 Rhaid, wrth gwrs yw ymgyrch yn ymgyrch, ddweud i chi'n gydag ar y cyfle i'r cyffredin nhw yma. Rydym yn ei wneud i gael eu cyffredin nhw yma sydd ar gyfer y cyffredin nhw. Rydym yn ei gydag i chi i'n ei wneud i chi gael cyffredin nhw. Mae hwn yn gwybod yn gweithio ar y cyffredin nhw. Mae hwn yn gweithio yma yn y casg hyffredin nhw. Mae'r amser unig i gael eich odd, yn gwybod. Mae'r amser a'r ddiwyddiadu unig. Mae'r gwaith yma yn rhywbeth ar gyfer y cyfnod ar y pethau ar y pethau. Felly yn ei ddweud, yn fwy o'r rhan o'r rhan o'u gweithio ar hyn o'r gwaith. Ond rydw i'n clywed o'r cymunedau ar gyfer y cyfnod, a roeddwn i gynnwys Matthew Bolton, bod hynny'n gweithio'r cyfnod y byd, a Matthew yn y profesor o ffliatw, dyfodol dod yn y Cynllunio Dysarmament ar Pace University yn Yng Nghyrg Cymru. fe was involved in international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, I can. That was a team that he was involved in that was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. He has a great deal of experience working only in academia but also with the UN and with the NGOs and has gathered a lot of field experience from what Marshall Islands through to Kiribati, Fiji, Cook Islands earlier in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, South Sudan, a Vietnam. Yn y gallu yn ymdyn nhw'n ddiddordeb yn y cyfnod o'r cyfnod hynny'n gweld. Mae'n ddweud yn ddod i'r seminol. Mae Mathi'r gweld i'r 10 o 15 minu. Mae'n gweithio'r lleol iawn o'r bobl, ychydig o'r oryginnol. Yn y gall, mae'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r Gery. Mae'r Gery i'r doctor Gery i'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r of the book Sarah has been with us for not so long but is a lecturer in humanitarianism and development here at SELAS. She's a long term peace and conflict scholar with a lot of involvement in mine action and is doing a brilliant job of trying to kind of bring that world of the explosive remnants of warfare into closer contact with with academia and and she'll be followed by another SELAS colleague Dan Plesch over there who is professor of diplomacy and strategy at SELAS and apparently he's also something called a door tenant but a legal practice in Bedford Row and he can tell us what that what that involves. Dan has has been putting out research not only research for a long time but research that's remarkably good at grabbing public attention internationally which is fantastic on all our behavs and is currently focused on critical contemporary global issues broadly including corporate accountability and so on and so forth. We are then very lucky to have Ricardo with us another product of SELAS both your LLM and your PhD and I think currently a postdoc at SELAS too and Ricardo is international policy manager at mine's advisory group which is a humanitarian disarmament organisation based in Manchester which was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier in 1997 and it reminds me that in the first year that we ran the masters in violence conflict and development here at SELAS one or two of you taking that masters we were visited our first crop of students for that masters was visited by character called a former soldier called Ray McGrath who who was the founder of mine advisory group and a very very dynamic individual so it's nice to bring that circle round so Ricardo will bring that kind of practitioner and community engagement perspective to the discussion and then finally we're very lucky to have with us Mary Caldor who is emeritus professor of global governance and director of the conflict research programme at the LSE and amongst other things has pioneered the ideas the concepts of of new wars and of global civil society she's the author of many things including the book new and old wars organised violence in a global era international law and new wars and global security cultures and she has the amazing distinction of having examined my phd and I'm going to and Mary will have a little bit longer than the others as well to speak but I don't want to take up time so I'm going to hand straight over to you Matthew thank you very much indeed thank you and you want to stand or you want to speak from there it's entirely up to you thank you so much for the introduction and and thank you all for coming to this this event our launch of this book global activism and humanitarian disarmament published by Paul Grave and I was asked to talk a little bit about the book about what it's about about what humanitarian disarmament is about and how the book came into being right because sometimes we see these you know sort of package set of words and it's all very neat and it's all been edited but how what's the kind of human story behind it I came into this field of humanitarian disarmament that I'll define in a second because it's a term that a lot of people are not that familiar with through working as a humanitarian aid worker in northern Bosnia shortly after the war and the community that I was living in the Birchco district was particularly affected by minds and explosive remnants of war and I found that to be such a compelling problem compelling in so many different ways but particularly as a as a literal reminder that the violence of the past kind of extended into the present and continued and I found the it to be a really interesting challenge of literally digging out violence from the from our setting and trying to transform situations of conflict into a more disarmed or peaceful setting I soon learned however that that the politics of actually clearing those minds was deeply embedded in the whole political economy of the conflict itself and that was a surprise a difficult one and a wake up call that you couldn't just just get them out of the ground right there was a whole complex of of actors and vested interests who made things difficult or wanted to profit from from the removal of of minds and so that really compelled me and I came to London to do my masters and PhD at the the LSE and I'm very happy that Mary who was my PhD supervisor and Vesna who was also my PhD supervisor are here today it feels like 20 years later to be back in the spot is really quite marvelous but what I examined was the politics of clearing those minds in Afghanistan and Bosnia and what was Sudan and now is Sudan and South Sudan and I began to realize as I finished my PhD that this was actually a field that was not by itself just clearing minds was one part of a broader field of practice called humanitarian disarmament and humanitarian disarmament exists at the the kind of nexus between humanitarianism international law diplomacy and and disarmament and it's a movement that a lot of people haven't really heard about or if they have they've heard like bits of it so what's striking about it is in the since 1996 is achieved four major treaties of the land mine ban treaty the cluster munition convention the arms trade treaty and the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons in 2017 it's also had two Nobel prizes they which were already named the international campaign to ban landmines and then the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons or I can but those are often seen by the prices separate things but many of the people who are involved in these campaigns are actually the same people wearing different hats in different times in different places and they're overlapping circles and so there are in civil society a kind of community of practice called humanitarian disarmament but there almost had been no real academic coverage of it there had been a few practitioners who'd written sort of academic adjacent articles so this is the first book actually that comprehensively covers this field of humanitarian disarmament and we look at it from a variety of different points of view from the view of its kind of approach to weapons as an approach it is focused on a strong normative framing of weapons as a vector of harm of humanitarian and human rights and environmental harm as opposed to a kind of classic security framing that you find in kind of many traditional arms control negotiations the focus is less on security per se and more about the suffering that the weapons cause to civilians as well as to soldiers right they're also marked by strong prohibitions of banning in the case of the land mine cluster munition nuclear weapons treaties entire classes of weapons not with exceptions they're not about controlling it it's about stigmatizing an entire weapon system as inhumane or indiscriminate or both many of these kind of it's for treaties but there's also several other policy processes have also prioritized remedial measures which is symbolized by by Ricardo here they the the approach to clearing mines clearing cluster munitions environmental remediation of nuclear test sites as well as victim assistance and risk education so linking not just what how do we prohibit weapons and and their spread but also how do we do justice to those people who've been affected by those those weapons and that that has been a real i think policy innovation of this field to make sure that you don't take the testimony and the images of victims and survivors and tokenize them to a sort of political legitimation for some you know weapons process but you actually do something for the people who are most affected and then finally a kind of normative framing so arms control has traditionally focused on verifying instruments through surveillance through control through spying on each other through kind of punitive measures and many of the humanitarian disarmament instruments don't actually operate that way they work through what's sometimes called cooperative compliance where the assumption is if you're part of the treaty you're there in good faith and so there's a kind of project management or problem-solving approach to destroying landmines for instance or cluster munitions the assumption is these are bad weapons so you don't want to keep them around rather than these are weapons that give you power and so you want to hide them away from from from everyone and so this is actually developed into a community of practice there are several angio campaigns around it so kind of advocacy people there are also operators the the the organisations that do the demining that provide victim assistance in the field and also a growing number of diplomats who have kind of coming to contact with it and have kind of adopted a humanitarian disarmament identity and you see sometimes the same diplomats being posted to negotiate you know multiple treaties and so finally there the process that has emerged that has driven this is um a close collaboration between civil society and often the diplomats of what's ir scholars sometimes call middle powers or small states those small states don't like to be called small states um they're they just prefer you call them states um but nonetheless uh focus on states that