Mondial December 2012

In this issue: UN Peace Ops need help

MDGs, what’s next On implementing R2P Cluster munitions bill a dud

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Published in Canada by the World Federalists, a non-profit organization that advocates more just and effective global governance through the application of the principles of democratic federalism to world affairs.

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Canada’s drift from UN system a case of ‘ignorance’?

John Trent is a Senior Fellow at the Centre on Governance of the University of Ottawa and author of The United Nations System: the Policies of Member States and Modernization of the United Nations System. He chairs WFM–Canada’s governing council.

“Canada will not be able to help with UN reform if it is just pouting in its corner.”

by John E. Trent Earlier this fall, Prime Minister Harper spurned the United Nations and refused to speak there at the opening of a new session of the General Assembly.

Foreign Minister John Baird took his place.

“Baird blasts the UN” is the way one headline put it. Baird underlined two principal grievances, denouncing the UN for “preoccupation with procedure and process” and describing the crisis in Syria as a “test” for the UN. “Many people… cannot understand why this organization… has been unable to take concrete steps,” Baird said. “While the brutal and repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad continues the slaughter of its own people, the United Nations continues to fail to impose binding sanctions….”

He concluded that Canada “cannot and will not participate in endless, fruitless, inward-looking exercises.” Earlier, Mr. Harper had let it be known that, henceforth, Canadian foreign policy will make common cause with democratic allies, “our true friends.”

What is wrong with this picture? In one word, it is ignorance – the ignorance of the leaders of the present Canadian government.

Baird continually infers that the faults are those of the “United Nations,” “the organization.”

But even beginning students are taught to distinguish between the UN and the actions (or inactions) of its member states. The UN is composed of a Secretariat and its sovereign members, especially those in the Security Council. The United Nations itself has no independent powers, no army, no taxes.

In the case of Syria, many people may not understand (but Foreign Minister Baird should) that many within the UN desperately want to act on Syria and have drafted many proposals only to have the proposed sanctions repeatedly refused by two vetowielding Security Council members, Russia and China.

Certain powerful countries have vetoes to stop them from leaving the UN if it were to trample on their vital interests.

The UN was invented because, if we want peace, countries cannot just deal with their “true friends.” Russia and China are terrified the West will use the UN to interfere in their internal affairs over issues of unlawful repression and abuse of human rights. This natural reticence with regard to UN action was inflamed by the UN-authorized

actions in Libya, which China and Russia say went well beyond the mandate provided by Security Council resolutions. Hence, their “vetoing” of action against their ally Syria – in exactly the same way the United States uses its veto to protect its ally, Israel.

This is an explanation of the UN, not a justification. Many of us would like to completely transform the organization. But Canada will not be able to help with UN reform if it is just pouting in its corner. To improve the UN requires being recognized as a knowledgeable team player – as we used to be.

Even as a small power, we were regularly elected to the Security Council, although not under Harper. Not so long ago, we were able to use our considerable influence to make the Security Council more open, inclusive and transparent. Canada gave successful leadership to the movement for ‘responsibility to protect’ – an important transformation of the sovereign state system.

If the UN concentrates so much on “procedure and process,” it is, once again, because its members – led by Mr. Harper’s ally, the United States – forced it to do so.

See “UN and Canada,” page 4

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UN peace operations need Canada’s help

by Fergus Watt After nearly a decade-long engagement in Afghanistan, and with budget cuts requiring adaptation at the Department of National Defense, there are renewed questions regarding Canada’s defense policy.

As always, Canada’s military should be expected to promote our country’s interests and values. Bordered on three coasts by oceans, and with no significant immediate threat to our territory, Canada’s interests as a trading nation and middle power are best served by working toward a more stable and peaceful world.

United Nations peacekeeping remains one of the best tools to achieve that goal.

For four decades up until the mid-1990s, Canada was a leading contributor to UN peacekeeping missions. However, Canada now ranks 57th in combined military and police deployments to UN operations.

But while Canada’s personnel contributions are much diminished, the number of actual United Nations deployments has been

rising steadily since 1999. The UN currently supports approximately 120,000 military, police and civilian personnel serving in 17 missions worldwide. The UN has more troops in the field than any actor in the world other than the U.S. Department of Defense.

Today’s multidimensional peacekeeping operations are called on not only to observe an armistice. Modern peace operations must also facilitate political processes, protect civilians, assist in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants, support the organization of elections, protect and promote human rights, and assist in restoring the rule of law.

And increasingly, more robust mandates for UN operations have included Chapter VII provisions allowing use of force, often in circumstances where the terms of a peaceful settlement have not been fully consolidated and where a return to hostilities is a very real possibility.

The latest developments in the Democratic Republic of the

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Congo (DRC) highlight some of the frailties of modern robust mandates for UN operations.

Clearly MONUSCO, the beleaguered UN Stabilization Mission in the DRC, was unable to prevent the escalating conflict between the poorly organized and underpaid government forces and a resurgent M23 rebel force backed by the Rwandan government.

While discussions aiming at a new political settlement in the DRC are ongoing, the Security Council has also mandated the UN Secretary-General to report on “additional force multipliers, observation capabilities and troops that could improve the mission’s ability to carry out its mandate.”

The UN’s call for assistance now, as it seeks to reinforce and reorganize MONUSCO, recalls discussions a couple of years ago in this country when there was a very real possibility that Canada would send Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie and a small contingent of Canadian troops to provide leadership for MONUSCO. Canada came close then, but declined to deploy. And we are unlikely to respond favourably to the UN’s current needs in the war-torn DRC. But a return to UN peace operations in the near future, most likely elsewhere in Africa, is a distinct possibility. MONUSCO in the DRC, as well as other UNled peace operations (e.g., Sudan, Darfur, the joint African UnionUN operation in Somalia) currently operate at troop levels below what has been mandated Continued on page 20

Fergus Watt is Executive Director of World Federalist Movement – Canada.

“For four decades up until the mid1990s, Canada was a leading contributor to UN peacekeeping missions.

However, Canada now ranks 57th…”

DECEMBER 2012

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The post-2015 development agenda – sausages anyone?

Published by the World Federalist Foundation (WFF) and the World Federalist Movement – Canada (WFMC). The World Federalist Foundation is a Revenue Canada registered charitable organization (reg. #:123998957RR0001). The World Federalist Movement – Canada is a national non-profit membership organization that advocates more just and effective global governance through the application of the principles of democratic federalism to world affairs. The WFMC President is the Hon. Warren Allmand. WFMC is a member organization of the international World Federalist Movement (WFM), which includes world federalist organizations in 24 countries around the world.

Articles that are the responsibility of the World Federalist Foundation are denoted by an concluding the article. These include “The post-2015 development agenda – sausages anyone?,” “Social Protection Floor: Shaping MDG goals past 2015,” “Responsibility to Protect: Which way now?” “New book boosts UNPA campaign,” “The passing of George McGovern,” “ICC update – Canadian made Deputy Prosecutor,” “Development as Freedom: a federalist lens,” and “On human rights as a strategy for peace.”

Material is not copyrighted. Submissions are welcome. Il nous fera plaisir de publier les articles présentés en français.

Mondial’s editorial working group: Leonard Angel Robin Collins Monique Cuillerier Karen Hamilton Donna Lindenberg Simon Rosenblum Fergus Watt ISSN number: 1488-612X

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by Fergus Watt There’s a grain of truth in the old saying that ‘laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.’

Around the world, there’s a great deal of discussion currently taking place regarding the form and content of a renewed set of “development goals,” to replace the Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000 to shape the international community’s development programming for the 2000 – 2015 period.

At the historic United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, the world’s leaders made a commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and improve the health and welfare of the world’s poorest people within 15 years. This commitment was set forth in the “UN Millennium Declaration” adopted at the time of the Summit.

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are: • eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; • achieving universal primary education; • promoting gender equality and empowering women; • reducing child mortality rates; • improving maternal health; • combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; • ensuring environmental sustainability; and • developing a global partnership for development.

