 Good afternoon and a very warm welcome to the SCRAP GDAMs Realizing Global Disarmament Webinar. My name is David Franco and I am SCRAP's project coordinator. Joining me today we have Karina Solmarano from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or CIPRI. Hi Karina. Hi. Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwon from the International Peace Bureau or IPB. Hello Yeshua. Hey David. I'm Gabriela Ersten from Rich and Crickle Wheel also calling from Geneva. Hi Geb. Gabriela. Hello. And to my right I have Ian Shields, an expert in climate and energy policy, member of the UK Chief of Defence Staff Strategic Forum and a research associate at the UK Defence Forum. Hello everybody. Finally also with us today and behind the cameras we have members of the SCRAP team who have greatly contributed throughout the year to help make SCRAP a reality and not just a slogan. So welcome to all of you and thank you for joining me today. Now for those of you joining outside through our streaming facility in the CISD website just to let you know if the stream fails please just refresh the website and click on the watch button again. So now before I formally hand over to our speakers I want to say a few things about today's webinar and the SCRAP project. April 17th is an important date. This morning CIPRI released data corresponding to the World's Military Spending in 2011 to coincide with CIPRI's release data the International Peace Bureau has an organisation sorry that's been fighting for peace for over a century and which was awarded the Nobel Laureate in 1910 has for the second consecutive year co-organised the Global Day of Action on Military Spending or G-DAMS as it is otherwise known and for which they have called friend organisations campaigns movements around the world to join in a unison cry to for sorry disarmament and international peace. Now of course we at SCRAP did not want to miss out on the occasion and hence today's SCRAP G-DAMS webinar. Last week I wrote and published an article in Open Democracy where I said that CIPRI's data corresponding to 2011 would most likely tell us that governments in the military industrial complex continue to do business as usual thus fostering conflict and war around the globe. In a few minutes Karina will tell us more about CIPRI's data for 2011 but having had a glimpse over it myself I want to say a few things. Total military spending for 2011 has been estimated at US$1,738 billion that is just not 0.3% more than in 2010 when measured in real terms. CIPRI has quantified this as unchanged data when compared to last year to 2010 and notes that this data breaks a 13-year run of continuous military spending increases. So was I wrong when I wrote that governments and private companies continue to do business as usual? Military spending may not have increased much from last year but it has not decreased either. If anything it has stopped a growing spending tendency in absolute terms mostly due to economic constraints and spending cuts in the main traditional powers plus Brazil and India but not in Russia, China, Africa and the Middle East. Furthermore despite the global economic recession the arms industry continues to boom with arms transfers increasing a 24% over the past five years. So as CIPRI has acknowledged in today's release of data it is all too early to say whether the flattening of military spending for 2011 represents a long-term change or not. Also let us not forget that any major new war or conflict could change the picture dramatically and that the current level of arms spread around the globe makes conflict and war more, not less probable. So what can we do to stop military spending, arms transfers, conflict and war? G-DAMS no doubt is a good start and so is CIPRI's and other organizations and movements continued research on military spending, nuclear weapons costs and so on. But for us to turn slogans into actual action and for us to turn action into fair agreements we need proposals and this is what Scrap is about. For those of you who do not know much about Scrap, Scrap stands for a strategic concept for removal of arms and proliferation and in short it is a strategic and holistic project on global disarmament that proposes the adoption of an international legally binding agreement for a general and complete disarmament with a 10-year implementation period from agreement from the date of the agreement. I know we've heard it before, some may think that this is utopian, some may think this is impossible or that we don't stand a chance. However at Scrap we are guided by numerous precedents and serious reasons that make us believe that general and complete disarmament is not only necessary but also possible. If you told someone in the past that the US and Soviet Union would reach agreement on the elimination of a whole range of intermediate and short range nuclear missiles they would have thought that person was insane. The same reaction ensued if you told someone that Europeans would scrap more than 60,000 tanks and establish top ceilings in their conventional forces and yet both treaties that you had Soviet intermediate forces, nuclear forces treaty and the European Conventional Forces Treaty were signed at the end of the 80s and at the start of the 90s. At today's the start treaties, the open skies treaty, the confident security building process initiated in Vienna, the biological and chemical conventions, the comprehensive test ban treaty and the conventions to ban landmines and cluster munitions all were deemed unrealistic at some point that yet they all became real. Today much more can and must be done and like in the past we will be told it is impossible. Our task, the task of those guided and engaged in disarmament is to tell and show how we can make this possible. Now I don't want to go much into the technical details of Scrap but I will nonetheless make three brief points. Conceptually Scrap is based on the premise that there is that present an overarching framework on general and complete disarmament and that the absence of such a framework is problematic at various levels. In particular we believe it is hindering progress on regional issues as regional actors ask why them when there are no similar initiatives at the global level. Secondly from a strategic standpoint Scrap focuses on three mutually reinforcing areas nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction conventional and humanitarian disarmament. Nuclear disarmament remains a priority but as noted in numerous occasions and numerous disarmament resolutions and treaties conventional disarmament can foster security and ultimately lead the path to nuclear disarmament. It is also an answer to those that see nuclear disarmament a way of perpetrating conventional supremacy. As per humanitarian disarmament we ask the following question aren't humanitarian concerns also applicable to conventional and nuclear weapons? So at Scrap we offer a proposal to globalize the effective disarmament mechanisms and protocols covered in a range of end-of-the-cold war treaties as well as in various mechanisms and regimes concerning verification found in the early 90s. Unfortunately those agreements have been rapidly forgotten and were usually presented with the supposed intractable step-by-step process when in the past rapid progress has been achieved and made by working in parallel on several different topics. So based on past achievements we propose at Scrap that disarmament could happen within a decade from agreement and this we argue is much easier when compared to the challenges presented by climate change and I'm sure Ian may be able to comment on that later on. But thirdly and most importantly for the purposes of the webinar today Scrap is a global project not only in the sense that it seeks WMD conventional and humanitarian disarmament on a global scale but also in the sense that it seeks to build a campaign a global campaign in support for disarmament by applying a global frame centered on the concept of human security as opposed to pervasive approaches to security centered on national interests and one may add excuse me on the interests of multinational companies and individuals engaged in the arms industry. Hence here at Scrap we believe that today disarmament can longer be addressed in isolation from other related and interlinked fields in particular development human rights and climate change and this is precisely what we what we want to address in today's webinar. Realizing the global disarmament we argue is necessary and possible. Now for the next 15 minutes to an hour we will hear four presentations from experts in their respective fields. Then we will open up for questions and a Q&A life debate towards the end. I would like to remember members of the audience that they can send us their questions through social media or by email to our Gmail account details of which can be found in the webinar event page where they're actually watching this now. So without further ado I will now hand over on to Karina Solmarano who's a researcher with the CIPRI military expenditure project responsible for monitoring military expenditure in Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia. Prior to joining CIPRI Karina worked at the Joseph Korbal School of International Studies at the University of Denver where she's a doctoral candidate. She's also worked on arms control issues at the Argentine NGO Asociación para Políticas Públicas and as an advisor at the Argentine Senate. Karina, the floor is yours. Thank you very much David. Well you pointed very well at the beginning saying that it looks like governments continue doing business as usual. It is true that during 2011 military spending came to a stop at 1.7 trillion dollars. You know this trend indicates that for now the cycle of continuous increases that we saw since 1998 might have slowed down or come to a stop. But again we want to be cautious about this. We want to in one way we want to not to create expectations that this might start a new trend of falling military spending. We I think we will need to see how the greater powers behave in the next coming years to determine whether we have come to an end of accelerated growth of military spending worldwide. However one of the main reasons why military spending has not changed in 2011 is because finally the financial crisis caught some of the largest economies and especially in the U.S. and in Western Europe. So the panorama in 2011 looked like this. The United States spent about 711 billion dollars. This is this is still a huge number but this was actually a decrease of 1.2 percent in real terms. This is after inflation and this is the first fall actually since 1998 in the United States. It is expected that further cuts will happen in the in the next coming years. And this is mainly because of two factors. The first is they withdraw all of the U.S. forces from Iraq and the gradual reduction of the military presence in Afghanistan which means that war spending will be less in the next in the next years. And