are not the the big powers right the big military powers and and essentially trying to do an end run around the the states that are the main problem in the sense that you don't need to when you are trying to deal with um you know murder you don't bring the murderers in the room to discuss how we're going to regulate their behaviour but instead kind of incorporating states that are broadly in compliance with norms to be the ones that innovate it so our book um tries to summarize that uh story that i've just told you um and then examine it from three different points of view we look at the emergence of norms where do these norms come from how do they get into the policy arena we look at religious actors we look at um uh kind of international lawyers and advocacy people we look at scientists who are often and technical experts who are often called to be the kind of voice of what's possible um and and have this difficult process of trying to find out what it's like to be a scientist and political at the same time which many scientists find very um unnerving um and everyone else does too and then we also look at what happens when these norms emerge how do they get diffused into policy processes and implemented so how does the cluster munition treaty um affect the states like the united states that are not part of the treaty but nonetheless have to adjust their policy um to it um to the implementation of landmine clearance in very complicated political settings which Sarah will talk about and then finally the wider context so how does humanitarian disarmament fit within the broader context of global policy making in general um and also within the specific context of disarmament and arms control and dan will talk about about that so we're really excited that this exists in the world um it had some difficult times uh like getting launched during the pandemic but here we are it exists and um i'm so excited that we have a panel who can discuss various aspects of humanitarian disarmament in this book so thank you thank you everyone for coming um again uh thank you Matthew for guiding us uh through the the process of putting this book together i thought i would also start with that with with the human story of how the book came about or how i even came about into the landmine's campaign i worked as Matthew uh as a humanitarian person uh aid worker in in Nairobi and uh worked with an organization called the Jesuit Refugee Service that um that worked in the region in the eastern African region and over time we realized that the work we were serving refugees were crossing borders who who are maimed and and and needing specialized uh um assistance and it became policy for this for the organization that we and but we engage in the landmine's campaign and i became the de facto person who was doing landmine's engaging uh at the time and and hence campaigning then coming over to england to do my my ma and and and then my phd and here i am today so that the the book itself came about from an international um uh studies association panel in Baltimore in 2017 and of course three years later then we we had the publication that came uh during COVID and the process was led and and and led and i think that what i want to emphasize here was the collaboration between early career researchers i'd just finished my phd and and Taylor the the other co-editor had also finished their phd and we approached Matthew and said you know could we get this published and he he he facilitated that process and it is a beautiful collaboration of uh you know academics who've uh you know senior academics and early career researchers uh going together and the collaboration continues we are re-engaging again in in a in a book um uh called reinvigorating disarmament so um the collaborations uh also with with practitioners has seen me take over from Matthew in in terms of uh being a trustee of an organization that uh is called is uh Seob's conflict and environmental observatory which is an organizations that's looking at the environmental impact of of of war and and the humanitarian consequences of conflict and they're doing this through research so he he stepped down and i i took over from that the the practitioner collaboration uh still continues now to my chapter i i i i my chapter comes under the section of the volume that discusses the difficulties with civil society actors working to advance the humanitarian um the humanitarian um pardon me the humanitarian consequences of conflict and military activities and and uh with the success of the mindband movement as as as we mentioned uh came that a whole new sector within the humanitarian sector and this was the mine action sector that looks at clearance or addressing the consequences of of explosive remnants of war as the chapter is based on my phd uh research so it's quite specific for the time that i'm looking at it addresses it looks at how uh the approach to to the phd was looking examining having a critical examination of the implementation of mine action programmes in in in difficult context like Somaliland's and I used a peace building liberal peace building lens I noted in the in that the way in which mine action was being implemented globally and locally uh in Somaliland reflected some dominant uh critiques of liberal peace building that they were mainly externally led uh mainly uses technical or templates uh technical approaches also it fails or disregards local context and therefore fails to build uh ownership these attributes uh the the critiques argue lead to failure or limited access of peace building interventions however uh this is this is a critique that I contend with uh and and but only to a certain point because I argue that uh or my research established that while these attributes did actually contribute to the challenges of implementing mine action programmes and thereby limiting the peaceability uh potential for for mine action and I used the the the term peaceability I borrowed it from work that Jonathan Good had had done many years ago and I think I recently met and I was mentioning that and it's not been published anywhere I found the report in a in an old archive and you used the the the peaceability idea and I thought it was it was a brilliant one to borrow so uh that actually the the modalities of implementing does do reduce the peaceability potential for mine action but uh that there was more to it that there was more beyond the implementation modalities and this is mainly about context and the context I was looking at was Somaliland it was an unrecognised entity and therefore that explained a lot of the challenges so the article in in the article I argue that Somaliland mine action is really caught within a very specific trap that is shaped by its lack of the lack of international legal status programmatically to treat Somaliland as a state would be seen as political and thus therefore um require a political uh and and also that would challenge the the political non-neutral process it would be a political non-neutral process sorry similar in mine action is also been understood as a part of a broader policy framework of DDR the demilitarised disarmament demobilisation and reintegration framework this framework places more you know emphasis on security rather than sustainable development or humanitarian dimensions of mine action so by framing mine action this way the UN had conceptualised it in in a limiting way as a disarmament arms and arms management programme this meant that mine action was never evaluated holistically so all the evaluation reports that I looked at none included mine action because it was always you know left out of of so the lessons that were to be learned there were missed and and to demonstrate and therefore the issues issues that the UN itself aspires to to to address which include local capacity building and creating local ownership were not were not being achieved and they were being neglected and to illustrate that I have two brief example maybe I'll do one and then I'll share another one during Q&A so that the way the UN approaches mine action or envisages engaging with mine action is three through three different operational scenarios of implementation a humanitarian intervention and this is in instances where the national authorities are unable or unwilling unwilling to address the problem and a mission is established by the security council and in in such a scenario the department then the department of peacekeeping and and and operation peacekeeping operations will will take the lead the other second scenario is a presence of an effective national government then in that scenario UNDP or UNICEF takes the lead the third scenario is where emergency where there is an emergency and therefore the need for a rapid response short-term intervention then the United Nations mine action service takes the lead Somaliland doesn't fit all these you know coordination models so it's an unrecognised entity so in a in a sense there is no government in in the eyes of or in there in as as conceptualized by the UN and therefore the UN could not establish a national capacity building relationship there is no government to establish a capacity building relationship there is not a peacekeeping mission with a mandate to establish a mine action program and neither is it classified as a humanitarian context under the authority of the humanitarian coordinator and therefore part of and therefore part of a development program under a UN resident coordinator yet in Somaliland what I found out then was that UNDP initially supported the program a political decision one might argue Somaliland already at the time had a national demining agency set up by the government you know that had taken that that had established itself after the war and they'd set that up under the ministry of rehabilitation resettlement rehabilitation and reconstruction and the view with the view of re-engaging or re-integrating ex-combatants into society what UNDP did was then create a completely different entity and this was because they were guided by the approach of neutrality a humanitarian endeavour so some you know from looking at that some people saw that as a complete deliberate act of disrespect of existing institutions UNDP had you know as a disassociated helping or offering assistance sorry they disassociated itself from the national demining authority because of the neutrality principle yet surprisingly they had engaged Zimbabwean ex-combatants from Zimbabwe to to come in and clear minds in Somaliland that was quite interesting so maintaining that neutrality was therefore in conflict with their own stated agenda of cooperating and with building capacity and as a result there was a disagreement with the UN the Somaliland government was was quite adamant that they were not going to engage with the with a new entity this Somaliland mine action and and and the coordination suffered