It was a murky bit of sausagemaking that led to these eight goals (and their accompanying 48 detailed indicators and benchmarks) that have served since 2000 as a widely used implemen-

tation framework for much of the international community’s development programming. The eight MDGs were “adapted” from the much longer Millennium Declaration – the official document that governments had adopted – in a process that included Kofi Annan as well as officials from the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the club of mostly western developed states, who are also the major aid donors.

According to Yale University Professor Thomas Pogge, who is a leading figure in a network called ASAP (Academics Stand Against Poverty), the process by which the MDGs were articulated is unclear. “The goals, what led from the Millennium Declaration to the MDGs, is a process that is wholly unknown. The goals were substantially changed and, in particular, diluted in the process.”

Nevertheless, the MDGs were supported by major donor governments, multilateral agencies and NGOs. While there is criticism of the specific content of the MDGs, there can be little doubt that they have become central to international development programming, providing much needed structure and coherence to processes that involve a multitude of actors.

Globally, overseas development assistance amounts to approximately $120 billion annually.

However, as Prof. Pogge points out, “we have to stop thinking about the poverty reduction projSee “Institutional order...” page 4

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Institutional order works against the poor Continued from page 3 _________

ect as being promoted by development aid only. Development aid is a very small niche in the international institutional architecture, and what happens there cannot possibly make up for the enormous headwind that is generated by the rest of the institutional order against the poor.”

Briefly, some of the elements of that “international institutional architecture” that make more difficult the task of effective poverty reduction include: • The terms of international trade. In addition to protectionism on the part of developed-country governments that limits the capacity of developing countries to expand export markets, international rules developed by the World Trade Organization and other regional trade structures inhibit the expansion and diversification of developed-country economies. A “development round” of WTO negotiations that might have addressed some of these inequities has been deadlocked for nearly a decade.

• The regulation of international finance. The work of organizations like the International Monetary Fund affects the conditions and levels of international development finance.

Developing countries have long advocated changes in the rules that provide developed western governments with voting majorities in these crucial international rule-setting bodies, to little avail.

• Tax avoidance, corruption and transfer pricing, within multinational private enterprises that lead to massive outflows

of funds from developing countries, mostly to a growing number of offshore tax havens and low-tax jurisdictions.

The debate surrounding the post-2015 development agenda is unlikely to address all of these structural obstacles thrown up by the present framework of global governance. But it does offer an opportunity to hit the reset button on an important global policy and programming agenda, with the potential to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of the world’s citizens.

So it’s not surprising that the global conversation has ramped up tremendously in recent months. At present, there are multiple overlapping processes, each with impacts nationally and internationally.

The two main UN processes include: 1. a high-level expert panel created by the Secretary-General to examine “the post-2015 development agenda,” further to a mandate from the 2010 MDG review conference; and 2. a General Assembly Working Group, looking at “sustainable development goals” as mandated at this summer’s “Rio+20” UN Conference on Sustainable Development.

These two UN processes are expected to be “harmonized” (another serving of sausages?) by September 2013.

Supporting these processes is a considerable amount of work by a myriad of UN agencies. An interagency task team prepared a widely referenced report, Realizing the World We Want for All. At present, the UN Development Group of agencies is conducting 90 national and regional consul-

tations. These include 11 consults organized thematically on: inequalities, population, health, education, growth and employment, conflict/violence/disasters, governance, environmental sustainability, food security/nutrition, water, and energy.

Beyond these UN-based processes, there is a myriad of studies, meetings, campaigns sponsored by NGOs, think tanks, academic networks, etc. Two reliable sources of information tracking the post-2015 debates are websites at Beyond2015.org and worldwewant2015.org.

WFM–Canada recently provided a policy submission to one of the meetings of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel.

The WFM–Canada submission focused on a recommendation that the Panel support the idea of a “rights-based Social Protection Floor.”

(See related item on the opposing page.)

UN and Canada Continued from page 1

It was forced to restructure its administration, cut its budgets and limit its personnel.

“Inward looking exercises” can be fruitful. They have completely changed the UN over the decades. Founded as a peace and security organization, it is also largely responsible for development and human rights in the world. It is to the UN that Mr. Baird turns to distribute much of Canada’s foreign aid.

As a knowledgeable player, rather than a hectoring nuisance, Canada has in the past proven it can make a difference. The Conservatives should do their homework, and give the UN a chance.

“Development aid is a very small niche in the international institutional architecture, and what happens there cannot possibly make up for the enormous headwind that is generated by the rest of the institutional order against the poor.”

DECEMBER 2012

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Social Protection Floor: Shaping MDG goals past 2015

Retired McGill University economics professor Myron Frankman has been a leading advocate for the Social Protection Floor proposal.

“The Social Protection Floor is based on the idea that everyone should enjoy at least basic income security sufficient to live…”

by Myron Frankman Almost 70 years have now passed since the American E.B. White wrote, “The world shrinks.

It will eventually be unified.” For White, that reality requires not a “mere caricature of government”, but a federation of democratic countries with a “legislature that can legislate, a judiciary that can judge, and an executive that can execute.”

We have instead today minimal ‘feel-good’ processes where the views of citizens, now transformed into ‘stakeholders,’ can be expressed either on their own account or through a group to which they belong, and noble goals can be proclaimed at the highest levels and even via 140character tweets.

We entered the 21st century in a celebratory mood with the Kyoto Protocol and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

While we can point to important signs of progress, serious alarm bells are ringing. The World Bank has recently issued a report whose title cries out for a collective response: Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided. In the 2012 MDG Gap Task Force Report, The Global Partnership for Development: Making Rhetoric a Reality, one reads that: “The Task Force has had difficulty identifying areas of significant new progress and for the first time there are signs of backsliding. With less than three years until 2015, there is no apparent commitment by governments to “reverse the reversal” in time. Fewer MDGs will be reached in fewer countries as a result.”

The MDG 2012 Progress Chart

provides at a glance the average progress on 16 MDG targets for nine different regions of the world. For only 59 of the 144 resulting grid cells (or 41%) is progress judged to have been sufficient for goals either to have been met or expected to be met by the end of 2015.

What next? The quest is on to shape the agenda for the future.

One of the ideas that is gathering steam is that of extending an ample social protection floor in all countries, north and south.

An ILO-WHO Advisory Group chaired by Michelle Bachelet, the former President of Chile, was convened in August 2010 under the framework of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) Social Protection Floor (SPF) Initiative to enhance global advocacy and provide guidance on the conceptual and policy aspects of the social protection floor.

The Social Protection Floor is based on the idea that everyone should enjoy at least basic income security sufficient to live, guaranteed through transfers in cash or in kind, such as pensions for the elderly and persons with disabilities, child benefits, income support benefits and/or employment guarantees and services for the unemployed and working poor. The combination of in-cash and in-kind transfers should ensure that everyone has access to essential goods and services, including essential health services, food security, primary education, housing, water and sanitation and others defined according to national priorities.

The Advisory Group urged the G20 countries to take the lead by enhancing their own programs.

One wonders, however, if the Bachelet Group’s recommendations will be overshadowed by the work of the Secretary-General’s High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which is scheduled to report by the end of May 2013. It is hard to imagine that British Prime Minister David Cameron, one of the three cochairs of the panel, will be at all favorably inclined toward a social protection floor given the austerity measures that his government has imposed in Britain.

The success of whatever emerges in the way of environmental and social goals turns in substantial measure on the availability of funding. As noted above, the flow of funds has already diminished. As long as austerity-inspired budget cutting prevails in most countries, we can expect that official development assistance will continue to play a minor role. This is anticipated in the Bachelet Group’s report, as it details alternative domestic sources that most developing countries could draw on. One increasingly hears about the role that foreign investment and charitable foundations are likely to play, possibly in a selfserving way and not necessarily reflecting host-country agendas.

Implementing the SPF will be a complex effort. Although the general objectives are to be agreed multilaterally, the specific targets would be determined according to national priorities and fiscal constraints. There would be a progressive phasingin process, building on already existing programs whenever posSee “A mature world” on page 7

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DECEMBER 2012

Responsibility to protect

How to implement R2P? Still controversial

This article is based on a report

by Andrew Coleman for the Parliamentary Group for Genocide Prevention.

