Stop the Next War Now (25 page)

A WORLD

WORKING TOGETHER

JODY WILLIAMS

Jody Williams, together with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. She now serves as a campaign ambassador for the ICBL, which she helped create. Prior to her work on landmines, Jody spent eleven years building public awareness about U.S. policy toward Central America.

The heinous crime of September 11, 2001, sowed fear and uncertainty not only in the United States but also around the globe. Terrorism is a threat that must be countered—but when it comes to solving the problem of terrorism, the U.S. government has offered only one answer: war. This has made the world even more unstable, exacerbating a fundamental tension between those who feel that one nation, or a small handful of nations, should determine how to meet the multitude of threats facing us all, and those who want to see those decisions made by a community of nations, international bodies, and civil society all joining together to take a truly multilateral path.

Understanding the terrorist threat does not mean simply being able to identify the countries the terrorists come from. We must recognize the underlying political forces that make people willing to die and to kill others in their efforts to bring attention to their causes. In a world increasingly dominated by the few, who seem not to care about the many, it’s no surprise that some of the disenfranchised see drastic action as their only option. Until we work together as a global community to address the common threats to human security posed by these gross inequalities, we will not live in a secure world.

Examples of the world coming together to solve common threats do exist—I have seen it myself. In 1992, when a group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launched the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), we had no idea what we could ultimately accomplish. We started the campaign because we wanted to help victims of war. But for me, the landmine issue was also a launching point; from there, we could begin to talk about larger issues, such as the laws of war and the means and methods of warfare. The decades-long impact of landmines could be a powerful symbol of other long-term impacts of war.

In the beginning, every government we met with thought that banning landmines was a “nice idea” but a utopian dream that would never come true. After all, virtually every fighting force in the world had been using landmines since World War I. Millions of mines contaminated eighty countries around the world and claimed thousands of new mine victims every year. Some fifty-five countries produced landmines, and tens of millions of mines were stockpiled. Few believed that eliminating the weapon was possible, since no conventional weapon in common use had ever been widely banned.

But we believed that what we were doing was right and that no matter what the outcome was, we would build public awareness so that citizens around the world would pressure their governments to get rid of the weapon. And to our amazement, it worked! The ICBL was able to capture the public conscience and propel governments to join with us in common cause to address the humanitarian crisis in the shortest time possible.

In less than a year, the Mine Ban Treaty was negotiated. It was signed in Ottawa, Canada, on December 3 and 4, 1997, by 122 nations. It is an elegant, simple, yet comprehensive international convention that provides the framework for ridding the world of the scourge of antipersonnel mines. Key provisions of the treaty require participating nations to stop producing, acquiring, or using antipersonnel mines; to destroy mines in their stockpiles; to clear mines in their territories within ten years; and to provide for the needs of landmine survivors.

By the end of 2004, some 143 nations were party to the treaty, and another 8 were signatories. Those who have signed on include most former mine producers and users. Unfortunately, though, the United States has refused to sign the treaty. While the U.S. government has offered various excuses, many of us at the ICBL believe that the issue for the United States has little to do with antipersonnel landmines. Surely, if all of our major military allies, including nato members and Japan, are willing to give up landmines, then the country with the most sophisticated military in the world can give them up, too. In my opinion, the U.S. military is afraid that responding to pressure from civilians on this particular weapon will set an uncomfortable precedent, perhaps pushing the military down a long and slippery slope on which they will have to surrender other weapons for humanitarian reasons. We still, however, continue to pressure the U.S. government to join the majority of the world community and adopt the treaty.

The process that led to the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty has been described as unorthodox, historic, and unique. Why?

• The ICBL worked at the regional, national, and international levels to build the political will necessary to ban the weapon.

• The ICBL successfully pressed governments to take individual steps toward banning landmines. The October 1996 Canadian challenge to other “proban” governments to negotiate the treaty within a year resulted in the “Ottawa Process,” which yielded the Mine Ban Treaty.

• For the first time, small-and medium-size powers (from Mozambique to South Africa to Mexico to Norway and Austria) took the lead and were not held back by some of the superpowers that had not yet agreed to ban landmines (such as the United States, China, and Russia).

• The process took place outside the official UN system, and governments were required to “opt in”—meaning that governments attending the treaty negotiation conference had to agree on the basic text beforehand. This, together with strong leadership at the negotiating conferences, prevented a few governments from watering down the treaty or slowing down the negotiations.

• Not only was the negotiation process extremely quick—the treaty was negotiated within a year, unprecedented for an international agreement of this nature—but it also took only nine months for forty countries to ratify the treaty.

• The treaty is a unique hybrid—successfully combining arms-control provisions with issues of international humanitarian law.

• The ICBL encouraged continued citizen participation. While governments were signing the Mine Ban Treaty in Ottawa, ordinary citizens were invited to make their pledges to the People’s Treaty against Landmines. Similarly, youth across the world promoted their own peace treaties, declaring: “We want no more war. We want no more landmines. We want no more mine victims. We promise to work for peace in our world.” The Youth against War Treaty was launched in Ottawa on the first anniversary of the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty. It was later translated into many languages and taken up by campaigns from Italy to Brazil to Pakistan.

• The treaty was the product of an unusually cohesive partnership among NGOs, UN organizations, and governments. Whereas in other treaty negotiations NGOs are often excluded or limited to observer status, in this case the ICBL participated in conferences about the treaty. That partnership has continued to this day, to ensure that the Mine Ban Treaty is fully implemented.