immensely and it led to to both these institutions being ineffective and lacking a clear division of responsibilities and a clear mandate I think I've run out of time just about I can I can have another minute great so that was quite you know and for a very long time I'm talking to the UN people at the time when I was doing the field work nobody knew nobody could tell me for certain this is the lead organization that's that's that's coordinating mine action the different UN people had different UN cards and and it was yeah so there was a bit problematic and the impasse between the government and and and smark as Somaliland mine action just continued then the other way the other example is the way in which the UN led mine action conceptualizes or organizes their their their entry it they use a very outdated develop what you call emergency development continuum which assumes conflict post conflict peace building and then development and that's I think up to today that's the same approach that is used in mine action this assumed that there is a straightforward you know movement from war to peace and nothing in you know in between with situations you know situations that I defined emergency it could be argued that it's an excuse for short term responses and and long term implications for interventions is no less important in in this case so for an approach for such an approach to be very to be successful operationalizing these programs would require a comprehensive analysis of the context related risks vulnerabilities and and capacities yet applying such an approach to Somaliland as an unrecognized state would be difficult for the impartial neutral UN so to conclude that this ambiguity complicates the UN kind of framing of the context within that idealized linear path and the underlying assumptions about statehood to conclude I argued I argued more generally on about my on the on the research itself and on particular this particular chapter that I wrote I argued for that the need of our nuanced critique that acknowledges the challenging realities of implementing programs in challenging post conflict environments and there are so many other examples within the chapter so you're welcome to read and and please get a copy of my thesis which is not out in as a book yet and hopefully the next book launch will be about that thank you very much it's a fantastic book I hope there are already lots in the library and if not you can put them on your birthday list it's a great pleasure to be here with such a a distinguished group and when we were on a panel at ISA and of Matton Sarah asked me to join I with my colleague Kevin Lettich who could not be here was overjoyed to join the project I have to say I feel particularly excited and slightly overawed with the panel today to have Mary Caldor with us because when I was I guess the average age of most people in this room I was a banner waving protester and it was Mary on the platform addressing crowds happily then in the hundreds of thousands along with Edward Thompson as we were campaigning against exterminism the politics of exterminism which sadly are back with us and I'm sure Mary will give us her views on that in in a short while my own experience started off as a banner waiver and hey here you are give me a banner waiver and end up a professor along the way I was involved in international NGO coalitions that helped produce the test ban treat nuclear test ban treaty landmines small arms a number of others of these international coalitions and I guess in some ways I was a a political refugee from the decline of those movements and managed to escape into academia as a sort of political bolt hole and happy to be so at so as which is renowned for helping develop creative disruptive ideas in many fields not least in insecurity I think we just need to be extremely clear that without disarmament movements we'll all be dead that without the movements of the 1960s and the 1980s in particular the politics of exterminism of toxic militarised masculinity which is present in all societies but particularly in a nuclear armed world has a devastating potential would have overrun us and it was the mass protests and expert opinion or particularly of those eras that meant we had another breeding space and yet the warnings although people seem remarkably sanguine from the built in the atomic scientists from Oppenheimer the movie etc are that we are back in that critical situation but as yet we haven't really seen the necessary political and public reaction and perhaps we can take a step or two in that direction this evening those movements democratic and important perhaps lead up one slight garden path which is the idea this is all western and necessarily democratic under the shoguns japan outlawed gunpowder for more than 200 years in 1600 japan was fighting wars with gunpowder like the europeans were but in that closed political space one has to say the political leadership decided that the impact on society on elite society of samurai of gunpowder was too devastating and they went back to swords so when people say you can't reinvent it there is a great example when we talk about democratic movements and treaties and humanitarianism let's not forget that the first hay conventions which we now look back on as fundamental in outlawing un-gentlemenly war were convened by the sars of russia at their initiative not known for their enlightened policies so the idea that this is all necessarily a western and democratic isn't one that we should feel trapped by in the same way is in more recent years one of the critical decisions on women and peace and security at the united nations was led not by western NGOs and foundations which sometimes like to take the credit but by Namibia and by women in Namibia who'd come out of the struggle in southwest africa and wanted to lead global policy in that arena so if we feel that this is just a western invention or somehow trapped by that construction we shouldn't be and i think those ideas you see coming through in chapter after chapter of the book that matt and sarah pulled together and for that reason alone i think it's a very important addition to scholarship about international peace and security when we think of the western movements on humanitarianism and disarmament absolutely we need to evaluate and treasure the treaties that have matt outlined so well but let's not forget that in 1915 at the height of the first world war 1500 women came together in the haig and created what we now know is the women's international league for peace and freedom and for them humanitarian disarmament meant directly addressing the weapons of world war one um no idea to call them conventional and to some extent the tragedy of our own agenda is that the tanks guns and missiles that we see killing people every day on television aren't the focus of any parts of civil society really except for this little project that i'm engaged in but those movements although they didn't stop a second world war and the arms control that came afterwards i did have some very important and tangible results that we can build on our logo for this project um is a of a uh Hiroshima bomb filed from a fired from a cannon and at the time i was listening to Mary's speeches in the 1980s there were literally thousands of these stockpiled either side of the east west border in europe thousands of them and it was only because of pressure that they were got rid of and indeed when we look at the armies of ukraine gaza and the like not only are they not equipped with uh Hiroshima bombs routinely and they don't exist in really any country's inventory anymore thank goodness our success but also chemical weapons maybe there are horrors in Syria enough but chemical weapons at one point were also there to be fired from these sorts of cannon and it was because of public pressure and to a degree you know more enlightened parts of our elites that they were got rid of so you shouldn't necessarily look at the world around us and think that the that progress is impossible that it's all intangible it is very tangible great things can be achieved and this book outlines in many ways uh how we as individuals and organizations can come together right now i think we do need new global initiatives much of the work that is in this book um arises from the optimistic idea that major war between states was a thing of the past after the cold war and therefore we should focus on the weapons that were killing people today quite rightly and at that time it was true landmines small arms cluster munitions were doing the damage but you only have to turn on the television today and you can see that we have returned to bad old ways and we need an agenda that gets to grips with um with those new old old threats and one way and hopefully you'll join us in our campaign is to have a two-month session of the UN devoted to new disarmament initiatives to um in our day when I was following Barry and and it was leadership uh they argued pressulently that if we challenge the weapons politics will change the block system would would change and crumble and new ideas would come forward and that is indeed exactly what happened in the end the powers that be Reagan Gorbachev took our demand for zero missiles off of our banners and it ended up in a treaty because of our pressure we need to do the same now we need to be asking for I think zero missiles whether it's in the Red Sea or Gaza or Ukraine we need to have a concept that's simple and powerful to help us mobilize and in doing so and I hope you will think of joining us in doing that you can have no better place to start than this volume which provides a series of chapters looking at uh the how uh and the why and the organisation to be your your guidebook and your manual and I hope you will use that and work with us so that we can stay alive thank you very much thank you thank you very much I was uh I was keeping my finger crossed that we would have kept the conversation on on the which are not on the podium but I'll I'll follow the I'll follow the the practice and thank you very much for for this invitation I'm very happy uh very happy to be here to speak about this brilliant brilliant book um I'm not an author I haven't I haven't participated to the writing of this book but I I'm glad to say that uh I am I am a reader of that book and uh I want to really to really say to um um to really emphasise what Matthew said at the beginning that this is actually a much needed book we hope I hope that it's going to be just at the beginning like Ososara was saying because uh in general and and then I'll speak a little bit about MAG in particular Minds Advisory Group in general we do say that I would like to say that the humanitarian disarmament movement has been I would say has been really fast especially now in the in the in the in the in the last decades and it has there has been a development