At the United Nations, the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) is understood primarily as a doctrine for the prevention of mass atrocities: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. The commitment to uphold R2P is classified in terms of three “pillars”: • Pillar one: the state’s primary responsibility to protect civilians.

• Pillar two: The international community’s responsibility to assist states in fulfilling these civilian protection responsibilities.

• Pillar three: If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community should take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter. This includes the use of diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means to protect civilian populations from these crimes. As a last resort, or in situations of imminent peril, timely and decisive action may also include the use of force.

In preparation for the 2012 UN General Assembly debate on the ‘responsibility to protect’, Canada’s all-party parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity (GPG) and the World Federalist Movement – Canada jointly sponsored a meeting on “The International Community’s Capacity for Timely and Decisive Action.”

The meeting, chaired by Senator Roméo Dallaire, took place May 30 in Ottawa. Participants – parliamentarians and staff from the GPG, civil society representatives, and officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade – were joined by two expert panelists who spoke on initiatives central to the timely and decisive implementation of R2P: – His Excellency Piragibe dos Santos Tarrago, Ambassador of Brazil to Canada, provided an overview of the Brazilian initiative ‘responsibility while protecting,’ and – Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, New York, discussed the growing acceptance of the R2P normative framework and the Global Centre’s “Focal Points Initiative.”

The meeting also included a discussion of Canadian policy, its historical commitment to the prevention and elimination of mass atrocities, and the general perception of more recent Canadian reticence towards efforts to advance R2P. From an international perspective, this reticence is puzzling, as R2P is widely considered as a non-partisan initiative.

While there is wide consensus on the general principles of R2P, the detail regarding how these commitments are operationalized is still controversial. Consequently, there was considerable interest in an initiative of the government of Brazil. ‘Responsibility while protecting’ is intended to develop in greater detail the conceptual and operational

framework of the responsibility to protect. Underlying the Brazilian initiative is the desire to avoid a situation where the use of force causes more harm than the initial dangers that it was intended to address. It rests on the principles that the use of force must be judicious, limited and proportionate. The initiative also asks for accountability, pointing to the need for enhanced UN Security Council procedures to monitor and assess the implementation of R2P mandates.

R2P ‘focal points’ are senior government officials mandated to enable national efforts to improve mass-atrocity prevention and response. In a June 6 article in Embassy under the headline “Canada should appoint a ‘focal point’ for atrocity prevention,” Dr. Adams discussed how it is up to “each government… to identify for themselves where best to place the focal point, but the ideal appointment is a senior government official who can not only ring alarm bells within government in a loud, clear, and precise fashion, but also has the gravitas to be able to mobilize their government to respond…”

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect is working in partnership with the Stanley Foundation and the UN Missions from Australia, Costa Rica, Denmark, and Ghana, to expand the number of R2P focal points appointed by national governments and to link them within a global network designed to facilitate international co-operation and co-ordination in pursuit of protection-focused objectives.

To date, 20 governments have joined the focal points network.

“While there is wide consensus on the general principles of R2P, the detail regarding how these commitments are operationalized is still controversial.”

DECEMBER 2012

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‘Responsibility to protect’: which way now?

Evan Cinq-Mars

“Progress as the norm evolves can be expected to be uneven.

And progress will inevitably change the way the UN operates.”

According to Evan Cinq-Mars, the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) is first and foremost a responsibility of national governments. When national governments fail to protect civilians within their borders, then the international community should be able to take action to prevent mass atrocity crimes – genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or ethnic cleansing. Taking such action is through the United Nations, but military intervention is only one method, and preferably the last to be used.

Mr. Cinq-Mars elaborated on these points in a recent presentation to the Montreal Branch of the World Federalist Movement.

Cinq-Mars has written extensively on the ‘responsibility to protect.’ Until recently, he worked at the NGO International Coalition on the Responsibility to Protect (see www.responsibilitytoprotect. org), writing a blog on R2P developments at the UN. He is now based in Waterloo doing graduate studies at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Cinq-Mars reviewed the origins of the ‘responsibility to protect’, including the international community’s well-documented failure to protect civilians in Rwanda and Srebrenica, as well as the historic adoption of the core elements of the R2P norm at the 2005 United Nations World Summit. Since then, there have been a number of R2P interventions not involving military force, notably in Kenya after a disputed election led to ethnic violence and widespread civilian displacement.

However, the consequences of the use of military action under R2P in Libya, and disputes amongst the veto-holding permanent members of the UN Security Council now threaten to make it more difficult in future to reach agreement on the application of R2P. Russia and China allege that the Security Council resolutions relating to Libya did not permit “regime change;” that there was “mission creep” by the (mostly NATO) intervening forces. As a consequence, the ‘responsibility to protect’ has become more controversial and invoking

R2P to protect civilians in Syria has proved impossible.

The ‘responsibility to protect’ is a relatively new doctrine. Nobody thought that it would be applied uniformly, in all cases. Progress as the norm evolves can be expected to be uneven. And progress will inevitably change the way the UN operates. Mr. CinqMars is hopeful that a recent Brazilian initiative, “Responsibility While Protecting,” will provide a framework for enabling consensus on clearer guidelines for future R2P interventions.

Another hopeful development being advanced by some states and NGOs is the “responsibility not to veto.” This would require adapting the Security Council’s working methods to limit use of the veto when dealing with matters involving mass atrocity crimes. A proposal along these lines at the UN this spring fell just short of the required number of votes. However, the issue is far from disappearing and was brought up again at a meeting this fall where an open debate looked at the Security Council’s working methods.

‘A mature world cannot rely on charity…’

Continued from page 5 _________

sible. But the literature on the efficacy of these sorts of cashtransfers to the poor is encouraging.

Articulating the SPF goal in the language of human rights makes it more likely that these measures will actually be implemented. And it also contributes to a useful reframing of the discourse, from a focus on northerndriven poverty alleviation

measures, to human rights, empowerment of the poor and to collective responsibilities of world citizenship.

A mature world cannot rely on charity but must have recourse to a system of world public finance. This principle was clearly enunciated by France in its 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man: “A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be

equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.” As we now live in the Anthropocene, that principle should apply today at all levels from the local to the global.

Myron Frankman is a Senior Research Fellow at the Montrealbased Centre for International Sustainable Development Law. He has been a member of the Council of the WFMC since 2010 and on the executive of the Montreal branch since 2011.

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Canada’s cluster munitions bill undermines treaty would allow Canadian soldiers to engage in activities that would otherwise be prohibited under the treaty. They include directing, requesting or authorizing use, acquisition, possession, import or export of cluster munitions; the transfer of cluster munitions; and using, acquiring or possessing cluster munitions while on attachment, exchange or secondment with a non-state party to the Convention.

The treaty does allow a signatory (like Canada) to co-operate with a non-signatory (like the

Canada’s Bill S-10 has been characterized by the international Cluster Munitions Coalition as the worst national implementing legislation, by far.

United States) in a combined operation. But it does not permit Canada to violate the CCM’s basic prohibitions. An ally could still use the weapon in the same conflict but Canadian Forces personnel would have nothing to do with such operations.

These exceptions directly contravene the purpose and provisions of the treaty. Canada’s Bill S-10 has been characterized by the international Cluster Munitions Coalition as the worst national implementing legislation, by far.

In October, WFM–Canada President Warren Allmand appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT).

His testimony included an open letter signed by 27 legal experts

calling for the government to “remove or radically revise” the offending parts (section 11) of its draft Act to Implement the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

These 27 legal experts, mostly professors of international law at major Canadian universities, also included three former Canadian ambassadors for disarmament, an American legal scholar who has authored definitive legal commentaries on the cluster munitions treaty, and the former head of the Canadian delegation to the treaty negotiations, who resigned from the Department of Foreign Affairs in protest over the government’s after-the-fact efforts to reinterpret the scope of the treaty.

