Palestinians vs the Arms Trade Treaty?

The final week of negotiations for an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is well underway at the UN in New York, after years of campaigning by governments, civil society organisations and survivors of armed violence. As the negotiations reach crunch point, the prospects for achieving a strong treaty that will have a real impact on reducing armed violence around the world are diminishing. Throughout the negotiations, states which do not want to see a high set of legally binding common standards for arms transfer controls have been making every effort to disrupt the process – including Algeria, Egypt, Iran and Syria.


The start of the negotiations was stalled by a dispute over the status of the Palestinian delegation. The Egyptian delegation proposed that the Palestinians should be regarded as a UN member state for the purposes of the ATT diplomatic conference, with the support of many other Arab states. There was concern that, should the issue have gone to a vote, most states would abstain, the Arab states would win and Israel would walk out of the negotiations, followed by the US. Without the US in the room, the whole conference would be seen to be dead in the water. As someone who has dedicated a lot of time and energy to campaigning both for Palestinians’ rights and for a strong ATT, I watched in horror as news of this situation began to arrive in my inbox.


The Egyptian delegation does not want to see a strong ATT agreed, and I suspect that its motivations for raising this point of order had less to do with solidarity with the Palestinians and everything to do with disrupting the treaty process and appeasing a domestic political audience. Egypt is a significant importer and growing exporter of conventional arms, and its government knows that if a treaty was agreed which made it illegal to transfers arms where there was a clear risk of them facilitating serious violations of international humanitarian law or human rights law it could seriously inhibit its ability to import (given its own human rights record) and export to other states in the region (given theirs). After President Mubarak was overthrown, ATT supporters were disappointed (but not surprised) to note that the Egyptian position on the treaty did not change at all – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces continues to be vehemently opposed. Furthermore, the negotiations began just a week after new Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi took office, and championing the Palestinian cause at the UN no doubt appeared to him a useful means of demonstrating a break from the Mubarak era and shoring up popular support. A happy confluence of interests, then, for two branches of Egypt’s government still uneasy in each other’s presence.


This is not to say that the Palestinians themselves were not a driving force behind the move. Palestinians have suffered a great deal from the poorly regulated global arms trade, bearing the brunt of the millions of dollars of arms transferred to the Israeli Government each year. However, the Palestinian Authority is no doubt highly sceptical about the prospects for achieving a treaty which would actually prevent the US, Europeans and others from providing arms that support the Israeli occupation of Palestine (and they’re probably right). Despite the recent bid for membership status and plan to seek non-member status, it is impossible to understate the level of faith Palestinians have in the UN to do anything to improve their circumstances, after many years of failed attempts. To most Palestinians, the suggestion that the UN might be about to put a stop to the decades-long flow of arms to Israel which has made it the largest military power in the region would be laughable.


The issue of the Palestinians' status at the ATT diplomatic conference appears to have been resolved through some kind of compromise, allowing the Palestinian delegation to attend some session and not others. However, the details of the deal that was struck have not been made public, and it is possible that the issue will raise its head again in the next few days, particularly if ATT sceptics do not like the way the negotiations are going.


Is it wrong for the Palestinians (or the Egyptians) to use – and potentially derail – the ATT conference in their pursuit of UN recognition? The issue is certainly not likely to be solved on the sidelines of the ATT negotiations, and it would be a shame if this treaty process which so many have worked so hard for for such a long time was undermined by the move. While it may help increase the pressure on UN member states to make progress on the Palestinian issue at the UN General Assembly in September, many of the states which the Palestinians would rely on for support are also keen advocates for the ATT, and the Palestinians risk alienating them if they’re not careful.


All of that said, Palestinians have been continually let down by the international community, and the UN in particular – its failure to enforce international law, failure to help facilitate a peace process in which the odds are not stacked in Israel’s favour, failure to help protect the most basic rights of Palestinians. Disrupting other, unrelated international processes in order to get their cause back on the agenda may not be the wisest move, but when all else appears to have failed, can we really blame them?

After the Shalit deal: freedom for the 164?

One can only begin to imagine the immense relief and jubilation being felt by Gilad Shalit and his family this week after his release from captivity after five long years.

However, while Shalit's release is cause for celebration, the prisoner exchange deal does not represent any major advance in the "peace process", and aspects of the deal are more a cause for gloom than optimism.