of the community of practice that Matthew was saying that has developed a lot of expertise knowledge lived experience involving also uh survivors from different from different from different conflict as well as well as then survivors uh becoming for example D-miners as well it's really it's really worth uh worth uh having that history studied researched even up uh approached in a in a critical way um like uh uh just to refer to what Sara was saying earlier I mean definitely uh the the example that Sara was was highlighting it's definitely definitely a misreading of the humanitarian of the humanitarian principles because neutrality is supposed to be an instrumental principle where the principle of humanity is actually the the the the the drive the driving one so if neutrality is actually put as at the top uh against every kind of traditional definition of the humanitarian principle that that's actually uh a bit problematic and it's good that someone like Sara actually flagged it flagged that out thank you Sara for doing that um okay so um I'm going like like like I was I was introduced I'm an international policy manager at Mines advisory group um my work uh my work is to uh is like uh like a I would say a diplomat slash a researcher for the organization I one of my main tasks is to uh facilitate the the bridging between our programmes on the ground that right now currently are more than third we have more than 30 programme active programmes around the world for about for about more than 6 000 members members of staff um and what we are really proud of in in mug is that we want to practice policy influence but based on evidence so based on the needs and the views that we uh we've that my colleagues my colleagues on the in the field for we to which I'm very great I'm very grateful and I hope someone is is listening to listening to me but without their everyday work I couldn't be here talking to you so I really have to mention this but basically what we want to do is to what we aim to do in the policy in the policy team in in mug is to bridge that gap uh bringing evidence evidence based uh informed policy to the fora in Geneva and new irrelevant fora Geneva and New York mainly and and facilitate the meaningful participation of a vast range of uh stakeholders that tend to for many different reasons tend to kind of remain at the margin unfortunately so ranging from national national authorities civil society civil society in uh in affected in affected countries um and and and other and and civil society broadly speaking just to give you an idea I was thinking that uh uh you heard the terms mine action a lot so I would really like to kind of give you a little bit of a of a snapshot right now it is estimated that there are about 60 million of 60 million people living under threat of landmines or other explosive remnants remnants of war uh explosive remnants of war uh I usually define them as uh unfortunately quantity of explosive that for some reasons landed up in an in an area or was in was in place was in place intentionally during during a conflict and remain active remain active uh remain active on the ground and be remaining active on the ground because it's a cluster munition that didn't explode or sub munition sorry or landmine that wasn't activated or a bomb that didn't didn't explode didn't explode it means that remaining active it means that they can be they they are usually activated by their their own victims so uh and just to give you another sad snapshot in only in only 2022 according to the landmine monitor we had uh four four thousand one hundred and seventy casualties from landmines of the or explosive remnants of war and uh three four three fourths of of them are actually people who remain injured from the accident and the reason why I want to highlight the fact that we have much more injuries that injuries than than uh than than death not not to minimize not to minimize the death that they have serious serious consequences for the family for the family most of all of the of the deceased but you can imagine that having uh what what can be the consequence the consequences of remaining injured from from such an accident it means on the one hand trauma physical physical physical conditions trauma psychological conditions that basically expand the shadow of the conflict so even even people that uh are supposed to live in a peace in a in in peace because uh because a peace agreement was signed or a truce was established they still live they still live under this under this threat so what happens uh there is this field called humanitarian mine action that has uh has a series of pillar risk education clearance stockpile destruction victim assistance and advocacy I feel that risk education is probably the one that is less less intuitive it it means it's the most emerging it's the one most of the time is the one that can only be delivered during emergency situation and during active conflict it means basically uh warn the population of the risk of of of explosive remnants of war and how to behave around explosive explosive remnants of war uh during active conflicts this is probably the only the only one that can be delivered for different reasons first for access because I mean uh humanitarian humanitarian mine action operators like maga cannot access cannot safely access uh zones of active conflict but then at the same time according to the humanitarian according to the humanitarian principles that are supposed to guide the to guide the operations of humanitarian uh humanitarian disarmament operators like maga removing a landmine you can you can safely you can safely assume that it's something that it can be seen as an active participation you know can be can be seen as an active participation you know still it is which is prohibited by the by the principle of the principle of neutrality so we need to find ways to address the humanitarian consequences during active conflicts in in in other ways when a conflict has has terminated has terminated or as the active hostilities are not taking place anymore what happens is that we start to we start to enter through the organizations the agencies that sarah mentioned earlier but also through NGOs like mines advisory group that were actually the novelty of the humanitarian disarmament disarmament processes so the fact that we we started to have a NGO civil civil society operate operators that actually provide the tech provide humanitarian technical assistance to to either prevent or address the harm the harm of landmines cluster cluster subunitions and other explosive remnants of war um so I want to focus because I think it's something relevant also for what Matthew and uh yes Matthew and Sarah just just mentioned uh in uh in mug our approach we are really proud that uh an important part of our approach is on building sustainable national capacity in line with with the framework as outlined by the humanitarian disarmament treaties the one that Matthew listed especially the anti personal mine ban convention of 1997 and the cluster munition convention of 2008 that specifically uh specifically attributes the responsibility the responsibility to national institutions to address this this issues and and this and this actually doesn't only mean a burden on national authorities but that's actually means a respect of the sovereignty of the the state the state that is trying to actually move away from the situation of the situation of of conflict or this long way long wave of long term effects um the other the other important the other important the other important thing is that we work with with with affected states also to kind of um put kind of a transcend the traditional models of international cooperation so not only the not only the typical north to south cooperation but like for example the south to south cooperation approach which basically means building on the expertise that a lot of states have developed during during the they're dealing with they're dealing with explosive remnants of war which I think it's very important because it's actually expand and legitimize a lot of authority a lot of actors in this community communities of practice that Matthew was was mentioning and this is very important and and here I want to conclude because uh in the the in the humanitarian disarmament process it's a process it's in it's a it's a continue in continuous process and that's also why this book it's very important because you you are actually flagging up actors with with with agency with agency and reaching a point where we have a stigma we have an understanding that anti-personal landmines have no military utility because the impact on civilians is basically unacceptable it's very important it's an achievement to to guard but it's also something to expand further and always to keep to keep to keep the guard the guard high that the the the kind of we don't have rolls back into actors that are claiming that inhumane weapons have a certain military certain military utility especially we we hope we don't want to to to go back to what we have already fixed on three on treaties and on practice so thank you very much for this book it's much it's much needed and thank you very much again for this invitation thank you thank you well first of all many congratulations on the book I think it's really important to that it draws attention to a type of disarmament that's different from arms control which was the dominant model which was really about managing relations between the superpowers it's much more focused on human beings and that's why it's important and the second aspect is of course your focus on global activism and the important role of civil society so I think for both those reasons the book makes a really significant contribution I thought I'd make a couple of comments about the book and then say a little bit about how do we go forward in this horrible situation where none of this humanitarian disarmament seems at all possible at the moment so the first point is really echoing what Dan was saying which is that I'm quite uncomfortable with the term humanitarian I know that these treaties are described as humanitarian but the problem with international humanitarian law has always been from the beginning that it is actually a way of legitimising war it's a way of saying we can fight wars that are not horrible and actually all the wars that get fought even with conventional weapons even if they don't use poison gas or land mines are really horrible I mean it is very striking to me the way bombing somehow seems to be acceptable that's what we're seeing in Gaza today and one of the things I always think went wrong was that Nuremberg was really victor's justice and the war crimes committed by the allies in the bombing of Dresden the bombing of Hamburg the bombing of Tokyo and worse than anything Hiroshima and Nagasaki were never subjected to legal cases and