Allmand’s testimony also pointed out that when Canada implemented the Landmines Treaty, parliament’s implementing legislation “contained… no exceptions to Canadian compliance… in the manner that Article 11 of S-10 creates exceptions to, and therefore undermines, the CCM….

That closely analogous international instrument allowed Canada to contribute significantly to a robust regime that has reduced the use of landmines and saved thousands of lives. And Canadian troops have been and continue to be capable of functioning interoperably with our allies, including the extensive Canadian and American forces deployed for over a decade in Afghanistan.”

Similarly, the Senate Committee’s recent hearings were dominated by witnesses, including the Canadian and International sections of the Red Cross, calling for the legislation to be overhauled.

Later, Liberal Senators Elizabeth Hubley and Roméo

▼

by Fergus Watt Just when you think things couldn’t get much worse…

WFM–Canada was actively involved this fall in parliament’s discussion of the government of Canada’s controversial Bill S-10, draft legislation to implement the cluster munitions treaty.

Cluster munitions are explosive weapons that release small sub-munitions or bomblets. They can be dropped by aircraft or ground-launched. Because they are widely dispersed and also have a high failure rate on impact they pose considerable risks to civilians, both during attacks and afterwards.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) came into force in August 2010. It prohibits use, stockpiling, transfer, manufacture or trade in these weapons.

There are now 77 states that have become party to the treaty.

As the international Cluster Munitions Coalition reported to the United Nations General Assembly’s First (Disarmament) Committee this fall, “The Convention is clearly establishing a new standard rejecting any use of the weapon – a standard that is influencing even those that have not yet joined the Convention. The small number of confirmed instances of use in recent years – Libya and Thailand in 2011 and Syria this year – were strongly condemned by many in the international community, as were the serious allegations of use by Sudan in 2012, even though none of those four states are party to the convention.”

Unfortunately, Canada’s draft Bill S-10, would generate a number of “exceptions” to the treaty’s prohibitions. These exceptions

DECEMBER 2012

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‘Cluster bill creates ethical, moral dilemma’: Dallaire ▼

Dallaire introduced a number of amendments to S-10. These amendments were defeated by the Conservative majority on the Committee. Subsequently, the Bill was returned to the Senate for third reading, where similar amendments were introduced by Senator Hubley and again defeated.

Senator Roméo Dallaire

Heated Senate debates

“How can you educate and train and develop an ethos within an officer corps to absolutely abhor that capability, and then say that, should you be employed by these other guys, you can do it…”

The heated deliberations in the Senate included some powerful remarks from Senator Roméo Dallaire, excerpted here: “Honourable senators, the Convention on Cluster Munitions is a very wise document and falls very much within the intent of this nation… to limit the use of weapons that… cause undue harm, beyond the needs of a military operation, to civilian populations.

“But we have not met the spirit of the convention…. The legislation creates a situation in which those who have to apply the convention in the field are finding themselves in an untenable ethical dilemma.

“Now, there is a problem here because, on one hand, we absolutely do not want anything to do with them. Our doctrine, our training, our whole development of those military personnel says, ‘You see cluster munitions, you are not authorized to use them.

It is out of your military jargon; it is out of your military inventory to use.’

“Then we are saying, ‘If you are seconded to someone who does use them, then you are allowed to do it.’

“The ethics of this, the moral references of this, are absolutely

absurd. How can you educate and train and develop an ethos within an officer corps to absolutely abhor that capability, and then say that should you be employed by these other guys, you can do it; you can actually command their use and employ them. You can do that because you are seconded and you are not being held criminally responsible.

“We are legally protecting individuals, but we are imposing on them an ethical and moral dilemma that they will live with for the rest of their lives because they are the ones ordering that and they are the ones who will see those bodies afterwards as they have been blown up and continue to be blown up by the cluster munitions that they have ordered.

‘Interoperability’ fake issue “Honourable senators, there is something wrong with that. I cannot accept that because it is legal, it is automatically ethical and moral.

“I could have used that argument with 30,000 Rwandans in my protection when I was ordered to abandon Rwanda. I got a legal order from the Secretary-General to abandon Rwanda. I refused that legal order because that legal order was immoral. If we had abandoned that mission, the 30,000 Rwandans under our protection would have been slaughtered within hours. One country had already done that. They pulled out and 4,000 people were killed in less than three hours.

“The argument that has been used is that we need this… if we

are seconded with the Americans, we do not want to put at risk our inter-operability, and that is total bull.

“We have had officers in Iraq.

We did not go to Iraq, but we had officers in Iraq. We have officers deployed in Afghanistan with the Americans in special forces and the like. If one seconds someone, there is nothing that precludes one in that secondment from saying, ‘By the by, the rules of our engagement with this secondment are that, should they be deployed in operations, they will not order the use of cluster munitions.’

“There is no problem of interoperability. It is a fake argument. There is, however, a problem of us and our stature internationally if we do not put these amendments in, because we will be seen merely as a country that cannot really implement for its own people a convention that we are writing and saying we believe in.”

In a November op-ed article in the Ottawa Citizen, WFMC’s Warren Allmand stated, “If our government cannot implement the CCM in a manner that is consistent with the treaty’s fundamental objects and purposes, then it would be better if we just didn’t pass any implementing legislation at all. It would be better to stand outside of the treaty altogether, rather than undermine it with legislation that sets a notorious precedent and creates incentives for others to write their own exceptions and loopholes.”

Bill S-10 is expected to be taken up in the House of Commons early in the new year.

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New book boosts UNPA campaign

by Fergus Watt The case for creating a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) rests on two widely accepted truths.

The first is the proposition that democratic governance is a good thing. Most people would agree with that. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 21, clause 3) affirms that, “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections…” There are only 48 of the world’s 193 governments that are considered (by organizations like Freedom House) not to be democratic; and many of these governments actually claim that they are democratic. With the end of the Cold War, democracy has become a universal value.

The second proposition relied upon by UNPA campaigners is the importance and relevance of global governance. Many of the most important issues affecting the well-being of citizens – our security, climate, the integrity of our financial structures, etc. – are global in their scope. They are beyond the capacity of national jurisdictions and present international organizations to adequately address.

Okay, fair enough. You don’t get any arguments anymore over the existence of “globalization” or the importance of global issues.

But when UNPA campaigners try to combine these two widely accepted truths – the existence of a global political agenda and the inherent desirability of democracy – to make the pitch for a UNPA, well, that’s when eyes glaze over and questions arise.

Tell them that most international organizations already have a companion parliamentary assembly, but the UN does not.

Tell them it’s not necessary to reform the UN Charter to create a UNPA. Tell them it would evolve gradually, beginning first as a consultative body, just as the European Parliament has done.

No matter. Somehow, folks just have a tough time imagining it.

This is why Joe Schwartzberg’s volume, Creating a World Parliamentary Assembly: An Evolutionary Journey, provides such an important contribution to the UNPA campaign literature.

Schwartzberg tackles head-on some of the most important questions about the UNPA proposal.

The book discusses how a UNPA could be created; what powers it may have; how its members might be selected; and the apportioning of seats. In all cases,

Schwartzberg discusses relevant options, or models for addressing these critical questions. There is no single blueprint.

The book deals most extensively with the possible models for apportioning seats in an evolving world assembly. Schwartzberg is a political geographer who is comfortable – probably more so than many of his readers – in the milieu of weighted voting and the architecture of more representative governance structures. The book includes, in painstaking detail, many charts, tables and maps supporting the various models for apportioning seats in a UNPA. One is grateful for the academic rigor, but it gets to be heavy going at times.

Nevertheless, the underlying importance of this book is the fact that he demonstrates how this big idea is both practical and possible.

Creating a World Parliamentary Assembly: An Evolutionary Journey Joseph E. Schwartzberg Published by Committee for a Democratic UN, Berlin.

A foothold at the UN? UNPA on someone’s radar The United Nations Independent Expert on “the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order,” Alfred de Zayas from the U.S., presented his first report to the UN General Assembly earlier this month. He reported that he is “exploring proposals for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in order to enhance the participation of civil society within international institutions.”

