QUNO Geneva Journal Letter - March 2009
Adam Drury
QUNO, Geneva
Dear Friends,
For once, my habit of leaving things to the last minute has served me well. If I’d been writing this a week ago, I would have been reporting a Geneva still mired in a gloomy winter, with grey, overcast days, freezing temperatures and drizzly rain. Today, however, as I desperately try to finish this letter before the deadline, the weather is glorious – not a cloud in the sky, and warm enough to sit outdoors for lunch – and the crocuses and snowdrops are out in really quite surprising numbers in Quaker House garden.
Even through a rather grim winter (Geneva sits in a basin, so is generally cloudy despite the beautiful sun up on the mountains), the work at QUNO has kept me enthusiastic. Since my last journal letter, I’ve been involved in a wide range of pieces of work around the three main themes of the Disarmament and Peace program, as well as all the various other tasks – the database, the office manual, the website – that are required to keep an office like QUNO running smoothly.
On the disarmament side of things, the new year has been dominated by the first 2009 Session of the Conference on Disarmament, the body which is supposed to be ‘the international community’s only multilateral negotiating forum on disarmament’ – a phrase much repeated by diplomats making statements in the plenary sessions. In practice, however, the Conference is rather less interesting and dramatic than it might be, because it has been deadlocked, unable to agree on what to negotiate, for over a decade. Nevertheless, it is an important forum, which has produced great things in the past, and there is some optimism that a (possibly) changed attitude from the new administration in the USA may be the impetus that is needed to move things forwards. Thus far, however, these changes are not forthcoming, and things continue in a rather repetitive track, with little progress visible in the weekly plenaries that are the only part of the Conference’s work open to NGOs, and so I find myself regarding the proceedings with a mixture of hope and exasperation that has probably been felt by most of my predecessors.
Before Christmas, I attended a rather more upbeat disarmament conference, in the form of the 9th meeting of states parties (I know the grammar of that is odd, but it’s the accepted phrasing, for some reason!) to the Landmine Ban. The week-long conference generally went well, and the Ban, now over 10 years old, came across as an established, institutionalised international instrument, quietly doing its very worthwhile work. The only problems came, depressingly for me as a Brit, from the UK. When it signed the Ban, the UK took on an obligation to clear all landmines from its territory as soon as possible, but within 10 years. Those 10 years are now almost up – as they are for several other states. Unfortunately, the UK has failed to clear the remaining minefields in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas, and indeed has not even begun clearance operations. The problem with this is not so much humanitarian, given the difficulty reaching the minefields in question and the fact that they are clearly marked and fenced, but rather one of attitude. The UK knowingly signed up to the obligation to clear these mines, and the fact that it has not even started and is now demanding a 10 year extension came across, quite frankly, as sheer arrogance.
Looking back at what I’ve written, I realise that it’s been rather negative so far, but in honesty this is a poor representation of my work in general, which has mostly kept me positive and optimistic, with great progress being made in several areas. In our work on the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, the last couple of months have seen a lot of progress towards real, strategic civil society involvement. I’ve been able to be involved with this through a meeting in London, and another that is coming up in Geneva (and for which my plate is rather full with organizational tasks!), bringing together a small group of NGOs to put together some ideas about what our shared agenda is, and how we take it forward. In particular, this has meant engaging with states on the consultation process for an upcoming Secretary General’s report, mapping armed violence and development work around the world, and building links with other civil society organisations, in particular those doing concrete work on the ground.
The mapping work, in particular, has taken up a large proportion of my time, as I and one other person are looking after this for the time being. So, we’ve been gathering data on projects by NGOs, the UN and states, looking at what they do, where they do it and who they work with in their work linking the reduction of armed violence with the promotion of equitable socio-economic development. Obviously, the range of projects has been vast, from enormous UN national development projects right down to tiny community mediation and healing work done by small, local NGOs. This richness and variety is encouraging and rather bewildering, especially when we came to try to build a typology, so that we can explain to governments and other NGOs exactly what kinds of things we mean by Armed Violence and Development work. We’re nearly there, though, and I spent some time last week putting together a paper that we’re sending round to some NGOs for their views.
The peacebuilding work, through the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, is also exciting. Before Christmas, the Platform held its annual forum, as well as organising a Geneva consultation for the UN’s Peacebuilding Support Office, so that they could get the input of Geneva based organisations for a report that they are preparing on peacebuilding and early recovery from conflict. Again, this involved rather a lot of organisational work! I’m also doing a small research project, analysing data that was collected last year on the various peacebuilding organisations working in Geneva, to produce a publication that will outline the ‘Geneva peacebuilding landscape’. In other words, what kinds of organisations are here, what do they do, what are their particular strengths and weaknesses, and how do they work together? Obviously enough, Geneva is heaving with peacebuilding organisations and huge expertise, but there are also some interesting gaps, particularly in communication and discussion between the various organisations – precisely the gap that the Peacebuilding Platform aims to fill.
Away from work, I’ve been enjoying myself despite the winter weather. I feel very much at home in Geneva now, with plenty of friends, a favourite local café, and some good places to go out to at the weekends. Last weekend I went to a packed gypsy music night in a bar in Geneva’s slightly more bohemian quarter of Carouge, and also took a trip to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. Bern turned out to be a lovely, surprisingly small town in a picturesque and cliff-bound river bend, full of cobbled streets, sandstone buildings and long roads of shops in cellars. I’ve also given some winter sports a go, with a couple of trips to the nearby Jura Mountains to go snowshoeing, and one trip up to the Alps to have a go on a snowboard. I fell over a lot. It was good fun though, and I’m keen to go again before the snow melts. The snowshoeing is rather easier, but also great, and the views from the Jura over the lake and onto the Alps and Mont Blanc are simply fantastic. I’ll really miss that scenery – and the work at QUNO, of course – when I leave in August, a time that all of a sudden seems to be only just around the corner.
In Friendship,
Adam Drury
March 2009