the result is that bombing has somehow become acceptable and it's unbelievable the way Israel goes on claiming it's not breaching international humanitarian law it's not doing forced displacement so you know I would love us to have humanitarian disarmament around bombing and to try to build a kind of justification against that so I think there's a problem I'd be much happier and I'll come back to that in a minute with the term human security and if you talk about they are sometimes called the human security treaties because the countries that were engaged in them are all part of something called the human security network and then you can add into that which I think is really relevant the international criminal court so it's not just about disarmament it's about human security that's a term I would prefer and I have a where I'd just like to in order to explain what human security is most people know it's about the security of the individual and the communities in which they live rather than the community the security of the state but one way of thinking about it is to contrast it with international humanitarian law so in international humanitarian law the killing of civilians is permitted provided it's necessary for the military objective and is proportionate to the gains that would be achieved by achieving the military objective and that's the argument on which Israel bases its justification I think in human security the killing of enemies is permitted only if it's necessary for the protection of civilians so it turns that argument totally on its head and it means that killing civilians in order to kill enemies is completely prohibited and I often think a very good example of this was Northern Ireland because for all Britain's faults and there were many in what happened in Northern Ireland the problem was that because the people of Belfast were British citizens we couldn't bomb the IRA and that meant that the role of the military had to be to protect civilians first and foremost they could send special forces after the IRA but it was a very different but very different from bombing them from going to war with them so that's the first point I wanted to make about human security and then the second point I wanted to make really was about civil society I mean Dan mentioned the demonstrations in the 1980s and I think that the real the period from 68 to 89 really was a period of mass mobilisation and what we saw after 89 after the end of the Cold War was if you like the institutionalisation of social movements and that's what the civil society activities were all about you know if you look at the history of society of how we became more peaceful domestically it has actually always been the consequence of social movements and all the nonviolent mechanisms that we've developed in our societies law courts elections committees they've all been the outcome of civil society pressure they've in a way been the institutionalisation of social movements and I feel what was the real significance of 1989 even though there'd been a history and Dan was telling us about the women's international league of peace and freedom there'd been a history of civil society effort the real significance of the 1989 revolutions was that civil society became seen as a became global that was the real significance and it's very interesting because you know at the time everybody said these were weird revolutions they just wanted to be like the west and there were no new ideas and I'd been very involved in the whole story and I'm going to tell you a little bit about that and I kept thinking but there were lots of new ideas but the new ideas were really about the things we're talking about they were about civil society human rights the new international discourse so how did that international discourse came about well Dan was saying we thought the missiles could make a difference but actually the key thing about European nuclear disarmament which me and Edward Thompson were part of is that we came to the conclusion that the way to get nuclear disarmament was to end the cold war and so we deliberately from the beginning decided to start a dialogue with the human rights groups in eastern Europe the people who were opposing communism and so our argument was actually pressure for disarmament provides more space for democracy because the Soviet Union uses the western threat as a reason for oppressing east europeans and by the same token more democracy makes disarmament more likely because the west uses the argument of Soviet oppression to justify the acquisition of weapons so that was our kind of argument and by supporting each other we sort of strengthened each other because the peace movement had always been considered an arm of the Soviet Union and could be marginalized as fellow travelers and the east european human rights were always seen as a western fifth column and equally could be marginalized but by linking up together it became really really difficult especially in eastern europe to marginalize the groups but more important debating these issues and there were lots of arguments lots of disagreements i won't go into the details really helped us develop a new language and people may not be aware of the fact that the term civil society was hardly used in the west before 1989 it was the east europeans that drew our attention to the importance of civil society the importance of what they called anti politics the importance as havel said of living according to your conscience anti politics so we kind of developed a whole new language about at that time pan european civil society and it was the coming together of peace and human rights and i think that was the language which people seized on after 1989 particularly the international community and created that moment in the 1990s when we had great progress with all these treaties but not sufficiently great progress to prevent what happened afterwards what happened afterwards i think from 2001 onwards from the from 9 11 and the coming to power of Putin in Russia was that the old cold war structures reared their heads again we hadn't got rid of the old cold war structures and i think that brought us to where we are today so i think these treaties are very much a product of their time of the 90s but nevertheless they do have their own momentum despite everything we're seeing a huge emphasis on international law in the wars in ukraine and garrs are much bigger than we've seen in previous wars we're seeing an emphasis on the role of crime and so on so i think it's still there and that's what we have to build on so let me turn to the situation now which is really grim and really deeply depressing i mean i think we're in a situation where the US has just lost legitimacy and we've lost and not only legitimacy but there's a loss of belief in american power you know when the america goes off and strikes the hooties we know very well it's not going to stop the hooties so what is it it's a kind of performance what's it about and america talks about you know the rule-based order and yet what's going on in Gaza is completely contrary to any version of the rules-based order but at the same time we don't have an international authority to uphold the rules-based order so it's a terrible tragedy because we've got this awful war going on in ukraine where i in my view the west is not providing sufficient support and russia could win which would be terrible and winning doesn't necessarily mean capturing all of ukraine it just means undermining ukrainian democracy and then we have this what i think is rightly called by many as a genocide in Gaza the horrible attacks by Hamas followed by the genocide in Gaza and we don't see any end to it it's actually seems as though it's strengthening both Netanyahu and Hamas this process and it's an endless war and i really liked the way both sarah and regardo pointed to the fact that wars aren't linear any longer they're not they go on and on and on they have their ups and downs but they never seem to end so where do we go from here in this very grim situation and as sort of activists and scholars i just want to draw attention i think to two issues where we might make a difference the first is back to my point about human security i think we need to push for a shift from national security to human security it's really fascinating to me that in its new strategic concept announced in Madrid last year NATO announced that human security women peace and security and climate change were now integrated into all of its roles now the question is what does that mean and i think they do mean protection of civilians but it's got to mean not just that protection of civilians is a nice thing to have when you do normal military operations which is international humanitarian law it means that protection of civilians is the goal and how do we get that across and the interesting thing i think is that Ukraine for many in NATO was a wake up call somebody a senior official said to me we suddenly realized that in reality our strategy depends on millions of civilian casualties and it's unacceptable so i think there is a moment and particularly with the strengthening of the european pillar when there is a possibility of shifting from national to human security and what does that mean apart from all the economic and social issues which we ought to be talking about what does it mean in military terms well i think it goes back to the classic principles of general and complete disarmament which you actually mentioned in the book it means that military forces are either required for peacekeeping or i would put it to protect civilians in times of crisis you know maybe we need peacekeepers in Gaza and for purely defensive purposes and we should be thinking about what that means in terms of military structures so that's one issue i think we could talk about and the other issue i think is the political economy of all this you know when dan and i were doing stuff in the 1980s everybody was really interested and in fact i've forgotten her name somebody was pointing out that i'd done something for the general assembly on the conversion of defense industries we felt that we had to understand why the arms race continued why does the us suddenly why does the us do airstrikes whatever happens why does this go on happening i mean i would say it's not just the defense industry it's the dominant geopolitical security culture in which the us is embedded and there are all these structures but hugely important other defense industries are now linked up with tech companies now with the war on terror linked up with intelligence agencies and much more interconnected particularly the us the uk and israel so i think we don't do enough work on this structure and how to change it because until we can sort of shift the cup it shifting from national security to human security is not just about shifting military posture it's