De Zayas is in the first year of a three-year mandate from the UN’s Human Rights Council. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes a provision (Article 28) that states “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this

Declaration can be fully realized.” However, the international community has done little over the years to spell out just what this means. Assigning an independent expert will help advance the debate on a “democratic and equitable international order.”

In five years, the UNPA campaign has gained wide support around the world from parliamentarians, academics, and NGOs, but not from governments. Having the UNPA introduced in the UN system through a report from the HRC Independent Expert would significantly enhance the standing of the proposal and represent a major milestone for the UNPA campaign.

The Independent Expert’s work can be followed online at www.ohchr.org/ EN/Issues/ IntOrder/Pages/ IEInternational order Index.aspx.

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Member/supporter feedback: reporting back In WFMC’s March 2012 membership renewal letter to all supporters, WFMC President Warren Allmand described our diminishing membership and funds, and included a request to members for their feedback.

More than 120 responses to the survey questions were received.

The first section of the survey asked for comments on the organization’s name and on the idea of using a “branding name,” a more concise name that would be more descriptive of the organization and our goals. The majority of respondents were either in favour of this approach in principle or wanted to see the actual “branding name” options before deciding.

The second section of the survey discussed ways for WFMC members to become more involved with the organization and our goals. Many respondents asked to be added to the Take Action email network and others offered to contribute their time and effort on specific campaigns or with more general work.

The last section dealt with WFMC priorities and asked for suggestions as to specific issue areas for the organization to focus on. A wide range of responses was received. The areas of largest concern were environment and climate change issues, and nuclear disarmament. Some respondents mentioned specific campaigns or program areas where WFMC is already active, such as the campaign for a UNPA, the ICC, UN reform and responsibility to protect (R2P). Others offered practical suggestions for us to convey our message more broadly. Many mentioned the importance of

involving youth in various ways and increasing our use of social media. Others offered creative ways in which WFMC could raise our profile, such as video or documentary competitions, greater participation in the universities and public displays.

A New Tagline for the World Federalists The idea of a name change for the organization was discussed at a Council meeting in May and again at the Winnipeg AGM. Rather than a change to the organization’s name, it was decided that a tagline would be used, to help explain “world federalism” and “World Federalist Movement – Canada.”

Suggestions for a tagline were discussed at meetings this past July in Winnipeg and at the October Council meeting. A final decision is to be made at the spring 2013 Council meeting.

A tagline is like a slogan, a memorable phrase that sums up the tone and premise of a brand, product or organization. It ought to complement the organization’s name without duplicating it.

A successful tagline is brief and has a tone that resonates with its target group, like Apple: Think Different or Nike: Just do it. Less well known examples from the Canadian NGO world are equally helpful in describing their organization, like CANADEM: Canada’s Civilian Reserve, or Project Ploughshares: Research and Action for Peace.

Some of the tagline suggestions that have been made so far are listed at www.worldfederalistscanada.org/taglines.html We would like your input!

Which, if any, of the suggested taglines do you prefer? Do you have a suggestion of your own?

Let us know: email monique@ worldfederalistscanada.org.

Preparing for a UN Emergency Peace Service In an article published this August by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a foundation affiliated with the German Social Democratic Party, Peter Langille noted, “Despite years of study and public discussion, the UN still does not have a rapid response military capacity, something that is most needed to avert rapidly unfolding mass atrocity crimes. The proposal for a United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS), first launched after the Rwanda genocide, should therefore be revisited and updated. UNEPS would create a permanent standing UN first-responder, ready for immediate deployment… [and] help

prevent armed conflict, protect civilians, help re-building, and contribute to disarmament and collective security.”

To attract a broad-based constituency of support, the UNEPS initiative needs to be expanded into a more formal network of civil society organizations, academic institutions and inclined member states, to encourage research and educational outreach. A meeting in March 2013 to establish a UNEPS research and advocacy network is being organized by WFM–Canada, Global Action to Prevent War and hosted at the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.

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The passing of George McGovern saw that the human cost – both

by Simon Rosenblum American and Vietnamese – of George McGovern died recentwaging the war far outweighed ly. McGovern was probably the best known advocate for vigorous the likely benefits of backing a hopelessly corrupt South Vietmilitary action in Southeast namese regime.

Asia. No, there is no misprint McGovern, in fact, became the here and no attempt on my part first U.S. senator to vigorously to engage in revisionist history. challenge American growing milYes, long before anyone could itary involvement in Vietnam. As have even dreamt of an internahe so delicately put it at the tional responsibility to protect time: “This chamber reeks of (R2P) doctrine George McGovern blood.” was calling for an international This obviously brings us to the military force to oust the genocidal regime of Pol Pot in Cambo- 1972 American presidential camdia. There was much in McGovern’s life to applaud but I will continue to remember him most as a brave spokesperson for humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide.

The genocide in Cambodia was not even the first time that McGovern made R2P-type calls.

During the Second World George McGovern in 2009 War, he was a decorated paign, where McGovern was the pilot who flew 35 missions over Democratic Party nominee Nazi-occupied territory and was among the first to argue that the against the incumbent Richard Nixon. The contrast between the Allies should have bombed the two men could not have been Nazi death camps and/or the greater: gentlemanly George railway lines leading to the concentration camps. The practicali- against Tricky Dick. McGovern was admittedly a somewhat ty of doing so remains a lively debate among historians. McGov- inept campaigner, but he stood unambiguously for peace and ern’s wartime exploits were at economic justice. I was a graduthe centre of Stephen Ambrose’s ate student in upstate New York 2001 bestselling profile (The at the time and actively camWild Blue) of the men who flew paigned for him. We did carry B24s over Germany.

Broome County, New York but The Vietnam War is, of course, how most of us remember George the larger result, no matter how one slices and dices it, was a McGovern. Although he was an early supporter of American mili- landslide loss – 61 to 37 percent in the popular vote and 520 to 17 tary involvement, he quickly in the electoral college. Ridiculed began to change his views as he

by many afterwards, George McGovern did ‘not go gentle into that good night.’ He became an important opponent of “nuclear overkill” and stood for the very best in modern American liberalism. Oops, I have neglected to mention that his mother was born in Canada and that he spent a few years of his early childhood here. No doubt his formative years.

If that were all, it would be plenty enough. But there was even more on George McGovern’s public policy table. Specifically, food. He was involved throughout his life in issues related to agriculture, nutrition and hunger. In 1961, President Kennedy made him the first director of the U.S. Food for Peace program and later he was instrumental in the creation of the UNbased World Food Programme. McGovern took great pride in knowing that he had played a major role in helping hundreds of thousands of school children get a decent meal every day. He had become “the point guy on global hunger.” A lasting legacy for a most decent man.

But let’s leave the last word to those closest to him, his children.

In an October 21 family statement, they said: “we are blessed to know that our father lived a long, successful, and productive life advocating the hungry, being a progressive voice for millions and a fighter for peace.” May George McGovern rest in peace and be remembered with great fondness and respect.

Simon Rosenblum is a member of the WFMC Executive Committee.

“McGovern was admittedly a somewhat inept campaigner, but he stood unambiguously for peace and economic justice.”

Photo: Scott C Clarkson: Creative Commons

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ICC Update – Canadian made Deputy Prosecutor

by Monique Cuillerier

Current Cases

Monique Cuillerier is WFMC’s membership and outreach co-ordinator.

The International Criminal Court is engaged in ongoing investigations in seven countries: Sudan, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya and Côte d’Ivoire. Additionally, the ICC Prosecutor’s office is examining situations in a number of countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, Nigeria, Mali and the Republic of Korea. The Prosecutor’s Office has come to conclusions in preliminary examinations into alleged crimes in Palestine, Iraq and Venezuela.

Uganda: Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army are still at large, reportedly in the Central African Republic. Meanwhile at the ICC, the case of the Prosecutor v. Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen is being heard by Pre-Trial Chamber II. Central African Republic: The situation referred by the government of the Central African Republic, The Prosecutor v.

Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, is at trial stage, the trial having begun in November 2010.