this will be the case if the United States continue with the plan of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by 2014. The second factor driving this this falling trend in the United States right now is the deficit crisis that the United States is having nowadays. As you probably have been following the United States the Congress passed a new bill a new budget law requiring a certain amount of cuts to address the high deficit and then in the debt that the United States government have has in this in these moments. And so it is expected that in the next 10 years approximately the defense budget will be cut in about 487 billion dollars. We hope that actually this this cuts will be implemented because like you mentioned before unless there is a war in which the United States would engage in the future this cuts would would be necessary to address the economic problems of the United States. The second region that saw the effects of the financial crisis was Europe and especially Western Europe. As you as you probably are very aware some of the smaller economies of central Europe were very much affected but also southern Europe. And this is the case for instance with Greece which saw a cut of 26 percent in 2011. Spain with an 18 percent Italy 16 percent and Ireland 11 percent. It's not coincidental that these four countries have been suffering the effects of the financial crisis and have been implementing austerity measures that have been really harsh on on the population. So that's that's why they needed to also address immediately these cuts in defense. But also the largest spenders in Europe the United Kingdom France and Germany have started to reduce spending and they are planning in the next coming years to continue doing so. Perhaps at a slower rate but nevertheless the panorama looks like as if Europe will go towards a falling trend in terms of military spending. This is the this is the picture where where we have a contrast situation with those countries that actually increase military spending during 2011. Russia is an example of that. Russia had a growth of nine point three percent in 2011 and it reached a total of almost 17 two billion dollars. This has placed Russia as the third largest military spender in the world overtaking the United Kingdom and France. Russia is nowadays embarked in a in a long term modernization program that involves further increases in the future. And one example of this is that they have planned to spend seven hundred and forty nine billion dollars on equipment research and development and support for the arms and military service industry from 2011 until 2020. This is this is again a massive number. And this would allow Russia to actually update almost 70 percent of its inventory its weapons inventory that dates back to the Soviet times. China is the second country that saw an increase during two thousand eleven six point three in real terms. And China is the second largest spender in the world at one hundred forty three billion dollars. And since two thousand and two it's it's it has grown rapidly at a pace of one hundred and seventy percent increasing in real terms. China is trying to again like like in a very similar fashion to Russia to modernize its armed forces its military. But it's also been increasing military spending in in line with its own economic growth. And so that's why for instance the share as a GDP has been kept around the two percent during all these years. China is trying to again acquire new equipment and become also stronger competitors in the arms industry is trying to improve also the conditions of its troops and increase for example the salaries for for the army. But it's also I guess part of the Chinese goal to become a greater power and have a better or larger role in international politics. And so in this regard they need to have not only economic power but also military capabilities to support this economic power. And this is in general terms the picture of the greater powers in 2011. In other regions of the world we have seen a little bit of a variation. Latin America is one very interesting case because up until last year Latin America was one of the regions that had the largest growth in terms of military spending. And this year because Brazil kept its military spending the overall expenditure in Latin America dropped by three point three percent. One of the countries that increase in the region was Mexico. As you know Mexico is right now engaged in in a conflict or in a war although the war the world war on drugs is kind of not the appropriate one but they are engaging the military in counter-nacotic operations. And so they have increased since 2002 their military spending by 52 percent as well. The Middle East is another region where this year there was not a large increase but a significant one at 4.6 percent. But with the Middle East what happens is that there's a high uncertainty in the estimates because data for some of the largest players is missing. For instance we don't have data for Iran and the UAE which are extremely important players in the region. One thing about the Middle East is that the increases that we saw during 2011 do not seem to be related to the so-called Arab spring. Not at least for the moment because these budgets were approved before the uprisings. And so I think that maybe in 2012 or in 2013 we might we might see if the Arab spring had any type of impact on the militaries in the region. And finally in Africa we saw also an increase that was mainly driven by Algeria which increases military spending considerably partially in response to the Libya conflict. But also because they have engaged in a large rearmament program. And today just to give you an idea Algeria is the seventh largest important importer of major conventional weapons. They have high revenues from oil and gas that have made possible for Algeria to actually afford this increase and to continue modernizing its military. And so like I said the regional and global picture presents interesting variations. I think that although the United States has decreased slightly its military spending there's no question that it remains and it will remain for the foreseeable future I guess the most important military power. China and Russia will try to continue modernizing their armies. They are expected to continue increasing military spending in the next years like I said before. So the picture in 2012 might be a little bit different to the one that we had today and especially if potential conflict in the Middle East will emerge. But one thing that I want to sort of remark is that this number that I said at the beginning the $1.74 trillion that the world spends on military spending is a number that we need to put in the context and perhaps in a perspective that might help us understand a little bit what we are talking about. Just to give you an idea and with this I would like to close my remarks. The total annual cost of achieving the Millennium Development Goals is about 20% of that number. So with that number the goals would be fulfilled by 2015. I think this might have a tremendous impact to the poorer in the world but still you know we don't see any indication that countries are shifting their priorities. They continue doing business as usual I guess. Thank you very much David. Thanks very much Karina for a very insightful presentation. I think you've raised very interesting points and I'd like to highlight for example the trend towards military rebalance in somehow the fact the increase in military spending in the Middle East not fostered at least in principle not fostered by the Arab Spring in Africa the rise of military spending by Algeria due to that conflict in Libya. I'd like to end my remarks here with your final point about the Millennium Development Goals and how the annual cost of achieving those by 2015 is about 20% of the total annual military spending in the world. So thanks very much Karina. Our next speaker is Jeshua Moser-Pwangsuwon. He's a consultant at the International Peace Bureau and he's also one of the editors of the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor Report for the International Campaign to Bound Landmines and he sits on the International Programme Council of the Small Arms Survey. At the IPB Jeshua has been involved in implementing the D4D or otherwise known as Disarmament and Development Programme. Jeshua, the micro is yours. Thank you David and first let me say how pleased the International Peace Bureau is that SOAS and SCRAPs has made this contribution to the Global Day on Military Spending, Global Day of Action on Military Spending. There are almost 140 events going on around the globe during this week on this and I'm not surprised when Karina said before this webinar started that there had already been a thousand news items on their release only a few hours earlier today. This is an issue that has been important to human beings for a very long time. I was at the United Nations Building here in Geneva yesterday and they have a display on the World Disarmament Conference of 1930 and many of the issues that are being raised were raised at that conference are the same ones that we're focusing on in the Global Day against military spending. So this issue this tension in society between expenditures on the military and social expenditures has been around for quite a long time. SIPRI's work which we have coordinated this day of action on is the key non-governmental transparency effort to bring some light to this. For disarmament activists in too many countries it is still dangerous for them to ask about military expenditures in their country. It's a military secret and many of our other countries were told that we shouldn't know this information for our own good. And so the transparency that SIPRI brings to this is incredibly important but there are several things that aren't included in the SIPRI figures. Not only can they not get all countries as Karina mentioned but also the debts from past wars that saddle many countries and the way in which military expenditures get hidden and farmed out into other parts of the budget and are hard to hard to see. So the figure that SIPRI comes up with is a figure that nobody should have a problem using because it doesn't cover everything. The expenditures that we have in human society on the military are much greater than that. The other transparency effort is the UN register on military expenditures that they invite countries to make submissions to. Unfortunately a lot of countries do not participate in that or they have in the past sent in reports that were not comparable and it's very difficult to get good data out of that. The UN started that transparency effort to support general and complete disarmament but they have stepped back from that now and are saying well this is really a trust building effort and trust is something that's really lacking in the world today but we think that the problem is deeper than that and it's one of militarism in our human societies. The belief