts, even including genocide, civil war and wars between countries, have only been avoided in a few cases, such as Estonia or Moldavia, and only then thanks to a major complementary effort by international governmental and non-governmental organizations. The many cases where this did not happen, or where virtually no such attempt was made, make it clear that an appropriate international instrument for crisis prevention is missing from the international architecture.

This instrument has to be integrated into the UN system, taking two factors into account. One is the great importance that civil society – which is independent of state structures –has gained in conflict management and transformation. The other is the lack of transparency in the selection of cases for preventive action by the international community. Both factors are addressed in the following proposed statute for a UN Commission on Peace and Crisis Prevention (UNCOPAC). It is seen as a model for further development of the UN system, appropriate to our times, on the basis of Article 1, paragraph 1 of the United Nations Charter, and as a contribution to the "International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence – for the Children of the World".

II. Indispensable Crisis Prevention

Given the immense suffering of women, children and men resulting from violent conflicts, crisis prevention is above all a moral and political imperative. But it also makes sense economically. It is much less expensive to transform conflicts into dialogue and constructive action than to deal with the aftermath of violent confrontations. For example, the costs of the Kosovo war have run into billions. Yet it can be assumed in this case, that war could have been avoided had the international community undertaken a sustained non-military intervention in 1993, or at the latest in 1995, in order to avert the clear and predictable effects of a violent conflict. To this end, it would have been necessary to establish an international judicial system and independent police force obligated to guarantee the observance of the human rights of all ethnic groups of the population, and also ensure equal access to work, public positions and resources, accompanied by intensive efforts to transform the conflict.

Although appropriate legal grounds exist in the UN Charter for such external intervention that restricts national sovereignty, experience shows that the threshold for intervention by the Security Council is very high. Measures are taken, if at all, only when crises become serious threats to world peace. However, they are not taken preventively, to avert the realization of such a threat, even though such action would have a clear political and economic rationale.

Moreover, the humanitarian effects of UN economic sanctions against Iraq show that an appraisal of the Security Council’s measures, by its own staff or by other UN bodies, is not adequately guaranteed.

III. Participation of Civil Society at UN Level

The power game at UN level would assume a different dimension if relevant non-profit civil society organizations, i.e. NGOs, were able to participate formally in the process of averting threats such as genocide and civil war, and take on a wider role in the protection of peace within the UN framework before any debate about coercive military measures were initiated.

This would reflect the increased importance of civil society in conflict management and transformation. Many NGOs are involved with great commitment in monitoring human rights violations, in humanitarian aid, in conflict resolution, in peacebuilding in post-war societies and in the fight against poverty, often with a substantial amount of donated funds. The time has come for them to contribute their experience and viewpoints to international decision-making, helping to prevent political disputes from turning into violent conflicts. The legitimating for this derives from their commitment, their extensive experience, their competence and democratic structure, and an international process of accreditation.

IV. The UNCOPAC Model

As a contribution to the ongoing discussion on a democratic reform of the United Nations' structures, this paper proposes the creation of a UN body whose members would be chosen with the involvement of civil society in a process in which international UN-accredited NGOs would propose candidates to be voted on by the General Assembly. The members of this body should not represent the NGOs, but be highly respected individuals from public life in the five UN regions and the world’s major cultures, selected according to the principle of gender balance (implementation of the Platform of Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 adopted in 2000.) This body should:

- produce analyses and develop appropriate recommendations for the General Assembly and the Security Council on the necessity and urgency of early non-military intervention in crisis areas;

- undertake a regular evaluation of crisis prevention measures;

- initiate and coordinate the institutionalization of peace education and conflict transformation worldwide, and

- have the right to inform the Security Council.

In addition, it is to be hoped for that the Security Council will consult UNCOPAC before adopting decisions on military intervention.

UNCOPAC's integration into the institutional system of the United Nations should be achieved through its establishment as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly in accordance with Article 22 of the UN Charter. This would be entirely appropriate since the General Assembly, in accordance with Article 11, paragraph 3 of the UN Charter, is obliged to draw the Security Council’s attention to situations which could endanger world peace and international security.

Such an institution was also recommended by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the 7 June 2001 report on "Preventing Armed Conflict" (A/55/985-S/2001/574), to which the General Assembly responded on 3 July 2003 with a "Landmark Resolution on Prevention of Armed Conflicts." Kofi Annan's report includes a series of noteworthy recommendations, and it is helpful to quote three directly relevant ones here:


Recommendation 1
"I recommend that the General Assembly consider a more active use of its powers, in accordance with Articles 10, 11 and 14 of the Charter of the United Nations, in the prevention of armed conflicts."

Recommendation 2
"I urge the General Assembly to consider ways of enhancing its interaction with the Security Council on conflict prevention, particularly in developing long-term conflict prevention and peace-building strategies."

Recommendation 3
"I encourage the Security Council to consider innovative mechanisms, such as establishing a subsidiary organ, an ad hoc informal working group or other information technical arrangement to discuss prevention cases on a continuing basis…" (emphasis added)

The subsidiary organ, referred to here as UNCOPAC, should contribute to further development in the areas of peaceful conflict resolution, conflict management and crisis prevention, and initiate and coordinate steps towards the worldwide strengthening of peace work, peace education and peace research. It should also, on the basis of existing early warning systems, enable the earliest possible intervention in conflicts, especially in those with ethno-political dimensions, in order to avert violent outcomes. UNCOPAC should have the right to make recommendations to the General Assembly, the Secretary-General and the Security Council, but also to parties to conflicts.