When the first list of prisoners to be released from Israeli jails was published, the first thing I did was to look down the list at the year in which each prisoner was born. Not one of them is a minor. According to the Israeli Prison Service, there are 164 Palestinian children aged between 12 and 17 in Israeli prisons.

When Gilad Shalit was originally captured, Hamas demanded the release of all Palestinian women and children from Israeli prisons in exchange for his release.[1] While I do not endorse capturing a young man and depriving him of his basic rights as a means of securing the release of those children, it is to Hamas' shame that they have prioritised the release of their own activists over those children's freedom. In the past, when the Israeli state has released large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, as it did in August 2008, it has chosen 'low value' prisoners, often with little left of their sentences to serve, Fatah members released to bolster the Palestinian Authority in its struggle with Hamas. The 164 Palestinian child prisoners would surely fall more into this 'low value' category than those who were released this time round, many of whom have been convicted of violent crimes against Israeli civilians. However, in this case, Hamas haggled with the Israeli Government over which prisoners it wanted released, prioritising its own key party activists.

While the Hamas leadership is known to have little respect for human rights, the Israeli Government is far from blameless in all this, as Amnesty International has pointed out, and not only because it chooses to imprison children. It continues to hold Palestinian prisoners on Israeli soil in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, often denying them family visits and arbitrarily placing them in solitary confinement for long periods. Furthermore, as UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pointed out in a recent report, while Israel punishes Palestinians who have carried out attacks on Israeli civilians, Israelis who have carried out attacks on Palestinian civilians often are not brought to justice. Citing several cases where Israeli authorities apparently either turned a blind eye to abuses or actively supported them, Ban Ki Moon called on Israel “ensure that all serious allegations concerning criminal acts committed by settlers or the Israel Defence Forces are subject to independent, impartial, effective, thorough and prompt investigations, in accordance with international standards.” Indeed, bearing in mind some of the shocking abuses for which justice has never been served, one might of the consider the 164 child prisoners to be the lucky ones when compared with the fate of some Palestinian children, such as ten-year-old Ahmed Musa.

However, the detention of children - and their mistreatment whilst incarcerated - can have profound and lasting effects upon their wellbeing which last into adulthood. As part of the Shalit deal, the Israeli Government is due to release a further 577 Palestinian prisoners in December, but it is not yet known whether any of them will be minors.

[1] I do not discuss the issue of women prisoners here along with children as I do not believe that women should be regarded as akin to children as per the "womenandchildren" conglomeration - nor should it be assumed that men are any less deserving of their freedom.

Time to export our arms controls to the UN

In February 2011, UN member states will attend the third of four Preparatory Committees (PrepComs) with the aim of preparing the ground for agreement on an international legally-binding Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in 2012. The 2012 negotiations will represent the culmination of 15 years of campaigning by NGOs, parliamentarians, Nobel Laureates and victims of armed violence.

The poorly regulated trade in arms fuels conflict, destabilises entire regions, undermines sustainable development and contributes to human rights abuses and violations of international law. While states have a right to self-defence and a legitimate need to retain arms for defence and security, poor regulation of the trade has devastating consequences. Approximately two thousand people die each day as a result of armed violence, with many more injured, displaced or traumatised.

Read the full article as published in Parliamentary Brief magazine.

Leaked cables confirm long-held suspicions over Chagos

The Chagos Islanders - no strangers to disappointment - have had their hopes of returning home to the British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT) raised and then dashed again this year.

The Liberal Democrats' party policy has long been that the Chagossians should be allowed to return to their islands, and in opposition they campaigned strongly for the Labour Government to drop its case against the Chagossians at the European Court of Human Rights. While the Conservative Party did not explicitly call for the case to be dropped, the now Foreign Secretary William Hague stated publicly that a just solution must be sought, and the then Conservative Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Keith Simpson stated that:

"...if the consequence of [the 2010 General Election] is that my party finds itself in government, I think we will want to revisit the whole issue with an open mind, because we cannot continue the present policy."

Indeed, even the US administration believed that the new government may bring with it a reversal of Labour's policy on Chagos, as one of the memos recently published by Wikileaks reveals that US embassy official Richard Mills wrote:

"We are not as sanguine[...]that the Conservatives would oppose a right of return."

After the General Election in May, the new coalition government stated that it was carrying out a review of its policies in relation to "the whole pattern of issues raised by the British Indian Ocean Territory's situation." As recently as July, the Foreign Secretary is reported to have told Dr Philippa Gregory in a constituency surgery that it appeared that the best solution was for the Chagossians to be allowed to return to the outer islands.