about shifting kind of embedded structures and i think we need to be doing more research about that to go forward and finally i would say i think we need a new nuclear disarmament movement i mean rushers threats in ukraine have really drawn attention to the dangers of nuclear weapons we're seeing modernisation in the us in russia and here in the uk even if it doesn't work and a huge waste of money and it's time it's really weird that people aren't more worried and upset about what's going on in the nuclear field so there's a sort of agenda for everything but thanks for the book because it's a really important contribution thank you very very much mary um it was a little depressing um so so that i can lighten the mood by saying what i forgot to say earlier which is i think you're all very welcome at a reception after it's outside um but despite despite the gloom and it's very real and and and very um substantiated i think what's what's kind of really interesting about all of our speakers is the emphasis in the midst of all this pessimism that they have put on the possible on what can be done through collective action and that's that's really really key to to what we've been listening to to tonight so um can i just open the floor there is a roving mic uh or two and there may be questions online as well so we'll we'll try and go between those and please introduce yourself and wait for the mic hello my name is horyung jin i study the developments and so on and then thank you very much for opening your nice speech and then i really think this um one of the reason of re-arming is a feeling of insecurity because the rhetoric of russia they are saying that the NATO was expanding like five times so everyone is engaging this defense theory from their justification were from their positionality and then europe for the same reason they say before we thought this piece continued but now they start buying these arms from korea where the usa is selling more arms so the my question is how we can deal with this growing insecurity because you know that as long as these people who are pushing the politics or the strongmans they are in front and they create this political capital of insecurity or this resentment collective resentment then uh if you don't deal it then we cannot have this accord between states secondly how can we revitalize about this platform as un because before somehow in new war un worked for enforcing these these arm ones were peace building but because of these two wars ukraine and palestine it really vanished this authority of un and then you know that so maybe you have to think about the sudden platform of reinforcement maybe civil society but the one of the biggest challenges people are many pretty much focusing on migration and green energy issue so how we can make another issue and affect attention of this population thank you thank you for that um should we intersperse is there is there a zoom question do you want to take to a batch of three or so yeah okay we do have a question from the chat asking what is the current relevance of international organizations other than the un so for example briggs azian to advance a humanitarian disarmament agenda hello i'm shiori ono i'm i'm learning development studies here and then i'm so impressed by all your speech because i was working on my undergraded thesis about the relationship between japanese government and tpnw into 2017 which was kind of disappointing now i have two questions firstly in terms of tpnw like what will be the i can or another like initiative's next strategy to like move forward tpnw i believe i strongly believe in the power of people for realizing humanitarian disarmament but due to the current international legal framework it is still not effective like uh so i mean like in we need to include like state actors especially in nuclear states so what could be the long term midterm strategy to make tpnw like effective or more efficient and my second question is on what could be an like expectation or hope for japanese citizens um to contribute to like a realization of tpnw because like uh we are only the country who who suffer from like the nuclear this uh nuclear arsenals in wartime so and then i my another dream is kind of like to contribute to these like nuclear disarmament as a global citizen so i'd like to just like to i'd like to bring back some learning from here like to my countries like friend or colleague or so yeah this is my question all right so now we have five questions for you there so so who'd like to have a have a go first nice to take the tpnw question so um thank you so the tpnw is the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons that was negotiated at the un um in 2017 uh it uh had it was supported by 122 countries that voted for its adoption um and is in the process of of of ratification now and this had two meetings of state parties uh it does not include the states that have nuclear weapons um they boycotted the process uh but what i think is interesting about it is the way that it has de-centered nuclear politics within the un by sort of the states that don't have nuclear weapons taking the initiative to to push forward a stigmatization of of nuclear weapons um without the nuclear armed states being involved and i i i hesitate to accept the the framing that the tpnw hasn't done anything i think it's done quite a few things um one is that there has been uh the the treaty includes provisions on victim assistance and remediation that are borrowed from the land mine and cluster munition treaties um and um we've already seen the tpnw essentially become a forum for talking about the effects of nuclear violence on affected communities um and the the development too slow but nonetheless happening of a new normative framework for dealing with the legacies of nuclear weapons and that sounds like it might not be relevant to disarmament but i think it is because it really is highlighting the what nuclear weapons do to human bodies uh too often our discussion of nuclear weapons is is in this kind of abstraction of deterrence and who has what missiles and how big they are and what the numbers associated with them are and it's recented the conversation on like what does radiation do to human bodies which has been so long obstructed by the nuclear arm states that that the answer to that is that we actually don't really know in much depth because there's been so much secrecy and so much obfuscation in the the the medical field even um for instance all our models um on uh how radiation affects bodies is based on a model of a human being who is a uh literally i'm not making this up or or on a european man who's about five foot ten um and um like uh has a western european diet um and of course most people aren't that um and so uh we are seeing the uh a re um examination of this whole field of of radiation health of the impact of of nuclear weapons on people and I think in that I see the possibility for agency because we can start by talking about nuclear weapons as real things not imaginative like um speculations and uh like uh but as actual devices that hurt people and even in nuclear arm states we are seeing um old structures that actually date back to the 80s like the nuclear weapons free zones um are starting to like in New York City we have actually adopted legislation that aligns the old nuclear weapons free zone that's still in existence is still keeping nuclear weapons out of the harbor by the way actively is being used um we've confirmed that and is aligning it with the tpnw so I think that within nuclear arm states there is possibility for agency at the sub national level and what can Japan do I think Japanese people could do that within Japan right to reinvigorate things at the sub national level but also to engage in solidarity it's fascinating to me that we have not treated nuclear testing communities with a level of regard that we have mine affected communities why is there no mines advisory group for nuclear affected people I I don't know the answer to that and I think that um that's something that people in Japan and elsewhere could be could be starting does it work yeah um so there were several questions but I don't know if you want me to answer them all um that this question about nuclear expansion and insecurity I mean I think that has everything to do with what I was saying about the shift from national security to human security at the end of the cold war people like me and Dan hoped that both NATO and the Warsaw pact would be dissolved and it would be replaced by a pan European security system based on the what are known as the Helsinki principles the combination of human rights economic and social cooperation and territorial integrity and of course that didn't happen and of course NATO expanded and I was very much against the expansion of NATO because NATO was a geopolitical allowance and not a human security allowance having said that I think it was entirely a pretext for Putin it was not the reason um and so I think the big problem with national security and it's very interesting if you look at civil society debates going back to the 19th century because they make the same argument Russo makes the argument Jean-Jacques Russo that uh princes go to war really in order to repress their own citizens and that the argument about an external threat is that argument of national security is always used as a way of suppressing opposition and that's why another reason why shifting from to human security makes democracy more possible is very important and then somebody asked well where is um change going to come from is it the bricks I guess it's the human security states it's countries like Japan, Canada, we would like to think the European Union but we don't know what's going to happen uh I think South Africa's initiative on genocide was hugely important and quite a big breakthrough in the development of international law so that whole alternative way of seeing the world has developed since the 1990s and hasn't gone away and is there for us to build on and then a final point I wanted to make I forgot to mention the fact that I am a member of the UN secretary general's advisory panel on disarmament and over the next two years we've been given the task of looking at the impact of new technologies artificial intelligence robotics space cyber and producing a report on what the UN should be doing and of course in all these cases you can think of positive things to be done like robotics for mine action for example or you know how you could use AI to counter the disinformation that's happening in a very frightening way or cyber security in a way that's defensive and protects human rights rather than is used for national security so there's lots you can say about all that but I think all of those issues really are important for everybody to discuss so if anyone wants to send me ideas I'll be very grateful