that the use of force is expected and okay in international relations and that is something that we are challenging with G-DOMs. You could see it as the Occupy Military Expenditures movement. Karina mentioned the Millennium Development Goals as the main consensus that we have on meeting social needs in human society today and the amount of the military budget that that would cover is not really known either because we just don't know how much it's going to cost to meet those goals until we've done it. The World Bank, UNDP, the Millennium Development Commission have all come out with different estimates as to how much it would cost and it could be up to a half or three quarters of the last year's military expenditures as were tracked by SIPRI. The UN budget fits into a minuscule amount of that. The UN budget for the last year was one one hundredth of that one one hundredth of a percent of that expenditure. Think of the refugees that are serviced by UNHCR, the child and maternal programs of UNICEF, the cultural programs of UNESCO, the development work of UNDP, the work on war-torn countries by UN, OSHA, the huge offices that they have in the New York, Geneva, Vienna, all of that one one hundredth of that figure. I mean these figures get really difficult to grasp and I created one that was very real to me in our movement to ban landmines. We started our movement in 1992 and up to 2009 we raised and spent 34 million dollars on our advocacy efforts and during that time we've had some notable successes. We brought about the 1997 mine ban treaty and since that time the number of weapons that have been destroyed has increased every year. The amount of ground that's been cleared of landmines has increased every year and the number of victims of these weapons has dropped every year so we can say it's successful. That money that we spend over a 15-year period is spent in two and a half hours by the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan on fuel. If you add in figure for humanitarian demining which is the actual clearing of the mines out of the ground and we've cleared about 3,200 square kilometers of land of anti-personnel mines that cost 4.2 billion dollars equivalent to 13 days fuel use by the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan. Now do we feel as a human society we're getting more good for humankind out of clearing 3,200 square kilometers of land or 13 days worth of activity by the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan. The international campaign to ban landmines believes we're about halfway through the problem. We think there's about 300, 3,000 square kilometers yet left to clear. So that means we actually know how much it's going to take to clear an enormous human problem. If we could transfer the costs of one month's worth of fuel use by the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan we would have eliminated the landmine problem from the face of the planet. Think about how much human suffering we would have avoided by doing that. It's a no-brainer. I think I'll stop there. Thanks very much Jeshua. I think you've raised very interesting points and questions as well and I would highlight two of them. One is the lack of transparency in many states when it comes to providing data relating to their military spending and I think that goes at the core of something we were discussing before kicking off the seminar here which is the relationship between military spending and the lack of democratic development precisely in states or countries which are deemed to be in principle democratic. Of course the term democracy has lost a lot of value these days. The second point I want to highlight from your remarks is the social and human costs of military spending and I think I'll leave it there because you've raised very interesting questions that we can address later on during our debate. So thanks again Jeshua. Our next speaker is Gabriela Ersten from Rich and Critical Wheel who will talk to us about disarmament and human rights. Gabriela is a project associated for Rich and Critical Wheel based in Geneva where together with the rest of her team they monitor and analyze a wide range of disarmament negotiations at the UN. Amongst other Gabriela participated recently in delivering a statement by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at the Conference on Disarmament on Women's Day advocating for the need to address disarmament in conjunction sorry with human rights. Gabriela your turn. Thank you so much. I would just quickly like to mention what Rich and Critical Wheel does and the Rich and Critical Wheel because it seems to confuse people a lot. Rich and Critical Wheel is the disarmament project of Women's National League for Peace and Freedom. It was created in 1999 sorry and it's a project that's supposed to promote and facilitate engagements for non-governmental actors in the UN disarmament processes. As all of the speakers have mentioned with the new SIPRE released figures you can see that it is business as usual which is interesting and if we look at how fast it took states to start cutting down on social welfare finances. These recent numbers from SIPRE shows that there's no such cuts are being made in the military spending. They remain unaffected and this mismanagement of resources that the states are distributing have become even more clear now since 2008 with the financial crisis. It's also clear we've had a discussion of democracy. It's also clear even though many states that promote themselves as advocates for international peace and security and claim to promote international disarmament are the same ones that we can see in SIPRE's number are the same ones that are the biggest military spenders and also the major actors in international arms trade and thereby they are contributing to a fueling conflict human rights violation and disrupting peace processes. I have an example that I've taken from another SIPRE report that was released earlier this year that states that although the US reviewed its arms transfer policies in 2011 they still remain the major supplies of the military equipment for Tunisia and Egypt and Russia are the same things for Syria. And you see with this development and also looking at the multilateral disarmament process within the UN that has long been working in complete isolation from other UN organs and many member states believe that including an aspect like human rights is completely irrelevant in the disarmament for us. We have here at Tunisian Critical Will started to emphasize trying to work how to include human rights aspect, humanitarian aspect in these for us and we think it's very important to realize that first of all disarmament is not a goal in itself. It's a tool that we should use to pursue global sustainable peace and therefore it cannot work in isolation or in a vacuum from today's realities and it needs to be addressed from multiple angles. It's also clear that multilateral disarmament for us are not contributing right now as they should be to the global sustainable peace. They're not moving forward, there's no thinking about UN disarmament for us but not moving forward and substantive work and they don't really integrate humanitarian approach so what we do in our work we try to look at the weapon and military expenditure in reality bigger picture of human security and human rights and the national security argument that's usually being used by states to harm is not directly today does not directly automatically mean human security and in many cases the opposite where the state is the violator of human rights and we also have other problems with this traditional call for national security when you look at that today's warfare and how it's changed and it's no longer say don't say war it's more civil unrest it's happening among civilians by civilians and these wars or conflicts are fueled by the lack of resources and lack of human needs being met and also human rights being violators and so therefore it shows that these increases or these amount of amount of dollars that they are putting into weapons and military sorry does not guarantee human security today and especially not if you see that there's limited resources and putting it into militarism instead of social spending it's literally directly taking reasons away from humans so we believe that this armament measures to contribute to preventing armed conflicts and preventing violation of human rights and seriously reducing the culture and military and economics of military and we therefore argue that the start the disarmament disarmament should not only be dealt with in traditional disarmament for us they should there are topics that should be considered in the entire range of the un mechanism and body that seek to establish human security and sustainable development and and also today when we see that the UN disarmament for us are not contributing to this sustainable peace we need to find other measures how to do this so we have established four we have identified four different areas within human rights law and international humanitarian law where we were safe to be held responsible and of their weapon proliferation and military expenditure and where NGOs and civil society should work to include disarmament and weapons in an ongoing discussion and these four areas are the first one deals with genocide and that the known civilian death toll for a nuclear attack could be used and for the criterias of genocide and looking at the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where hundreds of thousands of people were killed we think this argument is clear and therefore a potential nuclear weapon attack should be included in discussions of genocide we also have the argument of environment but I'm just briefly gonna touch upon that because I think that follow presentation will deal with that much better and so aside from that the military one of the biggest polluters on our planet it's also in particularly a catastrophe if a nuclear weapon attack would help on health and environment and recent studies have shown that it would be a regional nuclear weapon nuclear war between Pakistan and India and they would only use 50 nuclear weapons each this would cause a global famine and that could kill over 1 billion people and then we have the cost area and so the cost of continuing to renew and deploy and maintain all the different weapons systems should be put in relation to budget available for to fulfill human rights obligations and this is also anchored in the UN charter by article 26 that directly addresses a military expenditure and it would be applied it would immediately reduce resources away from military expenditure and into towards human security including education and health and so on we also have article 2.1 of the international convent convent on economic social and cultural rights that states that every state party should undertake the steps especially economic and technical to the maximum available resources with the view achieving progressively full realization