From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERCASE STUDYgroup created a new form of international diplomacy, built upon a willingnessto operate outside the UN system, extensive NGO participation,leadership from small and medium-sized countries, rejection of consensusrules, and avoidance of regional blocs.The movement provided essential expertise to the diplomatic processand played a major role in the actual drafting of the treaty. At the firstformal diplomatic conference in Ottawa in 1996, for example, Canadiandiplomats and the ICBL worked together to ensure maximum governmentattendance. ICBL was given a seat at the table, while governments asyet unwilling to support a total ban were relegated to observer status.Campaigners helped to draft the language of the final declaration and theaction plan. At the end of the conference, Canadian Foreign MinisterLloyd Axworthy stunned the delegates by announcing that his countrywould host a treaty-signing conference in a year’s time.Campaigners and core government supporters had learned from thefailure of the UN-sponsored negotiations on a Landmines Protocol in1995–96, when formal structures led by consensus gave the great powersinfinite opportunities to delay and dilute, and traditional alignments andregional loyalties undermined progress. With the strong support of thethen Secretary-General Kofi Annan, they took the process outside the UNand, rather than allow consensus to water down the treaty to the lowestcommon denominator, stressed the concept of ‘like-minded’ participation,whereby only those who believed in a total ban should take part. Thenegotiating rules required a two-thirds majority to make changes to thetext, effectively undercutting efforts by the USA and others to weaken itthrough amendments.Signed in December 1997 by 122 governments meeting in Ottawa, theMine Ban Treaty was an agreement of the willing, not of all governments.But, as the figures above suggest, it has even affected the behaviour ofsome non-signatory governments. Like other parts of internationalhumanitarian law that have not been universally agreed, it created aninternational norm of good behaviour that almost all governments nowfollow.404