For those who want to work in coalitions to bring about social change, it’s important to understand the importance of NGOs forming strategic partnerships with governments and UN organizations. It’s not easy to form such partnerships (and such partnerships are not necessarily appropriate for all issues activists are working on), and it requires a lot of work on the part of NGOs. In our case, we had to first prove that we had the ability to provide expertise on the issues, and credible documentation to back up the expertise; to articulate our goals and messages clearly and simply; to maintain a flexible coalition structure, inclusive and diverse, while still managing to speak with one voice on our issues; to communicate key developments to members of the coalition itself, as well as to governments and other agencies involved in the issue; to organize; to formulate action plans with deadlines—and to always follow up so that the goals of the action plans were achieved, building momentum and excitement.

Thanks to this broad-based campaign, today only about a dozen countries continue to produce landmines, and there have been no significant exports in the world in years. Stockpiled landmines are being destroyed. Mine action programs are operating in countries all over the world. And, most important, the number of new mine victims is beginning to decrease.

Our work is far from over. Until all countries are party to the treaty and everyone obeys it—until, in other words, all the mines are destroyed and victims are fully taken care of—our work is not finished.

But in this terribly unstable and insecure world, the ICBL and the Mine Ban Treaty offer us hope: the possibility that we will one day live in a world free of the daily terror of landmines, and the proof that there are alternative models for addressing our common problems. The process that the ICBL spurred shows people everywhere that governments, international bodies, and civil society can work together to find solutions to critical humanitarian and security issues.

CALL TO ACTION:TEN THINGS YOU

CAN DO FOR A MINE-FREE WORLD!

1. Visit the ICBL Web site to learn more about the problem and the solution at www.icbl.org, then join or start a local campaign.

2. Call, fax, e-mail, or visit the president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, your senator, and your congressional representative and tell them to support the United States’ signing the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty
now
!

3. Call, fax, e-mail, or visit your state, district, and county representatives; the mayo; and other prominent local decision makers (school board members, Rotary club officers, church leaders).Ask them to support the United States’ signing the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty
now
! Ask for a written proclamation or resolution of support for the ban declaring your town, city, or state a landmine-free zone.

4. Get the word out:Write an opinion piece for your local newspaper, call up a radio station, and send information to your friends. For publicity tips go to www.icbl.org/resources/campaignkit/publicise/index.html.

5. Call, fax, e-mail, or visit your local newspapers, radio stations, and television stations, asking them to support the United States’ signing the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty
now
! Contact the ICBL or the U.S. Campaign organizations for audio and video footage that local TV stations can use.

6. Call, fax, e-mail, or visit U.S. manufacturers of antipersonnel landmines. These are identified in the 1997 Human Rights Watch report
Exposing the Source
, available from the HRW office (1-202-612-4321) and its Web site: www.hrw.org/hrw/campaigns/mines/index.html.

7. Promote the Mine Ban Treaty:Write to the countries that have not signed the treaty. Urge them to get on board right away! You can find a list of these countries at www.icbl.org/treaty/members/non_sp. Use the ICBL database to find contact information for governments and embassies. Look at our country pages and action alerts for message ideas and sample letters.

8. Act for a mine-free world: Do something! Organize a photo or art exhibition, arrange a film screening, start a landmine-awareness day or week, set up a letter-writing event, hold a public demonstration, host a benefit conference! More action ideas are at www.icbl.org/resources/campaign kit/pubevent.html.

9. Sponsor a mine-detection dog: Raise money for a mine-detection dog to help clear mines and safeguard lives and livelihoods! Check them out at www.sponsor-a-minedog.org.

10. Make a donation or work for us: Every bit counts! Support the ICBL by telephone, mail, or online (www.icbl.org/campaign/donate), or find out about volunteering, interning, or working for the ICBL (www.icbl.org/campaign/opportunities).

“The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility

of other nations and makes friends of them.”

—Helen Keller

SEATING WOMEN

AT THE PEACE TABLE

NOELEEN HEYZER

Noeleen Heyzer is the executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), where she serves as the UN’s chief advocate for advancing women’s issues. She is also a founding member of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), a network of women leaders.

We are living in a time of great fear and insecurity. This is particularly true for women. Thousands of women are raped at gunpoint in countries experiencing war; countless women and their children lose their limbs to landmines; hundreds of thousands sit in refugee camps, displaced by the bombing of their towns and villages.

Those women know that wars are no longer fought on battlefields separate from homes and communities. Today’s battlefields are our schools, our villages, our communities—even women’s bodies.

During the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, some five hundred thousand women were raped; tens of thousands of women suffered a similar fate in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and East Timor. Already in the twenty-first century, some forty million people have fled their homes as a consequence of armed conflicts from Afghanistan to Liberia and Colombia. Eighty percent of these refugees are women and children. Unprotected and unable to provide for their children, these women are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, which includes the slow murder from infection by hiv.

Weapons-based security has certainly not delivered peace for women. So what does security look like through women’s eyes?

Women who have been invited to the peace table have been able to tell us. In the 2002 meetings that set up the interim government of Afghanistan, only three women were officially involved, but the United Nations Development Fund for Women brought more than sixty women from the Afghan diaspora, the refugee camps, Kabul, and across all the provinces and ethnic groups of Afghanistan to participate at a roundtable with UN agencies. These women forged an agenda that was incorporated into a transitional program at the UN, putting at the forefront education, health, economic security, human rights, and women’s rights.