yes so I follow up a little bit I will start from new technologies because actually um despite despite our name that I know it's mine's advisory group it's misleading but we do work in mine action but from around I mean around the mid of the 2000s we started to work also on weapons and ammunition management and small arms small arms control and and there is in that field there is a lot of there are a lot of talks about new technologies unfortunately the kind of instinctive way of approaching new technologies is about manufacturing because actually it's a terrible trend that now it's getting easier and easier to produce a pistol with a 3d printing which cannot be tracked or other ways to actually evade the the typical ways in which small arms are controlled the circulation small arms are controlled but actually what Mary you just you just mentioned a new technologies are also worth being being thought in a positive way and for example on the development of sustainable national capacity and international cooperation and assistance like you just you just mentioned about robotics for for mine action but also sometimes the new technologies in these two fields I just mentioned that sometimes I really are much more basic than what we think so for example when we speak about cyber security it becomes a necessity if we want to control the the circulation of smaller of small arms through through virtual or informatic informatic record keepings that sometimes are necessary when we have states affected by climate change because they they tend to be of some states tend to be affected by flooding or soil erosion and so paper based record keeping is not cannot cannot be a cannot be an option because they got they they get ruined quite quite easily in those conditions so that's actually an example of new new technology that and cyber security becomes vital because then you need to defend that virtual record those record keeping that are necessary because of climate climate change unfortunately one thing I wanted I wanted to to to speak about the question on the different the different realities I suppose it was the from from the chat from the chat so when we speak about I mean my understanding from the question is that we are speaking about organizations in a bro in a broader sense but definitely when we speak about the UN we have to remember that the UN is the international community and we do have a lot of processes that involve all the state all the states so we don't I think that when we look at the UN we tend to associate that to the secretariat so the UN agent the UN agencies but all the the the politics for example from from the conference on disarmament and and all other collect the general assembly the UN general assembly those are actually states with different different groups and different different ideas most of the times those states and this are actually something I really want to emphasize because we do work as MAG we do work a lot with regional organization regional international organizations like for example the ECOWAS or CARICOM impacts for the Caribbean ECOWAS is for West Africa those are key actors because I mean being small being smaller they tend to have to to to agree but in a in a much more easy in a much easier way on some points and and actually most of the times groups of states or actually specific states like I one example that I have in mind is Costa Rica Costa Rica is a champion on on on disarmament human human security based disarmament and and they are really I mean despite the size of their diplomatic service around the world they are impressive if you follow them on on social media you will see what what I'm talking about another another very interesting states on disarmament is for example is Ireland Ireland was behind one of the latest humanitarian disarmament campaign which is the I knew I knew campaign against the explosive weapons in populated areas areas that ended up in in a declaration the WIPA declaration explosive weapons in populated areas declaration which actually I think it's a good example of what Mary you were you were saying because if you read the declaration the the declaration clearly states that IHL is the minimum but then there is a concept of human security which which aims to expand the protection of civilian points for example at the fact that you you can I mean some some objects that can be seen according to certain interpretation of IHL as legitimate targets like essential infrastructures or or or other other other infrastructure that are essential to the survival of the population I mean cannot should not be targeted okay so if you look at that that process it's a it's a very interesting one unfortunately I mean between the signing of the declaration and now the next conference that will happen in April I mean a lot of things linked to explosive weapons a lot of sad things related to explosive weapons starting with with Gaza I mean have happened so it's going to be a very interesting sadly interesting conference in soon in next next month actually so that's actually another interesting process to follow down you've done so much work on the UN I wonder whether you've got something very brief to say on prospects for revitalising brief don't do brief I'm a professor I think we have to when we think about human security the people who defeated fascism in second world war created the UN system as a conflict prevention human security system the first meeting of the food and agriculture organisation had the banner hunger made Hitler the assumption that you mass unemployment unregulated financial markets were principal causes of the great depression and world war the architects looking at the present system would only wonder why we haven't had much greater war already so what we don't do is to take that system seriously a lot of my work has been around rediscovering what I would call the radical 1940s and that those lessons are there if we choose to to implement them you talk about the insecurity and it's goes to the heart of it a lot of it I have to say is male insecurity masculine insecurity the one has to deal with but in our own cities if all you do is invest in the riot police and the SWAT team then that's all you use the whole time because the neighborhoods are burning down and I think we understand that you have to invest in community development and community policing if you're not going to have the neighborhoods in flames and that is the principle we need internationally in our own small way perhaps the attention of the UN secretary general if we are able to get a new initiative on disarmament hopefully the book that my colleague I see at the back dr samuel has helped with on open source investigations in the age of google enables us to say excuse the very own academic language the boys can't hide their toys anymore putans attack was not a surprise I didn't think he'd do it because I didn't think he'd be so stupid because he couldn't win but it wasn't that we he was a surprise his forces were entirely visible and our book contributes to this discussion of security through transparency and that I think is an important component and other things that we bring to the table too. Japan I have to say I think astonishingly few people know that Japan outlawed gunpowder for 200 years I think it's an extremely powerful example of say actually societies for the reasons of social cohesion I'm not saying I'm a supporter of the samurai and the shogun in any shape or form but for reasons of social cohesion gunpowder was eliminated from society so they could carry on slicing each other up with those very sharp swords but lest there be any confusion on my part I do think that Ukraine absolutely has the right to self-defense and that we should do everything possible to help them and I concur with with Mary on that point anyway I really want to hear from Sarah yeah I think my my response is especially on the question on what we can do I think there's examples when you look I think and we were speaking about this earlier about the incremental change that happens when you know groups of people get together and and and start a movement so we already seen for example with the with the use of minds that are banned that when they are used wherever they are used there is an uprole there is a condemnation and there is a collection of evidence to show that people are breaking the international you know they are going against international humanitarian law the same as the cluster munitions so there is wherever there is a movement wherever there is a a a disarmament issue that that is that has already gotten to the point where it's a it's a treaty or it's it's been implemented there is efforts or ways in which the communities are now demonizing the use of this equipment this weapon so effectively I think it's not a lost cost it might be slow but it's incremental and and it saves lives at the end of the day yeah really thank you very much um I think we've got time if there's like let's just take a my goodness there's not so much we have to limit us to 15 seconds right exactly so can you think of asking one question each not two each for starters and then I'll control this bunch afterwards as well as I can so yeah in the red in the red I love your point on human security and so my question because I think we can all agree climate change and human security are super interconnected when you look at food and everything like that and so when you bring up things like AI and cyber security which use incredible amounts of electricity which is coal like in the US and Europe I believe it's coal so how do we balance kind of the need for nuclear nuclear disarmament with the fact that nuclear energy is our most promising way for a sustainable future and so that is a question excellent next one who else did we have my question has to do with social movements and activism and I'm just wondering why when looking back on the past things like green and common where thousands and thousands of women were able to gather and actually bring some kind of progress to nuclear disarmament or some kind or project you know the momentum to say that this is a dangerous thing what happened why aren't we seeing that today is there a general complacency is it the political economy that's making people fearful why is it the generational gap that we don't live as much in a world aware of these kind of conflicts so from your experience I'm wondering what you think that's very much I think we have one do we have one down here yes the gentleman down here please thank you my name is nice lullway and Sarah and I are both directors of a small NGO called the revive campaign and we're very much in the advocacy arm of mine action Sarah and I were at the house of parliament yesterday at an event at which we had three parliamentarians one of whom looked as if he'd gone into the wrong room um if we want change we