However, in August the Foreign Office revealed in several letters to campaigners that it was not changing its "fundamental policy on resettlement", and would continue to fight the case at the European Court of Human Rights. The reasons given were the same as before: compensation has been paid, the 2002 Feasibility Study said resettlement was not viable, defence and security risks, environmental concerns, financial costs of resettlement - all arguments which can be and have been easily refuted.

It seems that those who are totally unconvinced by FCO officials' arguments when on the outside, once in government can be quickly convinced to tow the line. Which raises the question, what do Foreign Office officials know that we don't?

The leaked US embassy cables have shed some light on the reality behind some of the FCO's arguments, confirming what many had suspected.

When Gordon Brown announced the creation of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the last weeks of his premiership, Foreign Minister Chris Bryant stated that,

"the extension of the marine protected area and the new measures we are taking will not have any direct or indirect effect on the rights or otherwise of Chagossians to return to the islands. These are two entirely separate issues.”

According to the cables, FCO Overseas Territories Director Colin Roberts described the proposed MPA as the "most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands' former inhabitants or their descendants from resettling in the BIOT."

The cable further reveals that while the US was concerned that the creation of an MPA would raise opposition to the US military presence on Diego Garcia, Roberts "insisted that the establishment of a marine park[...]would in no way impinge on US Government use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes" and that "the UK and U.S. should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that U.S. interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld."

In addition, despite previous (perhaps carefully worded) statements by the UK Government that "the historical treatment of Chagossians by the British Government at the time is a scar on our history" and "we should be ashamed of what was done in the name of this country", Roberts states that "We do not regret the removal of the population."

So what is the real reason for concocting stories to justify preventing the Chagossians from returning? According to Roberts, "the primary purpose of the BIOT is security." Many have rightly questioned what possible threat a small community of Chagossians living on the outer islands could pose to a US military base. It is true that they would pose no direct threat to the operation of the base; after all, "Many yachties today enjoy the "island paradise" for months at a time. They simply pay a fee for the right to stay in the territory".[1] However, it may be instructive to look at the US Government's original reasoning for asking the UK to evict the Chagossians in the first place. In the 1960s, many of the developing countries which were host to US military bases were gaining independence, and often allying themselves with the USSR. As a result, they were evicting the US military from their territories. If the Chagossians were to push for self-determination, they could demand the expulsion of US forces from Diego Garcia. As one 1966 foreign office brief put it:

"The primary objective in acquiring these islands from Mauritius and the Seychelles[...]was to ensure that Her Majesty's Government had full title to, and control over, these islands so that they could be used for the construction of defence facilities without hindrance or political agitation and so that when a particular island would be needed for the construction of British or United States defence facilities Britain or the United States should be able to clear it of its current population. The Americans in particular attached great importance to this freedom of manoeuvre, divorced from the normal considerations applying to a populated dependent territory."[2]

The logic of removing the Chagossians was not that they would pose a threat to the secure operation of the base on Diego Garcia, but that they would threaten the very existence of a base whose purpose, like 1,000 others, is to maintain the ability of the US to project its military might across the world in the 'post-colonial' era. It would seem that the new UK Government, just like the last one, considers maintaining the (steadily waning) global military dominance of the USA to be more important than the human rights of 2,000 indigenous Chagossians.

[1] David Vine, Island of Shame (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), p15

[2] 'Presentation of British Indian Ocean Territory in the United Nations', quoted in Vine, Island of Shame, p78

Development assistance, David Cameron style (part 2)

Back in December I blogged about David Cameron's plans for international development policy under a Tory government. I argued that his proposed MyAid programme, which would give the public the opportunity to vote on which aid programmes should received funding from DFID, may not lead to resources being allocated to the work which is most needed. This point was well made in the House of Commons recently by Jim Sheridan MP, who highlighted the need for funding for programmes tackling female genital mutilation, and questioned how the MyAid programme would "protect vital programmes that do not have the X factor and do not receive an internet vote?"

Now, Britain has a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, and its programme for government includes, alongside the MyAid idea, some commendable commitments to introduce greater transparency on aid spending, support an Arms Trade Treaty and make progress on the MDGs. Cameron has announced his intention to set up a new monitoring body to assess the effectiveness of DFID's spending.

Of course, we all want to see development aid being spent on programmes that have a real impact. But my concern is that the desire to see instant, concrete results can actually divert funding away from programmes which would bring the greatest long term benefit.