Kenya: Two trials regarding the situation in Kenya – the Prosecutor v. William Samoei Ruto and Joshua Arap Sang, and the Prosecutor v. Francis Kirimi Muthaura and Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta – are scheduled to begin in April 2013. The four are accused of committing crimes against humanity during the violence that followed the 2007 Kenyan presidential elections.

Kenyatta and Ruto recently announced that they are running

together for, respectively, president and vice-president in the March 2013 election.

Côte d’Ivoire: An arrest warrant against Simone Gbagbo, wife of current ICC suspect and former president of Côte d’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo was issued. Ms. Gbagbo is accused of crimes against humanity allegedly committed in 2010 and 2011. This is the first time the ICC has issued an arrest warrant against a woman. Côte d’Ivoire has placed her under house arrest and she is also set to face trial before a Côte d’Ivoire court for a number of charges, including genocide.

Democratic Republic of Congo: On August 7, 2012, a decision on the principles that will lead to the first award of reparations to victims of crimes under the Court’s jurisdiction was made in reference to a completed case, the Prosecutor v.

Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. The ICC Trust Fund for Victims will gather proposals for reparations from the victims to press the case for approval.

In the case of the Prosecutor v.

Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, closing statements to the trial, which began in November 2009, were heard in May 2012. A verdict is expected soon.

11th Assembly of States Parties Meeting The Assembly of States Parties (ASP) is the management oversight and legislative body of the ICC that is composed of representatives of the States that have ratified and acceded to the Rome Statute. The 11th ASP meeting took place November 14–22 in The Hague. WFM–Canada and Canadian Centre for

International Justice organized a meeting for civil society representatives and Canadian officials prior to the ASP. Among the important issues discussed at this year’s ASP session were states parties’ cooperation (or non-cooperation) with the court, complementarity between the ICC and national jurisdictions, reparation provisions for victims and the 2013 budget.

Changes in staff at the ICC At a June 2012 ceremony in The Hague, former Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was sworn in as the ICC’s new Chief Prosecutor. In August, Bensouda appointed Brigid Inder as her special gender advisor. Ms Inder is executive director of the NGO Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice.

At the November ASP meeting, Canadian James Stewart was elected new Deputy Prosecutor.

Mr. Stewart has most recently worked within the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General and has more than thirty years experience as Crown counsel handling criminal trials and appeals for the prosecution. His international experience includes work at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Amendment regarding the Crime of Aggression Amendments to the Rome Statute were adopted at the 2010 ICC Review Conference held in Kampala, Uganda. The amendments include (1) the definition See “ICC Update,” page 15

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Development as freedom: a federalist lens ty’ would have been common dinner parlance along with “please pass the salt” and “how was your day?”

The Economist sums up the purpose of Sen’s book by noting that “the perspective that Mr. Sen describes and advocates has great attractions. Chief among them is that, by cutting through the sterile debate for or against the market, it makes it easier to ask sharper questions about public policy.”

Amartya Sen’s writing is very readable to those who have only dabbled on the surface of the field of economics. This book reads particularly well to a world federalist as it deals with the interconnectedness of society, of individual lives and of life on this planet. Sen states it is not a question of whether certain political or social freedoms are or are not conducive to development but rather that “these substantive freedoms (that is, the liberty of political participation or the opportunity to receive basic education or health care) are among the constitutive components of development.… These freedoms and rights are also very effective in contributing to economic progress.”

Sen does not, however, provide a neat and tidy formula for how the relationship among these interconnections, these substantive freedoms, are going to work.

Like any committed and knowledgeable world federalist, Sen knows that the way forward will be messy. He also knows that “individuals live and operate in a world of institutions. Our opportunities and prospects depend crucially on what institutions exist and how they function. Not

only do institutions contribute to our freedoms, their roles can be sensibly evaluated in the light of their contributions to our freedom. To see development as freedom provides a perspective in which institutional assessment can systematically occur.” World Federalism indeed!

Sen is as convinced of the need to see people as agents, capable of acting on behalf of both themselves and others, as he is of the need to “focus on capability deprivation” (rather than only on income poverty). In discussing capability, he reminds us that it is not just all about income poverty and income inequity but that other deprivations “such as unemployment, ill health, lack of education, and social exclusion” also need very much to be considered in any development conversation or action. Political freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective security not only contribute to the capacity of individuals to live more freely, but they complement each other. It is the way that these instrumental freedoms are linked to each other that strengthens what he believes is the importance of freedom as not only the primary object of development but also its principal means. Development as freedom is about complementarity, a concept and way of being and governing in the world that World Federalists know so well.

Sen reminds us that we live in a world whose opulence would have been hard to imagine a century or two ago. Also hard to imagine would have been the extent to which participatory governance and democracy

▼

by Karen Hamilton “Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else” So writes Aristotle in his Nicomahean Ethics and so quotes Amartya Sen in the final chapter of his book, Development As Freedom. Sen quotes Aristotle to reinforce what he has been saying throughout 12 chapters, an introduction and a preface. It is therefore most appropriate to begin a commentary on Sen’s book with a quote that is both the book’s ending and its foundation. His point is that, although some of the recent literature on the subject of development has concentrated on limited indicators of development such as the growth of GNP, there have always been those thinkers with broader ideas. It is such broad thinkers as Aristotle who have influenced Sen, along with the likes of Petty, Smith and Marx who also believed “that the enhancement of freedom is ultimately an important motivating factor for assessing economic and social change.”

Such an emphasis on breadth – together with the emphases on complexity, diversity, complementarity and the agency of individuals that are also both foundations and constant themes through this book – will sound very familiar to World Federalists. In fact, another way to have begun this commentary would have been to speculate on the dinner table conversation in Sen’s household. As many readers will know, Sen married European federalist Altiero Spinelli’s daughter. We can well imagine then that terms such as ‘federalism’, ‘complexity’ and ‘subsidiari-

The Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton is the Chair of the Executive for WFM-Canada and the Secretary on the Executive of WFM. She also serves the faith communities and the world as the General Secretary of The Canadian Council of Churches.

“…the way forward will be messy.… Our opportunities and prospects depend crucially on what institutions exist and how they function.”

Development As Freedom Amartya Sen Oxford University Press

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Development is about removing ‘unfreedoms’ ▼

have emerged as a preeminent model of political organization. The world is more interconnected in trade, commerce, communication, ideas and ideals than it has ever been. Poverty is still very much a reality, however, political freedoms are violated, the rights of women remain tenuous in many regions and the environment becomes less and less sustainable. Development is about working to overcome these issues and problems and there are social, political and economic dimensions involved in such work. Sen also believes in not only the role of freedoms of different kinds in addressing these pressing issues but also very much in the centrality of individual agency and the complementarity between the two.

Development is, in his view, about the removal of what he calls ‘unfreedoms,’ those things “that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency.”

Sen uses specific concrete examples of his theoretical points only sparingly. As someone who is not an economist, I could have used more examples to illustrate his thinking. But those that he does use are well chosen and extremely memorable.

As a world federalist, I found it very gratifying and inspiring to read Development As Freedom: our perspective is so well articulated and defined, and by a Nobel prize winner in economics no less. Sen, however, does not let us rest easy in our beliefs and strategies but provides substantive challenge as well as affirmation and articulation. He states, “Nothing, arguably, is as important today in the political econo-

“Development is about the removal of ‘unfreedoms,’ those things “that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency.”

my of development as an adequate recognition of political, economic and social participation and leadership of women.” As World Federalists, we are very good at ‘talking the talk’ on this issue, but much less good in ‘walking the walk’ in terms of our succession planning and encouragement of the leadership of women.

We are also challenged by such statements as, “The rights of minorities often have to be preserved against the intrusion of a majority’s persecution and its grand gains in utility.” It is time for us to have some substantive conversations about how we define ‘minorities’ and, intimately related to that question, how we understand such current realities as Arab Spring in World Federalist terms.

Development As Freedom was written in 1999 but 13 years later, it still reads as fresh and

timely. Amartya Sens’ membership on the UN Secretary-General’s high-level panel reviewing post-2015 development goals gives this work added relevance.

