Treaty worries
The coordinator of CMC has just sent around an email re the various upcoming logistics for the conference and our first fear has been realised. There will largely be an NGO lock out of the proceedings. This is a disaster for the issue of transparency as the debates will be now held out of the public eye and behind closed doors. The opening and closing ceremonies will be open and there will be a video link so the meeting of the whole can be viewed from outside but the side meetings which is where the various texts of the treaties will be thrashed out will be closed. In each meeting they will only allow four representatives of the CMC to be present. This is a victory for countries like the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany who were very uncomfortable with the physical presence of NGO’s actually being in the room and seeing how the process would unfold. They were very concerned with the transparency of the procedure in Wellington and we heard that a great deal of pressure was put on the Irish government to lock civil society out to a large degree.
This tactic was highly expected but we were hoping that the Irish government would have stood tough on such an important issue. The same pressure was put of the chairs and hosts of the previous meetings in Vienna and Wellington and those governments resisted NGO exclusion.
Are NGOs alarmed and should they now be requesting to be on their countries delegation in order to ensure civil society’s presence and a fully transparent procedure?
The Ban Bus is an advocacy initiative. We are now striving to achieve a ban on cluster bombs. Our immediate mission is to work towards stronger legislation in Australia.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
G’day John and Mette,
Just read through the blog entries and checked out the great photos. Fantastic to see this initiative is off the ground and going so well and we honestly couldn’t ask for a better couple of people than you to be going round and getting people inspired and fired up for a ban on cluster bombs. Great stuff and thanks for the tireless work!
I’ve had it expressed to me a few times now that Irish civil society isn’t used to seeing the government as the good guy here - the guy at the anti-war movement talk isn’t alone. I agree with your comments from the briefing with Alison and Foreign Affairs that “Ireland is one of these strong core countries and her brief was open and had one point, to get the strongest treaty possible. It’s impressive to see a government operate like this. They don’t talk about exceptions and reservations or keeping a few loopholes, they just talk plain and straight.” That’s right but we need to make sure the Irish government stands firm and that there are no compromises on the wrong things or at the wrong times. Your initiative with the Ban Bus and all our campaigners coming from around the world will have a critical role to play on this front.
We’d love to have more NGO representatives in the room during the negotiations and we’ve consistently said this to the Irish. We’re really glad that the Irish haven’t given in to pressure to exclude NGOs from the informal consultations and we’ll be in there, participating fully, intervening and reporting on what goes on in those meetings. So there’s no exclusion there, those side meetings certainly won’t be taking place behind closed doors. There may not have a camera in there, but rest assured the CMCers that are in there will make sure they are transparent.
Can’t wait to catch up for a pint of that Guinness that was wafting over your former apartment. Take care, drive safe and see you next week.
Thomas
P.S. I think my comment is longer than your posting, ha ha!