Sometimes, what is needed to bring about development is not just accelerating economic growth or providing much needed goods and services in poor countries - although these things are important. The UN measures development not just in terms of economic development but in terms of human development, which is reflected in the MDGs. In some cases this can require social change, which may take decades to come into fruition.

In 2008 I spent three months in Palestine carrying out research on methods and frameworks for evaluating the the effectiveness of development programmes, specifically those devoted to women's rights and women's empowerment. What I found concurred with arguments in the development literature that the trend towards an increasing focus on evaluating the impacts of development projects and programmes, if not applied with caution, can have the opposite of its intended effects.[1]

Sari Hanafi and Linda Tabar summarise the point with a quote from a member of one Palestinian women's organisation who said: "Sometimes donors expect a revolution for the $60,000 they contributed. I will not work with such donors again. If they think they can see such results right away there is a problem."[2]

Many programmes for women's empowerment adopt the 'training the trainers' model, teaching women how to train other women in their communities in advocacy skills, gender analysis, citizenship, IT skills and more. Such programmes aim to plant the seeds of social change, which may take years to grow into a wider social movement with real impacts on society. Meanwhile, projects which produce quick, tangible results may attract more funding even if ultimately they do less to bring about the social change which is needed and desired.

David Cameron must also not forget, amid the upcoming frenzy of budget cuts, that thorough evaluation requires funding dedicated for that purpose. Many development NGOs are funded only on a project-by-project basis, and if that budget does not include funds for the evaluation process itself then it may not be carried out. It is a cost worth bearing, as only through evaluation of its activities can any organisation learn from its experience. However, it is a long term investment, and donors must ensure that development NGOs have the space and the resources to carry out evaluations which are not just tools for donor accountability and future funding decisions, but also provide a useful basis for organisational learning.

In a competitive environment where continued funding depends on producing evidence of instant impacts, the allocation of resources can become skewed toward low-risk, short-termist projects, and the financial need for a positive evaluative result can get in the way of the kind of honest appraisal which is vital to building long term strategies for development. A push towards transparency and thorough evaluation of impacts is, on the face of it, a positive thing, but it must be done with sensitivity, ensuring that the evaluation process serves not only the agenda of donors such as DFID, but also that of the organisations whom they fund and, most importantly, the communities whose quality of life they aim to improve.

[1] e.g. Islah Jad, 'NGOs: Between buzzwords and social movements' in Development in Practice, vol 17 no. 4, pp. 622-629 (2007); Sari Hanafi and Linda Tabar, The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite: Donors, International Organisations and Local NGOs, (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 2005).

[2] Hanafi and Tabar, The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite, p. 186.

The price of Brown’s green legacy

In January 2009, shortly before the end of his Presidency, George W Bush announced the creation of a Marine Protected Area around its overseas territories in the Pacific Ocean. It was widely speculated in the news media at the time that this was an attempt to create a positive legacy for a deeply unpopular leader.

Roll on 2010, and Gordon Brown is preparing to say goodbye to Number 10 Downing Street. At the beginning of this month, the Government announced the creation of a Marine Protected Area around the Chagos Islands – the UK’s overseas territories in the Indian Ocean.

I have documented before the British Government’s attempts to prevent the former inhabitants of the Chagos Islanders returning home, having been exiled in the 1960s to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia. The creation of the Marine Protected Area (MPA) means that no fishing will be allowed in the waters around the islands, thereby removing the only viable means the Chagossians would have of making a living should they return to the islands. The Foreign Office insists that this does not prejudice the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, expected later this year, on whether or not the Chagossians should be allowed to return. An unusually flustered Chris Bryant, Minister for Europe, tried to defend the Government’s decision in the House of Commons, acknowledging no contradiction in this position. He said, “The extension of the marine protected area and the new measures we are taking will not have any direct or indirect effect on the rights or otherwise of Chagossians to return to the islands. These are two entirely separate issues.”

In itself, the MPA is a good idea, which will help to protect a precious marine ecosystem. But it could have been created, as many Parliamentarians requested, with a condition to allow limited fishing in certain areas, to support the Chagossians should they win their battle to return. Bizarrely, the MPA will include – much as Bush’s does – for an exclusion zone to allow for continued military activity in the area. Somehow, the Foreign Office believes that while small-scale fishing to support a small community on the outer islands will cause unacceptable damage to the environment, a large military base on Diego Garcia is perfectly acceptable.