It speaks strongly and articulately to the values and ideas that World Federalists espouse. We world federalists could, if we so chose, read this book as a kind of ‘proof-text’ for what we struggle so hard to say and live in the world. Perhaps the book also reads in such a fresh and timely fashion because the world has made so little progress towards the ‘development as freedom’ that Sen describes and advocates. As we live and move and have our being in the expression of subsidiarity, complexity, complementarity and the celebration of unity in diversity, we should commit ourselves to re-reading Sen’s words once a decade. We should commit ourselves to living them every day.

ICC Update: defining crime of aggression Continued from page 14 ________

and conditions for the exercise of jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, as well as (2) the prohibition of weapons such as poisonous gases and liquids and special bullets as “war crimes.”

The amendment regarding the crime of aggression defines an act of aggression to mean “the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.” The Court will exercise jurisdiction through state or Security Council referral beginning one year after the ratifica-

tion of the amendment by 30 States Parties, and no earlier than January 2017.

There are some NGO concerns related to the exemption of nationals from Non Parties to the Rome Statute and other concerns regarding the unlikelihood of a State Party surrounded by Non State Parties ever ratifying the amendment.

The first ratification of the crime of aggression amendments was in May 2012 by Liechtenstein. Since then, Samoa and Trinidad and Tobago have followed suit. Germany’s ratification is expected in early 2013.

Legislation is reportedly in progress in a dozen other states.

See crimeofaggression.info/.

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26th International Congress and the WFMC National Meeting

World Federalists come together in Winnipeg Canadian and international World Federalists gathered in Winnipeg from July 8–13 for the 26th International Congress of the World Federalist Movement along with WFM–Canada’s national meeting.

Some of the highlights include: – A thematic panel (video available) on a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly was moderated by WFM–Canada executive director Fergus Watt with panelists, Andreas Bummel (Chairman and CEO, Committee for a Democratic UN), Bill Blaikie (former member of parliament) and Warren Allmand (WFM–Canada President).

– A second thematic panel, on the 10th Anniversary of the International Criminal Court, featured William Pace, Executive Director of WFM-IGP and Convenor of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, and Takahiro Katsumi of WFM Japan. The panel began with a video from WFM-IGP and a presentation on the Crime of Aggression by

Mr. Katsumi. Video of the discussion that followed is on the website.

– On Thursday evening, WFM– Canada hosted an awards banquet which saw the presentation of the World Peace Award to author Erna Paris and the Hanna Newcombe Lifetime Achievement Award to longtime WFM member Jim Christie. See the opposing page for excerpts of Erna Paris’ speech. Audio recordings of the speeches are also available at the WFMC website.

– During the week, a number of “side events” were held. Shimri Zameret discussed the Occupy movement and grassroots approaches to democracy; Bob Flax presented the new website of the Democratic World Federalists; Chris Hamer led a discussion on uniting the democracies; and Fernando Iglesias explained the “Manifesto for Global Democracy.” As well, there was a discussion on involving young people in the World

Federalist Movement with Shimri Zameret, Becky Luff and Joan-Marc Simon.

– Four Policy Commissions met throughout the week and developed policy outcome documents that were adopted by WFM-IGP. The four commissions were organized thematically: International Justice, the Rule of Law and Human Rights; Peace, Human Security and Conflict Prevention; Global democracy and United Nations Reform – Federalism at different levels; and Global Environmental and Economic Governance – Managing the Global Commons and the effects of Economic and Social Globalization.

The text of these statements are also available at the WFMC website.

Photos are available from various events, including the opening reception, WFMC’s national meeting, a brown bag lunch with WFM President Lloyd Axworthy, the thematic panels and the WFM–Canada awards banquet.

Delegates to the WFM Congress plenary review and discuss policy statements arising from the policy commissions.

Photos, video and text of different events that took place in Winnipeg are all available on the WFM–Canada website at www.worldfederalistscanada.org/ Winnipeg.html

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WFMC World Peace Award

On human rights as a strategy for peace

Excerpts of remarks by Erna Paris upon receiving the 2012 World Peace Award, presented by the World Federalist Movement – Canada in Winnipeg, July 12, 2012.

Erna Paris

“To frame rights, law and justice as the entitlement of the few is always dangerous, for the excluded are likely to be preyed upon as beings of lesser worth.”

A complete audio version of this speech is available a http:// www.worldfederalistscanada.org/ 26thInternational CongressBanquet Audio.html

“

On reflection, I think I may have been a World Federalist sympathizer before the age of 10. My father was a remarkable man who took his parenting duties seriously. One of his many educational pursuits was to orchestrate political and literary conversations at our family dining table in which everyone was expected to have a considered opinion about the subject at hand, regardless of their age.

One day, the principal of my elementary school festooned the corridor walls with the pages of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I can still picture myself standing on tip toes, using my recently acquired reading skills to take in the document. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” it said. That includes me! I remember thinking. I couldn’t wait to tell my father.

The document on the wall also notified me that, “Human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” That also sounded like promising information to take home. Naturally, I did not know that this was the first document of its kind in history, or that it had come about as a direct result of the murder of millions of European Jews. I think I knew vaguely that something unspeakable had happened to my people – and that the reason it was unspeakable was that it never came up at

our dinner table, where father was the arbiter of everything worth knowing. Yet reading that seminal document on the school walls, I sensed that it represented protection… from something I couldn’t fathom.

I now believe that the Holocaust, which I learned about in incremental pieces over my teenage years, was a root, if not the root, of my passion for justice, for universal human rights, and for the rule of law. I am a third-generation Canadian, not a direct survivor of that event; however, like many Jews, I carry with me a sharp awareness of what might have been were it not for my grandparents’ chance emigration from Eastern Europe to Canada at the turn of the 20th century.

It is, I believe at least in part, this razor’s edge of understanding that has led me to explore the universal foundations of experience and extreme vulnerability, including the psychological factors that come into play when community breaks down, moral inhibitions fail, and criminality is normalized.

Among the tentative inferences I have drawn across the 40 years of my writing life, a few stand out from the rest. The first is the substantive importance of universal human rights as a strategy for peace. To frame rights, law and justice as the entitlement of the few is always dangerous, for the excluded are likely to be preyed upon as beings of lesser worth. A second observation is that the now-commonplace phrase – no lasting peace without justice of some kind – is likely true, with a stress on the word ‘lasting.’ I have seen from my

study of historical memory in places that have experienced conflict, followed by what may appear to be a stable peace, that the victims of major offenses such as crimes against humanity and genocide will eventually demand some form of accountability.

I was halfway through my fourth book before I realized that I had spent the previous 15 years writing about interrelated themes. They are, briefly: How do nations remember, or choose not to remember, their national histories after war and other crises? And are there social and political consequences to these memory choices? Second, how and why does the public consensus with regard to minorities in mixed ethnic societies sometimes change from tolerance to intolerance? How is it that seemingly ordinary people can be led with such apparent ease to commit atrocities against people who were their friends and neighbours? And finally, what might be needed to rebalance the social pendulum after war and other major crises?

Somewhere along the way, the seminal importance of the rule of law and justice presented itself to me as my destination. Justice as a reconciler of historical memory. Justice as relief for the victims of major crimes. Justice as pushback against the longaccepted impunity of perpetrators, who must be held accountable in the short or long term if societies are to properly regain their footing after conflict.

Justice as a many-featured Continued on page 18

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WFM at the cutting edge of internationalism Continued from page 17 ________

instrument of possible reconciliation among peoples.

When I examine the priorities of the World Federalist Movement, I note that this organization has been at the cutting edge of global internationalism for decades – and that your work unfailingly promotes the common, or public, good. This ancient idea has had its ups and downs. In our own time, the notion of a public good fell into disrepute in the 1980s when U.S. president Ronald Reagan began to promote his trickle-down economic theories. The writings of Ayn Rand, today more popular than ever, openly promote disdain for the disadvantaged.

Hyper-individualism replaced collective responsibility, which is a sine qua non of citizenship.