the rights recognized in the present convent by all appropriately this was also re-established in the mastery guidelines which state that any violation of these economic social and cultural rights clarified that this is in violation of the content if it fails to allocate maximum of available resources resources to realizing human rights our fourth area is regarding responsibility protect I don't know if I should maybe quickly that's all right should I quickly explain what responsibility protect this please go ahead yes we're within within time so that's fine so that to quickly try to sum it up responsibility protect is a norm or a set of principles that is based that on the idea that sovereignty of states is not a privilege it's a responsibility and that and it focused on preventing and holding for crimes genocide war crimes and humanity and ethnic cleansing and it has three three different pillars and our argument deals with the prevention pillar so to hold export countries responsible for arms sale the countries where there it is a reasonable or foreseeable law foreseeable that violence of human rights law and international humanitarian law will occur should be related to the doctrine of responsibility protect and this doctrine should be invoked to prevent states to export arms to regions their violation of human rights are documented or where conflict is likely or where it's reasonable to see both other types of arms what would be used on the civil civil population civilian population and we also believe that real protecting and protection of humans can only be li through prevention and that's why this responsibility protect the prevention pillar is important so um at reaching critical we believe that this armament processes if there's time for development processes to promote and protect human rights and international humanitarian law and we believe that one way forward is to hold states responsible for their action and obligation and by doing this and we should do this by incorporating this armament into human rights treaty bodies where they should be addressed by special repertoires and special procedures and eventually eventually go in and be tackled by the human rights council and its um universal periodic review and we have seen this this has been mentioned also from prior speakers you've seen that these arguments have been successful in banning landmines and cluster munitions it's just it's specifically the humanitarian effect of these weapons that have helped to ban these weapons we've also witnessed a change in the nuclear uh in the nuclear disarmament doctrines among states civil society and now recently international um red cross the national meeting of the red cross uh they're slowly starting to recognize the truly indiscriminate of these weapons and the cross humanitarian consequence that would take place if they would be used and this example could also be seen in the 2010 non-proliferation treaty final outcome document where this language was incorporated uh and yes that is what we're working on at reaching critical well thanks very much Gabriella for a very rich presentation you've raised a lot of points there you were cutting off um at some points but hopefully people I mean it wasn't very serious so hopefully people will have been able to to follow you um I was going to I liked that you mentioned well you started your presentation by saying that states are not quite implementing the cuts in military spending as they are perhaps implementing cuts in other areas of social welfare for example um you also mentioned the contribution of arms transfers to human rights violations in many cases from states themselves who acquire those weapons who import those weapons um you stressed the importance of addressing human rights and disarm or in conjunction to with disarmament and not to address disarmament in traditional fora but in the entire un system um you also highlighted four areas that you have identified at reaching critical will as um critical if I may use the word again um in human rights law and international humanitarian law uh dealing with genocide environment costs and responsibility to protect um now I'm sure we can discuss much more of this when time comes in the q&a session towards the end and I was reading through the questions that members of the audience have sent us and there's a couple to do with human rights so we can discuss that there also something that I wanted to say somehow you have indirectly linked with Karina's presentation Karina highlighted the military rebalancing that we're seeing um I think it is important to note that in many cases arms transfers uh whilst whilst military spending is going down in certain countries especially countries hit by the global economic recession especially in the west we see how arms transfers are going the other way in in many in major states um it may be like for example china um has developed its own indigenous industry in some areas but in other cases countries and non-developed countries are important those weapons from industrialized countries and and when it comes to responsibility to protect you have mentioned you know the need to actually protect protect before the conflict arises and one way of doing that is by by not selling arms to unstable regions um so I think it's important to note that uh so we're just I think we're we're running well in time so our next speaker as I mentioned earlier is Ian Shields um you're sitting here to my right I hope he's well framed in the in the camera screen um Ian is an expert as I said in global climate and energy policy and he collaborates amongst other universities with the SOA Center for International Studies and Diplomacy where he teaches a module in one of the MA programs here he's also a member of the UK chief of the defense staff strategic forum and research associate at the UK defense forum um Ian is going to talk to us about the relationship between military spending and the environment Ian thank you very much David I should perhaps start off with a few disclaimers I'm reminded of the Duke of Wellington surveying the field at Waterloo when he said there's only one thing saddened and a battle lost and that's a battle won I say this because I'm in a slightly different position to my very three speakers on this panel and as much as I actually have a military background I spent 32 years in the military um I have seen a nuclear weapon I was actually trained at one point to drop them so I speak um perhaps in my slightly different viewpoint I have no difficulty with this because I firmly believe that for those who truly want to understand war and conflict um you can do so if you have actually been a participant in it willing or otherwise so having set my stall out I'm going to look at the relationship as David said between disarmament and climate change and I really want to make three broad points um the first is uh that I want that I would like to reinforce what both David and Gabriella have said in their comments and say that we need to look anew at what we mean by security and I think we need to drastically broaden what we mean by security and spread the debate much wider secondly I would like to suggest that there's a direct environmental threat by not disarming and this point it has again been touched on by other speakers and the third point I want to make towards the end is the potential for climate change mitigation by disarming so let me start off with the first of these three points what we understand by security in its broadest sense and again as Gabriella and David have both hinted already um our traditional view of security is very state centric it is based on hard power it is based on uh force between nations um which is now being challenged by new perceptions of what we mean by security um we see threats much more transnational if they are transnational how can nations operating individually or even in coalitions hope realistically to counter them I would suggest that when you look at security challenges around the world and I noticed that many security analysts these days use the word conflict rather than war because war is very much tied to interstate conflict what we see is far more about policing well we're far more interested in in things such as uh conflict resolution such as nation building we are interested in indeed in terms of anti-terrorism as much as a police action as a military action all of this suggests that there is a far greater role for what military analysts refer to as soft power rather than hard power so the role of diplomacy and of disarmament becomes more pressing when we look at the new way of regarding security I would go one step further in these first comments and say that the very notion of the state itself and therefore using the state both as an actor um in terms of conflict and an actor for solving problems is fundamentally being challenged and undermined by the threat of globalization and I'll return to globalization in just a few moments time when we look forward just 20 or 30 years and certainly no further forward than 40 years most analysts based in ministries of defense or departments of defense um in the uh what we might term the developed world um all come up with a very similar analysis of the threats we are facing and certainly work in the united kingdom the us canada and japan amongst other places have identified three major drivers for future conflict and therefore security threats the first of these and this again has been touched on not least by gabriella is global inequality and how poverty itself is a threat multiplier the second is the is the issue of globalization and how globalization is undermining uh the traditional view of security and making this interconnected interdependent world more secure in some respects but equally damaging less secure and the third threat that um all these think tanks all agree upon and the one that I'm going to concentrate on is climate change and how climate change is however you define care to define security a security threat why might it be a security threat i'll give you a number of examples the first one is that um those areas around the world that's that are most prone to the negative impacts of climate change are very often the same areas where poverty is rampant where human development is is low and where the quality of life is very poor more over they tend to be in areas where there has originally been large-scale conflicts if not large-scale in terms of numbers than in terms of time so climate change as with poverty acts as a threat multiplier let me give you another example for those who believe that climate change is not a security threat to a country such as the uk let us consider what would happen if if sea levels rose by about two meters where we are sitting today in the city of london uh on the edge of the city technically we would be under considerable threat however thanks to technology such the thames barrier we may be able to hold back the uh the impact of this uh this rise in sea level a