More recently still, the Government’s current justification for preventing the Chagossians’ return – that its resettlement feasibility study showed the islands could not support repopulation – has been seriously called into question. One of the consultants commissioned by the Foreign Office to produce the study has revealed that his conclusion that the resettlement was a viable option was silenced by his client.

Just as the Government has evaded democratic scrutiny at every turn in this sorry saga, the announcement of the MPA was made while Parliament was in recess. Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis, who promised just weeks earlier during an excellent debate on the subject that MPs would be fully briefed before any final decision was made on the MPA, was nowhere to be seen.

One can hardly begrudge Gordon Brown for wanting to make protection of the planet and marine biodiversity a part of his legacy, but this needn’t be incompatible with human rights. Jeremy Corbyn MP, who has long campaigned for the rights of Chagossians, pointed out that “every other marine protected area proposed anywhere in the world by anybody includes a local human element to protect the zone” – a role which those Chagossians who do wish to return would be more than happy to fulfil. Diane Abbott MP (Labour) has said the Government “cannot hide behind environmentalism to mask what many of us fear is an encroachment on the rights and legitimate expectations of the Chagossian people”, while Mark Field MP (Conservative) accused the Government of “using the environmental issue as a fig leaf for the continued abuse of these human rights”.

I leave you with the words of human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who wrote:

"The truth is that no Chagossian has anything like equal rights with even the warty sea slug. There is no sense that the British government will let them go back. The government is not even contemplating equal rights for Chagossians and sea slugs."

I spoke too soon...

Just a few short weeks ago, on International Women’s Day, I lambasted the UK Government for its lack of commitment to promoting women’s rights in its foreign policy. I referred to Action Aid’s excellent campaign for the establishment of a Ministerial role to co-ordinate the work of the Foreign Office, Department for International Development and Ministry of Defence to tackle violence against women overseas. Referring to a Parliamentary answer to Jo Swinson MP in which the Prime Minister gave an indifferent response to the suggestion, I stated that the Government had no plans to create such a role.

Naturally, shortly after the piece was published on The F Word, the Prime Minister announced a new role for Foreign Office Minister Baroness Kinnock. Obviously I coughed and spluttered a little. I wondered how I had got it so wrong. Clearly the PM declined to reveal his plans in response to a Parliamentary question, preferring to save the announcement for International Women’s Day (somewhat calling into question the point of Parliamentary questions, but that is another matter). I even considered eating my words.

However, I won’t be eating my words, at least until a few more questions have been answered. So close to a General Election, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Government had announced this new role in the knowledge that Baroness Kinnock was highly unlikely to be a Minister (or indeed, Gordon Brown unlikely to be Prime Minister) in a few weeks’ time, making it a somewhat meaningless appointment. On top of that, most Government departments, including the Foreign Office, are facing significant budget cuts, and it seems highly unlikely that the Government will announce additional funding for this work at this stage, let alone create civil service posts to support Baroness Kinnock’s work. In which case, the move would be purely cosmetic.

The other big question is, if the Conservative Party should happen to win the General Election, would they continue this post or abolish it? I used the opportunity of a Women’s Question Time hustings event in Westminster to question all the main political parties on whether they support the continuation of this role. The always-articulate Caroline Lucas MEP offered the Green Party’s support, and Liberal Democrat Women and Equalities Spokesperson Lynne Featherstone MP said her party would also support the role. Of course Vera Baird QC, speaking for the Labour Party, offered her support, but the party I really wanted to hear from was the Conservatives. Theresa May MP first insisted that this was an Ambassadorial Role, not a Ministerial Role (quite whether this is true and what are the implications, I don’t yet know). She then explained that she was in discussions with her party about this question, but that she did not yet know whether the Conservatives would keep the role alive. A Parliamentary motion calling on all parties to commit to keeping the role has, at the time of writing, been signed by 13 MPs, including 1 Conservative, but the party has not yet announced its official line on the issue.

So, the first major question is whether or not there will still be a Minister co-ordinating this work after 6^th May. The second is whether it will have adequate resources and support to make a difference. To her credit, Theresa May also said that there is a difference between creating an Ambassadorial role and creating real change on the ground – which is absolutely true. We have yet to find out whether this role is purely symbolic, or if it will have real clout. Until then, my words will remain uneaten. In the meantime, congratulations to Action Aid and the Gender and Development Network on their campaign success.