Before, throughout, and after – popular or not – World Federalism has held to the foundational ideal of citizenship, and not just within national boundaries. The World Federalist Movement has consistently been the first to promote ideas that were first seen as extravagant, but have come to pass, such as a permanent international criminal court, and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. You were an intellectual backbone of peacekeeping, for which Lester Pearson, a Canadian prime minister, won the Nobel Prize. Today, you advocate the absolutely necessary reform of the Security Council. And the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to improve the democratic character of global governance – an idea that is

slowly attracting attention as the Security Council looks increasingly dysfunctional.

As a Canadian, I am honoured to point to the seminal tenure of Lloyd Axworthy as Canada’s minister of foreign affairs. Mr. Axworthy shifted the focus of this country away from traditional issues of territorial security to human security – to the protection of civilians – on grounds that, as the 20th century drew to a close, sovereign states were less able to shield their citizens from abuse; indeed, the sovereign frequently transformed himself into the prime abuser. That Mr. Axworthy is a long-time member of the World Federalist Movement does not surprise me.

The idea of human security also paved the way for Canada to become the prime mover in a group of like-minded states that in 1998 miraculously agreed to the Rome Statute, the treaty underpinning the world’s first permanent international criminal court. This is my chance to thank Bill Pace, executive director of the World Federalist Movement and also the driving force behind the Coalition for an International Criminal Court.

Some years ago, I interviewed the late Robert McNamara. He was an old man, close to 90, and he told me he had been doing a lot of thinking. He realized that economic sanctions were largely ineffective and that military intervention was a rough, crude instrument. There had to be a third option, he said. He had come to believe that option was international justice.

Towards the end of our conversation, he began to speak about

something he said would not have crossed his mind when he was younger. The power of empathy. Empathy is a tool for understanding events from an opposing view, he said. He now believed that knowledge so gleaned should be a strategic element of military planning. As evidence, he cited his 1995 visit with North Vietnam’s former foreign minister, the man who had been his enemy counterpart during the war. He said he was shocked to learn that while the U.S. believed that the war was about maintaining the security of the West by preventing the Communist Chinese and the Communist Soviets from controlling South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese thought of the conflict as a civil war. They saw the United States as a colonial power.

In memoriam

Shirley Farlinger Longtime activist Shirley Farlinger died peacefully December 18 in Toronto following a long struggle with cancer.

Shirley Farlinger was a member of WFM–Canada’s governing Council for many years in the 1980s and early 1990s. She also served as President of the World Federalist Foundation. She was a strong supporter of a number of peace and disarmament organizations in Canada, particularly Science for Peace and Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. She served for many years on the editorial board for Disarmament Times, published by the NGO Committee for Disarmament at the UN, New York.

“The World Federalist Movement has consistently been the first to promote ideas that were first seen as extravagant, but have come to pass…”

DECEMBER 2012

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Branch News Vancouver — In July, WFMC’s Vancouver branch hosted a visit

by Andreas Bummel, SecretaryGeneral of the international campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. While in Vancouver, he spoke at a public meeting and held separate discussions with Vancouver city councillors as well as with Vancouver MP Don Davies. In August, the annual branch picnic was followed by a meeting where Duncan Graham reported on the Winnipeg WFM Congress.

In September, the guest speaker was Simon Fraser University professor of contemporary literature Stephen Collis. Collis has written Dispatches from the Occupation, a collection of essays on the Occupy movement. In October, Dr. Michael Markwick of Capilano University’s School of Communication discussed the state and democracy, the role of the individual and how democracy can be renewed. In November, Vancouver branch hosted a discussion called “Beefy problems: Meat consumption on today’s massive scale” with author Eleanor Boyle, discussing the global issue of environmental and health problems resulting from large-scale livestock production and heavy meat consumption.

Ms. Boyle authored a recently published book High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (highsteaksbook.com). Later in November, the Vancouver branch was co-sponsor (with the UBC School of Social Work, Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Vancouver Branch of the UN Association in Canada) of a public lecture on “Ottawa and Poverty” by Ken Battle, president of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy with Dr. Marjorie Griffin

Cohen from Simon Fraser University as respondent. Vancouver branch meetings are held on the third Thursday of each month, usually at the Hewett Centre, Unitarian Church, 949 W. 49th Ave. at Oak St. Victoria — At the September meeting, Bill Pearce led a discussion on global warming and global energy needs, reviewing the work of University of California Professor Richard Muller.

Later, Joan Russow gave a talk on her experiences at the June 2012 Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.

The Branch held a discussion November 30 on Canada’s vote against granting the Palestinian Authority upgraded observer status in the United Nations General Assembly. Subsequently, the topic migrated to the WFMC national executive; a letter from WFMC President Warren Allmand to Foreign Affairs Minister Baird expressed disappointment with Canada’s vote, opposed further Israeli settlement expansion and reiterated the need for Canada to regain a balanced approach to Middle East politics.

Toronto — Award-winning Canadian author Bill Freeman is leading efforts to reorganize the WFMC Toronto Branch. A meeting is scheduled for early 2013.

For more information, contact Bill at billfreeman@rogers.com. A number of Toronto World Federalists attended the public meeting organized in November by Pugwash Canada where former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo was the guest speaker.

Montreal — On November 23, Evan Cinq-Mars, WFMC Council

member and Junior Research Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, spoke on ‘The Responsibility to Protect (R2P): after Libya and Syria: Which way forward?’ See page 7.

Myron Frankman, also a WFMC Council member as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the Montreal Branch, will be speaking at the annual post-holiday luncheon January 27 at the Café of the Museum of Fine Arts. His topic: ‘The Post2015 Millennium Development Goals: Will Rhetoric Outpace Commitment?’ (See page 5 for a related article.) Myron presented a related paper, ‘Universalizing the UN Declaration of Human Rights,’ at the 14th meeting of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) in September in Munich, Germany. For details on the luncheon and to make reservations, contact Carol Greene, cgreene@sympatico.ca.

Remembering Marie-Berthe Dion Montreal Branch members were saddened by the death in August of Marie-Berthe Dion at the age of 99. A letter-writing group, which she initiated and convened for many years, was named in her honour and has continued for almost 20 years.

This fall, the group’s meeting topics were ‘Action on Climate Change,’ ‘Criminal Justice in Canada Today,’ updates on the Cluster Munitions Convention, and the ‘Arms Trade Treaty.’

Persistent and good-humoured, Marie-Berthe was an active member of the Montreal Branch and served in the 1990s as a member and also chairperson on WFM–Canada’s governing Council.

20 mondial

DECEMBER 2012

Canadians prefer peacekeeping demonstrates that UN peace operations are still the public’s by the UN Security Council. most preferred institutional The recent policy review cararrangement for Canadian overried out by the Department of seas deployments. NATO allies Foreign Affairs and International such as France, Italy and Spain Trade (DFAIT) identifies Canahave all ramped up their comda’s growing strategic interests mitments to UN peacekeeping in in Africa. recent years. So too have rising Additionally, peace operations powers like Brazil, India and under United Nations auspices China. demonstrate In Canada, numerous comparthere are strong “United Nations peace ative advantages institutional operations provide over deployments voices and unparalleled legitimacy to by regional orgaindustry lobbies nizations like any international effort.” that stubbornly NATO or the EU. insist on avoidUN operations are ing the UN, premore cost effective. They are gen- ferring a singular emphasis on erally better able to coordinate joint operations with the United with and integrate the various States. However, there are some civilian components that are military operations that the U.S. essential to successful postis not well suited for. Peacekeepconflict stabilization, reconstrucing is one. tion and governance. And most The more prudent course for importantly, United Nations Canadian defense policy planpeace operations provide unparners would be one that leaves a alleled legitimacy to any interna- variety of options open. tional effort.

A return to significant numCanada gained considerable bers of Canadian soldiers joining influence and respect on the UN peace operations would be a world stage when it was a leadlong overdue and much welcomed ing contributor to UN peacekeep- development. ing. It made sense for Canada’s A comprehensive fact sheet on interests as a middle power back “Canada and UN Peacekeeping” then and it still does today. is available at www.worldfederDespite the recent decline in our alistscanada.org. contributions, polling in Canada Continued from page 2 _________

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