similar rise in sea level uh in bangladesh would have a devastating impact on the low-lying crop producing areas of that country this is surprise surprise a direct security threat to the uk because one of if not the largest immigrant population in the uk is bangladeshi so globalization no man is an island there is a direct link between uh rising sea levels affecting agriculture production in bangladesh and security back here in the uk um the nature of climate change is insidious it is international and therefore demands international responses that requires a new approach to security in its broadest context having set the scene i now want to look at two particular aspects directly impact what we're talking about today in terms of disarmament and reducing defense spending gabriella thank you for stealing some of my sandwiches but you didn't quite make sure steal all of them let me start with uh this question of direct environmental threat of not disarming the first and perhaps the most obvious is in weapons of mass destruction or if you prefer weapons of mass effect the nuclear threat which we've all touched on today we have something in the region of what 2300 major weapons uh it beg upon major warheads held between the us and russia more than enough overkill to destroy the planet several times over nuclear proliferation continues despite the best efforts of many organizations and the efforts of the npt if there was to be as gabriella has suggested a nuclear exchange even relatively small between say pakistan and india and we can all think of other countries that are trying to create their nuclear programs could we face the nightmare of the nuclear winter where there's sufficient dust thrown up by this nuclear exchange to to actually get up into the upper atmosphere large quantities of dust which actually shields the earth from the sun and plunges temperatures around the world by several degrees leading to an onset of a prolonged winter lasting maybe 20 or 30 years what would that have what effect that have on crop production more worrying when that dust slowly comes back down out of the upper atmosphere it will cleanse the upper atmosphere allowing far more uv to reach the planet of the earth and so the nuclear winter will be followed by a nuclear summer um whose impact upon uh crop production would be at least as bad staying for one moment with the the question of weapons of mass destruction weapons of max of mass effect uh biological warfare rarely spoken about is still out there and still exists if that goes wrong if that goes wrong so when i look back on the uh that the um ability of mankind completely to destroy life on on this earth the last 60 years we have lived with this threat and i i take little comfort from the fact that the clock on the website of the american nuclear scientists has uh in the last couple of years been moved forward and i believe now rests at something like four minutes to midnight but as well as the the nuclear threat what about the threat from from more conventional weapons systems and here um and again uh gabriela touched on this the huge reliance upon hydrocarbon energy by conventional armed forces most ships most warships are the oil or diesel powered they are designed for speed and maneuverability not fuel efficiency um in the land arena tanks aren't exactly really good at fuel efficiency um and and i believe the uh the humvee returns something like about 12 miles to the gallon um and moreover uh modern armed forces rely upon very large numbers of vehicles all of which tend to be extremely thirsty however this pales into insignificant compared with the big one which is air power uh the united states air force is the largest user of hydrocarbon energy in the usa each year um unlike the uh land and the sea uh domains where there might be alternative sources of uh of fuel uh for aircraft there really isn't an alternative that we can see at present to hydrocarbons um jet aircraft particularly when they start using reheat very very thirsty uh and they pump all sort of carbon out into the atmosphere um we have large air forces um around the world increasing in numbers as as carinas figures emphasize and therefore the carbon footprint of these is set only to increase further um oh and by the way if you think air power is the really nasty one uh what about space um let's all picture the uh satellite going on the top of the locket uh what is that doing to uh the carbon footprint um yes you can argue that there are one or two minor offsets um the us in particular is looking at the whole of the energy question in the field uh but primarily for military reasons because it's taking awful lot of fuel to get fuel forward to the uh that the us marine core out in the field in afghanistan for example um there are minor benefits such as in the uk soils replaying the major training area for the british army in southern england uh if it wasn't for the army that would now be a large housing state probably instead of which it's preserved as open chalk land but come on let's keep things in context here uh the the uh the real uh problem is that these armed forces use a great deal of hydrocarbon energy and have a very large impact on the on the climate so what about the other side of the coin um if we did away uh uh with some of these armed forces or all of them by disarming um what might we be able to do with the money instead um yes i'm sure that my three fellow panelists would all have a long and worthy shopping list but i would suggest that some of the cash could be built could be spent as well as looking after the threats of poverty by mitigating climate change um uh indirect benefits obviously such as confidence building um and de-escalation of threats not least from the uh the nuclear uh division would be of great benefit great benefit uh but i would also perhaps suggest that the huge research and development effort that armed forces receive every year if that could be diverted into mitigating climate change we would have a slightly better um uh hope for the future um so if i just wrap up because i think i've probably just about used up my time um a question why do those regions that uh or many of those regions most at threat from climate change seem to be spending the most on arms they actually got things right um i would suggest that it's easy to dismiss uh as as a fantasy but um we can help mitigate climate change by a disarmament program uh but the climate change threat the new security threat or one of the new security threats is uh is so profound that it needs new and radical solutions if we could eliminate nuclear weapons and the threats uh the threat from weapons of mass effect then the future for mankind would be immediately better but the environmental damage that armed forces do inadvertently maybe by their reliant upon hydrocarbon energy is one that we need perhaps to review and to conclude i would say that there is a pressing need um for climate change reasons if for no others to review our fundamental understanding of security and security threats and look for new radical and innovative solutions David thanks very much Ian um again you've touched upon many many things um i think your presentation was very rich i'm not an expert myself in energy or climate change but i can of course understand um every single of your points um i wanted to say here um a couple of things or remarks about what you said uh to start with the reconceptualization of the concept of security you've mentioned that today threats uh are transnational um and i would add to that that transnational threats require global solutions climate change does not respect boundaries um do not respect boundaries either and therefore we ought to address those issues globally not nationally it actually goes at the core of the understanding of security as attached to national security or interests as human security um and of course we know we're all we're all the same whether we're in Europe or elsewhere for challenges that we meet here are the same that are meant elsewhere and you mentioned the threat multipliers um and you made a comment on the impact that uh nuclear exchange even a small one between India and Pakistan would have perhaps here in the UK um and although i totally agree with that i think there is these days uh too much focus is made on you know the Middle East um India Pakistan um or other countries but i you know i'd like to focus also on the countries that have been holding onto nuclear weapons since the beginning um there are still nuclear weapons deployed in Europe um much to the ignorance of a lot of people who don't know about that um and uh i recently watched the calm down to zero movie where um you know one of the one of the things that struck me is that not long ago a plane flew over the US with i think six nuclear weapons on board without the pilot knowing about it and what if that um you know those any of those weapons explode obviously we will we would um hopefully not we will we would uh suffer the consequences here as well um and to to end my remarks uh regarding your presentation you ended up with a question um why do those regions with more poverty and uh environmental problems continue to invest in the military and you mentioned um you know how much the military this day spends in in in fuel uh and uh energies that are not environmentally friendly um i am sure we will get to a stage where you know states will invent those technologies that do not require fuel or any energy which is environmentally friendly so we would find ourselves with the same question um so i think it is directly linked disarmament and climate change in that sense but uh i would like to take this forward and when when the day comes that we see new technologies i think we will also face the same questions as we're facing today about disarmament itself um right we've reached its five ten p.m now and we've completed our four presentations thank you very much to um the four of you i think your presentations were were brilliant and you touched upon many things so i think it is time for us to open up the discussion and the Q&A debate um as i said i have uh there's a few questions that we have received from the wider public i would like to start with one but two questions perhaps uh from a lady Blanca Romagna she writes uh from the UNDP in the border between IT and the Dominican Republic and i think her first question is for me but i can't i can't leave pass it on to you Carina because uh i want to see what you think about it it's uh Blanca asks that if states military spending armies and arms straight make war and conflict more probable and she's taken this probably from my article in open democracy not from what you said uh but she asks that if states military spending armies and arms straight make war and conflict more probable then why governments are likely to continue with this trend uh despite the terrible consequences and the thousands of deaths they indirectly fostered through conflict and war and she's got a second question which i'll