When there are indicators that political development could lead to violent conflict, genocide or crimes against humanity, UNCOPAC should, within a defined period of time, draw up detailed proposals for non-military measures appropriate to reverse this trend. The deadlines chosen in the proposed statute are short so that proposals for crisis prevention can be made promptly, since time is a decisive factor in prevention, and because the proposed close cooperation between the civil society organizations doing related work and the highly qualified staff of UNCOPAC ensures that well-founded proposals can be developed relatively quickly.

In this way, the United Nations' institutional structure should – without amendments to the UN Charter – be complemented by a well-equipped subsidiary body of the General Assembly, dedicated primarily to crisis prevention. UNCOPAC recommendations would (1) provide an official ground for international non-military "early action" independent of the interests of the governments affected, (2) define the appropriate date of action, which at present is always uncertain, (3) provide a well-founded and well-considered concept and consequently, (4) generally enhance the often contested legitimacy of early action.

Candidates for appointment to UNCOPAC, to be voted on by the General Assembly, should be nominated by internationally active, UN-accredited NGOs which are actively committed to promoting peace (through peace work, crisis prevention, conflict resolution, peacebuilding, human rights, peace education, peace research or humanitarian aid). These organizations should also have the right to submit proposals to UNCOPAC concerning crisis areas in which they are active, and, conversely, to be consulted by the Commission. In this way, civil society will have a voice at the UN level, and the new subsidiary organ is less likely to be misused as a forum for the assertion of national interests. UNCOPAC's decision-making body should not exceed twenty members and must be equipped with a good professional staff. At this size, the Commission will be large enough to ensure that all UN regions, as well as the most important competencies, are represented. On the other hand, only a relatively small body can, in the long run, speak with one voice and not divide into divergent factions on difficult issues. This is the only way that UNCOPAC can remain independent towards international alliances and their hegemonic states.

V. Development of the UNCOPAC Proposal

The inspiration for the development of the UNCOPAC concept came during a meeting of the IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, with co-organizers: VDW/Association of German Scientists and IALANA / International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear War) held in Berlin at the end of September 2001. The current draft of the UNCOPAC statute was subsequently developed during three study sessions of the German Platform for Peaceful Conflict Management in the Berghof Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin, 2002 – 2003. It was based on three proposals with similar objectives:

- The UN Council on Conflict Resolution, proposed by the Women and Peace Working Group of the German National Preparatory Committee for the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (initiators Heide Schütz and Ingrid Lottenburger-Bazin);

- The UN Civilian Peace Council, a concept formulated by Mohssen Massarrat and presented to the European Peace Congress in May 1998 in Osnabrück;

- The International Intervention Council, proposed in the framework of the Linz Appeal for Peace Policies during the Kosovo war in summer 1999 (among others by Franz Leidenmühler and Reiner Steinweg).


Authors

Michael Bouteiller, lawyer and former mayor of the northern German city of Lübeck; Franz Leidenmühler, Institute for International Law, University of Linz, Austria; Ingrid Lottenburger-Bazin, Chair, Helsinki Citizens' Assembly, Berlin, Germany; Mohssen Massarrat, political scientist/peace researcher at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, former spokesperson of the German Independent Peace Movement and co-founder of the Coalition for Life and Peace; Frieder Schöbel, Board of the Peace Center Association, Braunschweig, Germany; Heide Schütz, Chair, Women’s Network for Peace, Bonn, Germany; Reiner Steinweg, Linz branch of the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Stadtschlaining, Austria, 2001/2002 Acting Director of the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin, Germany; Peter Vonnahme, administrative judge, Munich, Germany, member of IALANA /International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear War.

On 19 January 2003, this group established themselves as the Initiative Pro UNCOPAC.

This document is a slightly extended version of the text approved by the Initiative Pro UNCOPAC at the end of July 2003. The draft statute was approved in April 2003.

For further information please contact:

Initiative Pro UNCOPAC
Ute Hegener
Press Speaker + Coordination
Am Glockenberg 8b
D 45134 Essen

www.pro-uncopac.info

xxxxx to prevent the violent escalation of conflicts;

xxxxx to strengthen peace work, peace education and peace
xxxxx research worldwide;

xxxxx to expand sustainable participation;

xxxxx to foster confidence in the UN and its organizations, such
xxxxx that world peace can be promoted,

- peace and conflict research (especially large group psychology, political psychology; research on ethnocentrism and enemy images; international law; peace education; prevention of social violence; good knowledge of early-warning problems and systems, civil conflict resolution; research on peacebuilding and development of peace networks, peace constituencies and capacity-building; security analysis);

- economics (especially mechanisms and impacts of economic sanctions and international boycotts, transformation of civil war economies and economies of violence, economic levers for the reduction of weapons production and trade, economies of weak resources and their administration, reconstruction of peace economies in post-war regions);

- minority rights and human rights and the means and ways of guaranteeing them in multi-ethnic societies;

- media analysis (especially the role of the media in preventing violence and promoting reconciliation).

- competence in "training the trainers" in the areas of peace education, conflict and conflict prevention, development of peace constituencies, intercultural dialogue; training of qualified peaceworkers for international crisis intervention;

- experience in the organization of training and research as well as in the area of organizational development;

- practical experience in international governmental and non-governmental organizations in line with Article 4, paragraph (2).

Interesting Question / Answer session followed both the talks, which included UN Reforms, UN’s role in occupation of Iraq, poverty and globalization issues.