really need to get parliamentarians and politicians on our side and uh I I spend a lot of my time talking about the politics and diplomacy of mine action and victim assistance and it's an uphill struggle so um more a comment than a question thanks thank you for that and then there was one back there and then there's one online I think yeah yep you both of you right quickly earlier you said that the U.S. has just lost legitimacy what do you think will happen to the legitimacy of the ICJ and other international courts in the future who's the lady by note okay and then you got one from we actually have two questions well you can ask one of them the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine also raised the argument for military intervention to stop the victimization of civilians against the government of Israel and Russia respectively is this argument aligned with the humanitarian disarmament agenda I can take some of the climate change stuff I think that um in answering a couple questions I think that it isn't somehow um quote quote younger generations aren't politically involved I think they're involved a lot in the climate change question um among others and the struggle for racial justice um and it's that uh perhaps um we need to make clearer the the intersections between disarmament and those movements um and that violence is often racially um inflicted um that climate if you look at for instance Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands um where there is nuclear waste from both the nuclear tests in in the Marshall Islands and also Nevada um that is uh cracking and um being inundated by the rising seas so you see like there can be connections I think we have to be better perhaps politicizing them and making them um known to to um our political leaders I can the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons um very carefully uh distinguishes between nuclear power and nuclear weapons I think they're um very distinct and different um issues one is the uncontrolled explosion of of nuclear um kind of reactions and one is the other is um the use of nuclear energy for for peaceful purposes I'm not convinced that nuclear energy is the the answer to climate change I think that's that um underestimates the regulatory problems of getting nuclear what nuclear energy plants going they they tend to run into regulatory problems and they're really expensive whereas um there are lots of other alternatives that we could be turning to um but to distinguish I don't think nuclear disarmament is going to stop nuclear power plants and it shouldn't they're not they're not related um issues well I'll I'll pick the question about why aren't we doing much I think there is enough that there is quite a fair bit that is being done uh and I wonder whether the the the way it's happening is maybe different from the times when Dan and Mary were uh carrying placards although I think I see that quite a lot there is a lot of um I think with with the social media there is quite a lot of upro they's quite a lot of evidence collection that happens that uh you know that that makes government may hopefully state question or or or mobilize you know uh and and do things differently I think there is enough there is quite a lot that is being done I I see especially even from the um environmental movement you know the the school uh you know younger generations joining in and being part of that I think there is but of course as as as everybody has been saying on the uh whatever on this uh panel there is not uh I think the problems are multiplying and there is not enough people who are uh engaging in that but there is enough or there is some that something that is happening uh in terms of campaigning against uh some of these issues and it's not like for example when we say um if you think about the land mines campaign or the the campaigns that that we are speaking about it's not like when the treaty is uh gotten that that stops actually the harder work continues uh the land mines issue is kept alive by for example the land mine monitor which is published every year that shows exactly what each state is doing uh in regards to their responsibilities in regards to victim assistance and that is on record and everybody uh for for everybody it's launched every year isn't it every year it's launched I think it also combines now the cluster munition treaty in terms of adherence so there are some efforts but I as we all see from the world today I don't think it's enough yet to to solve some of the challenges I just I mean I just echo what what's what Sara was saying I mean probably one issue one issue is that it's really I mean a lot of very complex and also we have also to deal a lot with uh the how appealing every issue is because just I want to follow up on the comment unfortunately in mag with in our advocacy in our advocacy work it's not uncommon to find to find the our interlocutors saying oh land mines are still a problem because they are kind of boxed in a 19 in a 1990s scenario and like Sara was saying the the the adoption of the of the apmbc the mine ban treaty is has been seen as a sort of uh of yeah a finishing line so definitely we do need a lot of a lot of a lot of work also for example adapt to adapt those treat those treaties right right now for example we have an an an emergency that is not really at the top of the media on the use of improvised land mines so land mines that are built not industrially and so they are much more difficult and the the treaty I mean we are working on adapting the treaty to that so also if you want to remain informed I echoed what on mine action what I echoed what Sara was was mentioning but also the fact that we also have mine action review so that's another overview on what other national national authorities around the world do I want just to conclude something that for me it's I think it's a good summary we do really need solidarity and empathy so we need to when we speak about the principle of humanity that means addressing human suffering wherever wherever it is found it also should mean to all of us that the suffering of the community cut out by minefield is actually my suffering despite I'm in a comfortable sitting comfortable in London or Manchester I think I mean going technicality yes but also this kind of values that they might be they might sound simple but they are deep they are deep and they're necessary and we don't see them so so much so this is my conclusion thank you um I just want to answer two questions one is the question about why isn't there a powerful anti-nuclear movement what's the difference between green and common and now and I think it's felt at the time very immediate we were in the middle of the cold war we really the cold war had sort of unexpectedly heated up again when we thought it was over and we felt we were in the middle of it and we still felt quite close actually to the second world war so you know the idea of a more horrible third world war seemed very immediate what I think is alarming is that and I've written a lot about this is that we see a different type of war now which isn't like the kind of war we thought about which is becoming more and more widespread and never ends this is what we were discussing that there isn't much difference between war and peace in large parts of Africa large parts of the Middle East large parts of the central Asia and it's gradually encroaching on all of us and I think I would argue it's an extreme form of militarized neoliberalism it's the consequence I mean it's not it's the consequence of a combination of inequality and the rise of crony capitalism I could go into it's a great length but I think it's um so in that sense Dan's points about hunger are absolutely right I mean you know when you get situations of extreme inequality when young men have no choice they have no proper jobs so they can either become criminals they can join an armed militia or they can perhaps survive on humanitarian aid it's not it's not a choice in these situations and it it it just grows because it expands through transnational criminal networks I was just being told about a sort of incredible other way syrian states becoming a narco state and it expands through crime it expands through refugees and forced migration it expands through humanitarian networks and I think we all ought to be much more alarmed about all this than we really are so that's I don't know how we develop the kind of empathy and solidarity which I absolutely agree we need to do because we do now live in one world the other point the question I think was to me about I'm advocating military support of Ukraine and maybe peacekeeping in Gaza I just think human security there are still some uses for the military in cases of genocide massive violations of human rights force displacement aggression you have to defend people you can't just let them be the subjects of that but how you defend them is very important I mean military action has always been about defeating an enemy to say that it's not about defeating an enemy if possible you arrest them actually it's about making sure that civilians are safe requires a real rethink of how we do military operations in a quite substantial way I don't think either Kosovo or Liber Libya were that they used conventional military forces to try to protect people in those circumstances and it had all sorts of problematic consequences so I am for military I think there are cases where military force is required but we have to rethink it's much more like policing than like classic war fighting very quick three points some years ago I wrote a book which is in embarrassingly large quantities in the library called the beauty queen's guide to world peace which some of my students came and told me they found very useful and easy to read so that's one answer the second is our banner scrapweapons.com you can contact us and see what we're doing about global weapons control I'm sure if you're good development studies and politics students you'll have read your Gramsciad, your Foucault and Ideology and well if we are if you are and we all are in an ideological structure and if we are looking to challenge it and break out of it it doesn't feel comfortable if it feels comfortable it isn't working which is not a very good point nice point to end on but we're not ending because there's some booze out the door I think he's doing my job for me but thank you so thank you all for coming and for really superb questions actually at the end really really probing and relevant questions and I'm sure you'll join with me in thanking our distinguished guests for their very very insightful comments but so that's to Dan to Mary to Ricardo to Matthew but above all to Sarah for convening and and helping us be here and organising such a distinguished and brilliant panel and as well as your own contributions so thank you Sarah thank you everybody