also add to this one she says and i've got it here sorry just one second um yes she asks could building a disarmament agenda for the 21st century or working towards a globally disarmed world be added to the UN millennium development goals and i would add what would the cost of of that be i don't think that that one is you know necessarily something that i can address but i can gladly address address um the first question that uh that she that she posed um i think that that at the end of the day we we sort of wonder um why is it that states continue spending at this at the at the pace that they have done uh in in recent years and that might might do in in future years um and i don't think you know it's something that we we sort of question sometimes um as part of our daily work at Cypri when we try to redefine why is it that instead of setting up other type of priorities uh countries still spend on their on their militaries and i think it's because in many in many i mean it's it's not a straightforward answer um but um in many for instance developing countries the militaries are still very powerful actors um who are um perhaps not necessarily in power in society but with enough influence in the society or in the government to sort of set up set up the agenda on on how to design the military budget for instance um many militaries in the world and this sort of you know links to something that jeshua brought before about the lack of transparency many militaries in the world actually have access to enormous amount of off budget funding whether it's because they manage companies for instance they have participation in oil companies or in copper exploitation and like it is the case of of Chile clearly in Latin America or gas and this gives them this this gives the military also a lot of leverage to sort of define uh the type of weapons that they might buy whether they are needed or not because sometimes the reality is that they have the money and instead of using the money for social purposes they buy weapons and this is one of the big big paradoxes of our times um so i think i think that's that's uh that's that's why they continue spending uh there's a lot of influences still there's there's money out there um and it's also i think a question that we would we would have to analyze on a case by case sort of basis uh on on what is it that it's important for a government if we look at the countries that did increase military spending this year china and russia they clearly have a geopolitical agenda if you want to call it um by which they they are trying to um gain leverage vis-a-vis the united states they are trying to position themselves as top players in the security agenda or in the military agenda um and so it's also those intentions that that count uh us to try to explain why is it that they despite the financial crisis these countries can still afford these enormous amounts of money uh in military spending does anyone else want to comment on that maybe yeshua with regards to blankus question regarding whether we could add a world disarmament agenda for the 21st century to the millennium development goals uh yes and i'd like to weigh in on the first question as well which is if uh spending makes uh conflict more likely why are states likely to do that and it's sort of in line with karina's answer on that again i would say it's rampant militarism in the highest levels of human society and uh the way in which power is rewarded in the un it's got a security council in which the the big three nuclear powers plus two others um have controlled decision making and there are several other countries who who want to get in on that and they are imitating that which i think in part at least uh answers in question of why are people going down that path uh because this is how power has been rewarded in the world um i don't think disarmament would need to be added to the millennium development goals as a cost um there are some weapons systems especially nuclear ones which can be complex to disassemble but demilitarization of weapons uh in many cases with uh the conventional weapons that the vast majority of armed forces have can be demilled um relatively straightforwardly we've we've got we're learning a lot about how to do that especially the humanitarian mining movement has learned a lot about that not just about mines but about um personals of weapons that were accumulated during the cold war that are sitting in third world countries and they're beginning to deteriorate arsenal explosions have become common so demining uh humanitarian demining organizations have ended up demilling a lot of weaponry shells and moors and other things that are left over and they've learned a lot about doing that and it can actually be a cost effective thing you can recover metals out of that um in Cambodia they're recovering explosives for the shells to help with the mine clearance activities and so there's recycling going on in there uh and so it's not an enormous cost such an enormous cost like alleviating poverty that we would need to add it to the millennium development goals um it's certainly a supportive activity um but I don't think we'll need to act add it to the goals personally if I may add on to what you said Karina and Yeshua um when it comes to military spending on states I think the reason why they continue to do that is is very complex obviously and it is um an addition of various variants or tangents or variables if you want to call it um and I would highlight four um some of them you've already mentioned that Karina uh the first one I would say it is the fact that military or militarism continues to be seen in in international politics as a tool of power um as a means to an end um when it comes to codifying I mean the UN charter attempts attempts at uh codifying that militarism uh and the use of force is not uh or should not be a tool a tool or a means to an end um that will get within time uh we're still we're still not there yet I would say so that would be the first one that I would highlight the second one is a pervasive and we've discussed this throughout the past hour or so the pervasive understanding um from states and governments that uh security is based on national security and interests uh we cannot uh you know I don't think we should adopt the reductionist uh outlook here and uh put it all on economics saying that it is all about economic interest and the military industrial complex I think there is still a pervasive understanding of security based on national interests and security um the third one is economics we've already mentioned that I don't want to go further into that uh and then I would I would add a fourth one inertia it is very difficult to change things when things have this is the way things have been done for decades I would say centuries in mankind so I wanted to to add that one um now I have a some more questions that have actually arrived while we were discussing um one of the questions that has been addressed or asked is by Lauren Dickey who's in the scrap team actually and uh this Gabriela would uh I think the question you are the best place to to answer this um the the question is recent UN reports from South Sudan suggest that civil disarmament can lead to if not further exacerbate human rights violations uh what do you suggest for ensuring that disarmament and human rights don't clash could you repeat the the question I'm sorry I think my internet is a bit yeah no problem um recent reports from the UN um in South Sudan or regarding South Sudan suggest that civil disarmament can lead to if not further exacerbate human rights violations what do you suggest for ensuring that disarmament and human rights don't clash I think the question um has to do a lot with whether you know what is what is it that increases security militarism or disarmament yeah okay um well I think once again I would emphasize the whole um isolation of subjects um I think that we should look at it from a holistic perspective so look at disarmament and human rights together um and I think that automatically doing that in peace processes or in conflict affected areas that would um reduce these risks that the question entailed um I'm unfortunately not um as an expert on South Sudan um but um yeah I um that's all I can say I think that the uh having a discussion discussing both these topics together see that Yashia can answer this better maybe um we'll um we'll help this forward and make that it doesn't collide yeah sure you wanted to add something on to that yeah actually um some of that information came from a small arm survey project which is the baseline security survey in Sudan um and uh it's a very specific situation where uh authorities in one area wanted to disarm one group and they felt threatened by another group which was not disarmed so it was like selective disarmament and certainly that won't work the group felt like it was being made more of a victim um so there definitely has to be balance in that um and that would be true on a global level as well um so it was a very specific situation in Sudan where authorities were trying to disarm one group but not another and they felt threatened by that one question here I think it's very interesting not only because of the contents of the question but also uh with regards to who this comes from um Teresa Diaz Moreira from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Corporation um says uh the ministry would be interested in in us elaborating further the notion of general and complete disarmament which does that mean exactly um and I know Yashua we actually discussed this on Saturday uh so I'm going to give the lead to you and maybe we can all comment on that uh if that's okay sure I'll brief to uh let the other panelists weigh in um general and complete disarmament is to a certain extent a historical phrase it comes from proposals by uh the Russian and U.S. governments in particular in the 1960s for the total dismantlement of the world's militaries and the the shift of uh that monies to human development um that has become almost a mantra in um U.N. documents today it tends to get tacked on the documents virtually every document relating to disarmament leading to general and complete disarmament under international control um and so it's just added on but it comes from that historical framework um and it's almost difficult to imagine today the situation that we had in the 1960s um which was seen as extremely hopeful by many of the recently decolonized governments in the world where the military powerful countries and some of our most respected and learned diplomats were all talking about global disarmament for the the newly independent countries they saw that this was a way in which they wouldn't have to go down that track of buying arms and the non-alive movement um kept that line for a very long time and to a great degree they felt sold out by the fact that that disarmament never happened by the economically advanced countries. Do you think that by using the word or the line general and complete disarmament across the board it has lost meaning over time? Something I come across very often when I when I talk about scrap and what scrap proposes it is you know is general and complete disarmament is utopian and to some extent people don't really understand um what it is what it means what it entails what are the contents of it um and you know operationally would that mean getting rid of all weapons across the board um would that not actually lead to more insecurity than security I think this is the underlying question that a lot of people have with general and complete disarmament I don't know if Gabriella Carina or Ian want to add anything on to that um but if uh if not I would say that general and complete disarmament is not getting rid of all nuclear across the board it is about putting ceilings to conventional forces um getting rid of nuclear weapons that is top one priority I would say um it entails confident security building measures increasing them um it would let it would leave untouched internal policing of course um and there is another question from from the audience made by Anais de Mulder from Belgium who asks whether general and complete disarmament would actually be linked to or is linked to the notion of collective security I think that's an important point and I think to some extent and to a great extent it is after all general and complete disarmament is the one of the motives of the UN general assembly and although collective security is not included in the UN charter I think it is also one of the aspirations um and again I think it is directly related to the the notion that Ian was mentioned before about um global or transnational threats needing or requiring global solutions now I have one more question uh for you Ian um from Lauren Dickey she asks um let me just scroll down a little bit doesn't want to scroll down yeah um Lauren asks should larger countries in other words countries with greater emission levels be held to a different standard in the process to disarm how exactly will smaller countries with lower pollution emission levels feeding to the picture well I would say the problem with trying to answer this question is looking at Durban last December and the attempts at keeping the Kyoto protocols alive and taking them forward we actually went backwards we simply making less progress than we ought to be with this whole question of of cutting emissions the EU is taking a global lead with initiatives such as the 2020-20 initiative and very much um to to the forefront I think before you can even start to link the question of disarmament with emissions I think you've got to look at the question of emissions in the first place I think trying to make it even more complex and more controversial than it already is by trying to link the link disarmament into this is just one step too far I think this is one particular elephant in the room that we're going to have to take little bites out of rather than trying to swallow the whole thing in a single sitting thanks Ian um Gabriella yeshwin Karina if you want to add anything please raise your hand and I'll I'll give you um the micro um I'm picking up questions as as they arrive and as I see them in our document prepared for the occasion there is one question by David Santoro who writes from the CSIS Pacific Forum in Honolulu, Hawaii he asks to what extent disarmament particularly nuclear disarmament is seen as a priority on the international security agenda how important it is or is it in consider in relation to other issues um I think this we can all answer that question somehow but I don't know if Gabriella if you have anything to to say on that since you are you know usually at the UN monitoring what's happening at the conference on disarmament where the discussions lay in that respect or more monitoring what's not happening yeah and that's also answers the questions a little bit uh it's not highly prioritized I think uh in the UN um well it's no let me rephrase it is highly um prioritized by the non-nuclear weapon states um but since that as we've heard before the nuclear weapon states are the ones that are sitting in the security council uh if you look at the conference on disarmament with three monitor it works by consensus which is now these days used as a veto right so um as long as the nuclear weapon states don't want to disarm they're not there's not going to happen anything within the UN on nuclear disarmament if we look out the public um I think I think David I think you mentioned it before that it's not widely talked about when I go around talking about working with nuclear disarmament people look at me and think like I'm a crazy person that works that's something that I should have been working with in the cold war um when I wasn't even born but uh so I don't think unfortunately there is um enough light is being shed on this and I also think that's why once again to come back to our reach and critical wills view of this connecting this issue uh to other issues that the public think is more important like lack of um health care and food and water and so on will increase um people's knowledge that this is still a big threat and it's important to deal with and that would also put more pressure into the and hopefully make a difference I don't know if that answered the questions I think it did um I personally I see a lot of talk um out there about proliferation or nuclear proliferation rather than nuclear disarmament um having said that I think one should not take lightly um statements coming from governmental officials or even world leaders um to what extent uh President Obama's speech in Prague in 2009 um is a real commitment to nuclear disarmament is something that would could spend hours debating um personally I don't think all is about rhetoric I think there is a significant uh compromise there towards reaching that goal um but it is it is quite down to how that statement or initiative is sometimes being instrumentalized by others to actually shift the attention to proliferation rather than disarmament as if pleading for disarmament could actually strengthen the proliferation regime itself um I think it's worth bearing that in mind um now a further question from the audience um Adria, he's a Adria Caro, a Spanish lawyer, he writes from Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, he asks how is any agreement um on disarmament uh or how would any agreement on global disarmament uh control the governments that sign it that they actually comply with their disarmament obligations um you mentioned earlier Jeshua about the episode in South Sudan where a faction had disarmed the other one had not disarmed could we see this you know on a global scale I'm not sure that it's comparable situation I would prefer to go with something like the mine ban treaty which we monitor at the land mine and cluster munition monitor I mean that's the purpose we we both monitor the compliance by states to the agreement are they fulfilling their obligations as well as looking at what's happening in the the states that have not yet joined the treaty uh and so far we have not found a single country that has been using anti-personnel mines that join the treaty they are used by governments that haven't yet joined the treaty and mostly by non-state armed groups um there's a certain um the the power in treaties is that um the the the governments that sign up to it uh do not want to be seen as violating their obligations so there's a certain trust factor there um it it has to do with legitimacy in the world today now is that a strong enough power to keep someone from doing it well the other part of the conventions are they destroy the weapon and I consider that to be the real ratification because it's required that they destroy their stocks uh when they uh they join the convention they have a period of time to do that in but once they do that even if they desire to use it they don't have it anymore and we've essentially shut down the entire global trade in it there's almost no production anymore except in india and pakistan um so um the convention has been very successful um and it looks like we're on track to to do the same thing with the other humanitarian disarmament convention the one on cluster munitions uh this is the best system that we have at this time is it foolproof no um our monitoring system uh it also helps because they know that there are groups looking over their shoulder uh unlike some other conventions where uh there is non-governmental compliance we're accepted as a member of the convention even though we are a non-governmental entity um they accept that we're doing better monitoring of the convention than they could do on their own so I think very good monitoring by groups transparency efforts like um sypree reaching critical will are extraordinarily important at building trust in these types of international agreements ian is i just on to work with podges to gabriella yes i am old enough to remember the cold war uh but just picking up on something that uh yes you referred to earlier the conventional forces in europe treaty um here we are still in the cold war still um with this horrendous threat of of global new nuclear warfare across the inner german border perhaps as the as the trigger and yet the soviet union the warsaw pact if you wish um and nato um agree that they are going to decrease the amount of conventional armaments in europe and despite the tremendous loss of distrust between the warsaw pact and nato the treaty is a success and uh there is open and verifiable monitoring of reduction in uh in conventional weapons if we can achieve that um when you got um that there's a huge threat between the warsaw pact and nato i think there's a great course for optimism and perhaps that um is is another lesson in history that it can work as well as the excellent exams that yesh was just given on the contemporary world thanks ian um yesh what may yes gabriella yes can i just add something from them you know uh from the conventional armament i do believe if you look at the conventional armament and the lack of work that's been going on for the last 15 years um and how states put effort in not to proceed in negotiating a nuclear weapons convention or anything that could lead to this armament i do if you want to look at from a positive side do believe that um this shows that states one they're even they're even uh they don't even want to discuss discussing these issues of a nuclear weapon convention and so on which for me shows that there is some sort of sacred seat that if there would be a nuclear weapons convention even though if you wouldn't sign it will still create a norm like we've seen uh with other disarmament treaties um create a norm not to use the weapon or to disarm so i do believe that even though that you have the uh flaws of international international law that sovereign sovereign law is stronger um i do think that states um if there is a treaty there they want to uh apply to it they don't want to be like yosha said they don't want to violate something uh that strong okay um this question perhaps uh carina and yesha are best placed to address it what do you think will the impact be of the arm straight treaty in current military spending and arms transfers of course would it be an impact um it's it's hard to say because the the arm street the negotiations for the arm street treaty are not necessarily calling for reductions for instance in military spending or anything on those lines i think i think they are trying to introduce um better controls you know that that you know to make states more accountable in in this regard but when it when it comes to the links or the the relation with military spending i think that one um one way perhaps one tool that we can utilize to sort of monitor whether this can work or not is it's against you know uh transparency whether for instance you know one of the big issues that we have here at cipri is whether the states give enough information about the type of arms procurement that they do we know that there's a lot of arms exports and arms um imports right and we actually have one of the largest databases if not the largest database on you know registering this this type of transactions but sometimes finding those transactions you know reflected on a budget is a total different story i mean this this uh this in in some cases are hitting from the budget or they are um they have a specific clauses of national security exception uh not to disclose this information so hopefully you know um the the treaty might might bring some some some um room for improving transparency when it comes to reporting this type of um um of of uh transactions yeah sure yeah um like kareena said no i don't think it's going to have much of an effect on on military spending the goal of the arms trade treaty is not to halt the arms trade or to ban the trade in arms it's to put conditionalities on it most of which are human rights conditionalities because of the um enormous amount of uh human rights abuses which are enabled by people with arms in in many countries so that is the driving force behind the arms trade treaty the international peace bureau fully supports the negotiations of an arms trade treaty and it could bring an end or no won't bring an end but it could reduce a certain type of human suffering um however there's a trend that we haven't talked about yet that i think is a real threat and that is autonomous weapons this is a coming threat that i haven't seen much work on yet also known as robotics and it's going to be a revolution in military affairs that's going to drive a new a new amount of purchases and i see this as a real threat for sucking up yet more resources that we need for other purposes yeah can i just jump in here yes you raise a really worrying point and certainly it plays into some of the stuff that i was investigating shortly before before i left the military a couple of years ago this whole question of autonomous weapon systems and robotics is really to me very very worrying when you have a weapon system that's going to discriminate based on wands and noughts rather than a person in the loop it's really quite frightening don't be fooled we are there already within the british weapons system is a system called brimstone this is all open source reporting brimstone can be fired off and go and seek its own target based on pre-programming this to me is really worrying when you look at the whole question of robotics the only work that's ever been done on ethics of robotics is i-lobot by azimov a work of science fiction and all that you are all the thinking about the ethics of of robots and autonomous weapons systems relies upon a piece of science fiction wow yes thanks ian i'm glad that we actually addressed the issue of robotics i think it is something we had scrapped at looking into that as well because as i said before when it when with regards to ian's remarks on the use by the military of not non-environmentally environmentally friendly energies we will see in the future more and more the use of drones and other robotic type of weaponry and armory so i think we need to bear that in mind it's a it's a dear concern i have one final i think we're fast approaching the end of the webinar i have one more question for you carina you're at sepri you you do research um on military spending for latin america south asia and africa or the middle east sorry does any i mean based on your research do you have any or how do i put it um when you look at defense uh spending by region is there one particular region that gives you reasons for hope and is there one that gives you reasons for serious despair well i think the the region that it is starting to give me a little bit of hope is latin america or i would say south america mostly because south america has has come a long way tremendously in improving transparency for instance uh to report their military spending and also to report their their arms acquisitions in the region and and at the level of the unassued which is this new body created um a couple of years ago they have recently implemented or or approved an instrument similar to the un register on military spending whereby each country member of the unassued would send annually a report um with a disaggregation of all their military spending this is a tool of transparency this is a tool uh of confidence building um and i think it's a it's a really good positive step for a region um that uh two or three years ago people were talking that uh there might have been an arms race going on so so this is an extremely positive step and and the hope is that actually this initial um this initial uh a jump that all the states are having with with this instrument the unassued instrument on military expenditure i hope that it lasts because sometimes we have seen uh even at the international level that many of this regional or international treaties or instruments are very much um executed at the at the very early years that then eventually they become obsolete so hopefully you know the the unassued one is gonna continue um one region that that perhaps is is uh concerning for for the opposite reasons uh for me specifically is the middle east given the the lack of of data and transparency that we have uh the middle east i don't know if you if you are aware of this but it's the region with the largest um share of um gdp in military spending right so while while the average in the world is around uh two percent uh in the middle east this is it tends to be on the on the really high side uh there are countries in the middle east that spend up to 10 14 percent of their gdp in military spending um it's a it's a region where that that's very volatile it's really volatile right now uh not only because of the arab spring but but also because of of um of the allegedly iranian nuclear program uh and and lack of transparency in these issues create even more distrust among the states and and and it's it and it's one of the reasons why sometimes states race into and jump into increasing military spending because they don't know what the neighbor is doing and so the easy answer is uh okay i'm gonna increase i'm gonna buy more just in case my neighbor is doing the same uh so it's it's uh it's a region that i i follow very closely because because again lack of transparency is is causing um um more distrust um in a region that it's already historically very conflictive um so i would say that those are the ones north africa as well we need to start watching what you know how how the nibian army is going to be built from scratch you know whether whether the neighboring countries are going to feel any threat or not from that situation um it's uh it's a region that it's uh it's posing you know many many questions as well when it comes to to transparency um so i would say i would say though those are the you know the two phases of a of a very similar situation that that at the end of the day comes to this issue of transparency thanks thanks carina i'm glad you mentioned the middle list because i think it is a very good example um where it reflects one of the debates around disarmament itself which is what is the sequence for disarmament or um divesting in military uh spending is it first security and peace and then disarmament or does disarmament or can disarmament lead to disarmament related initiatives lead to more trust um more confidence in the security of the region and ultimately to peace um yeah um i don't know if yashua you want to add something to that um okay um right we're fast approaching the the end um of the call and um before i draw uh the webinar to close i want to mention or say a few words um disarmament is not easy um i will not cease to repeat that otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this here when you know if we look back disarmament started centuries ago and in the modern times it started with the conferences of the haig towards the end of the 19th century and early 20th century so yeah i'll repeat to i will not cease sorry to repeat it it's not an easy task and uh that we know we know about that here we're sought to address some of the key issues facing and challenges facing disarmament and how disarmament is directly related to other fields such as development uh human rights and um and climate change um the questions that we have received um and discussed here today plus those that we've not had a chance to read because frankly i had more questions there but uh i'm afraid that if i go into them uh we would go over the allowed time for the call um touch upon some of the very key challenges that disarmament faces today um further i mean disarmament is not about or disarmament and militarism is not about who is right who is wrong i would say um or who does better and who does worse surely those defending militarism uh have their own reasons and believe they're in the right side of the coin um the same applies to disarmaments and anybody working in peace the way i see it personally there are two potential outcomes uh to the current trend of militarism um either perpetuation conflict perpetuation war and more injustice or disarmament and with it less conflict less war and more justice um i think it's a matter of choice um so i want to ask uh for those who are listening which of the two outcomes um do we prefer um and finally well i want to thank uh the speakers uh today uh gabriela yashua carina and ian for joining us um on the scrap gdans webinar um i want to also thank anybody who has taken part in the global day of action on military spending um i think it is a great initiative and uh i'm glad that this is happening and hopefully it'll happen again next year and uh finally a big thanks to the scrap team and to all of you out there who have been listening and sending questions through um our social media and uh other channels i hope that you follow that you will follow scraps activities and steps uh as we progress towards uh our goal um for general and complete disarmament thank you very much and have a nice evening