Global Activism And Humanitarian Disarmament

279 Pages·2020·3.83 MB·English

by  Matthew Bolton, Sarah Njeri, Taylor Benjamin-Britton

Global Activism
and Humanitarian
Disarmament
Edited by
Matthew Breay Bolton · Sarah Njeri ·
Taylor Benjamin-Britton
Global Activism and Humanitarian Disarmament
Matthew Breay Bolton · Sarah Njeri ·
Taylor Benjamin-Britton
Editors
Global Activism
and Humanitarian
Disarmament
Editors
Matthew Breay Bolton Sarah Njeri
Department of Political Science Africa Leadership Centre
Pace University King’s College London
New York, NY, USA London, UK
Taylor Benjamin-Britton
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-27610-2 ISBN 978-3-030-27611-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27611-9
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F
oreword
The emergence oF humaniTarian disarmamenT
and iTs impacT on weapons and Violence
When we built the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)
in the early 1990s, we were responding to a humanitarian crisis result-
ing from the use of antipersonnel landmines in the regions of the world
where the two superpowers had fought proxy wars during the Cold War.
It was primarily civilians who were maimed or killed by those indiscrim-
inate weapons of mass destruction in slow motion, as we came to call
them in the ICBL. Once these wars ended, the landmines remained
where they had been sown and all casualties were civilian.
Not surprisingly, landmine survivors became some of the ICBL’s
most powerful advocates for a treaty banning landmines. The ICBL was
broad, deep, and creative and we partnered with a core group of pro-
ban governments and the International Committee of the Red Cross to
bypass the ineffective efforts to deal with landmines within the UN and
negotiate a ban treaty in a stand-alone process.
The work of the ICBL demonstrated that mass mobilization of sur-
vivors and nongovernmental organizations around the world could be a
powerful engine for change. In 1997, our joint efforts resulted in the
Mine Ban Treaty. The treaty created a framework to mitigate the human-
itarian impact of landmines through risk education, victim assistance, and
landmine clearance. Later that year, the ICBL and I were jointly awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize for our work. In their announcement of the 1997
v
vi FOREWORD
Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee also said, “As a model for similar pro-
cesses in the future, it could prove of decisive importance to the interna-
tional effort for disarmament and peace.”
Our success was not a fluke, nor was it the result of some special,
innate capacity to which we alone had access. Since the Mine Ban Treaty,
campaigns making up the emergent “humanitarian disarmament” com-
munity have achieved three major new treaties: the 2008 Convention
on Cluster Munitions, 2013 Arms Trade Treaty, and 2017 Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The International Campaign
to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017
for the TPNW.
The movement against indiscriminate weapons has also shown that it
can have a normative impact beyond supportive states. The landmine ban
treaty has demonstrably changed the behavior of major military pow-
ers—as they have adopted export moratoria, destroyed stockpiles and
avoided using antipersonnel mines in conflict. Several non-state armed
groups have also signed commitments to abide by its norms. We have
also seen the cluster munition ban have similar effects.
The humanitarian disarmament community has been consistently
underestimated by academia, particularly those wedded to traditional,
realist understandings of security, arms control, and disarmament. Their
dismissal of our work is often framed in gendered terms, casting us as
“emotional” and “naïve.” But in editing this volume, Taylor Benjamin-
Britton, Sarah Njeri, and Matthew Bolton are helping to redress this
lacuna. This book shows how activists, advocates, and practitioners have
been able to constrain weapons and inhumane violence. Rather than
critiquing from the sidelines, their work, as well as that of the other
authors, is rooted in a commitment to making the world a safer place for
us all.
At a time of rising nationalist sentiment, used to justify all manner
of atrocities, we need more thinking campaigners working in solidar-
ity across boundaries to strip away the academic, political and military
discourses that prop up violent people. The humanitarian disarmament
community is one among many networks that show it is possible to
resist militarism. This book tells our story. In reading it, I hope you are
FOREWORD vii
inspired to join our struggle, learn from our mistakes, and apply our
lessons to your own efforts to build sustainable peace with justice and
equality.
Jody Williams
Chair, Nobel Women’s Initiative
1997 Nobel Peace Prize
co-Laureate with the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines
Westminster West, VT, USA
Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban
landmines through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared
the Peace Prize with her that year. At that time, she became the 10th woman—
and third American woman—in its almost 100-year history to receive the Prize.
Since her protests of the Vietnam War, she has been a lifelong advocate of free-
dom, self-determination, and human and civil rights. Like others who have seen
the ravages of war, she is an outspoken peace activist who struggles to reclaim the
real meaning of peace—a concept which goes far beyond the absence of armed
conflict and is defined by human security, not national security. Since January of
2006, Jody Williams has worked toward those ends through the Nobel Women’s
Initiative, which she chairs. Her memoir on life as a grassroots activist, My Name
is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize was
released by the University of California Press in early 2013.
c
onTenTs
1 The Humanitarian Disarmament Movement:
An Assessment and Review 1
Taylor Benjamin-Britton, Matthew Breay Bolton
and Sarah Njeri
Part I Emergence of Norms
2 When Scientists Become Activists: The International
Committee for Robot Arms Control and the Politics
of Killer Robots 27
Matthew Breay Bolton and Cayman C. Mitchell
3 The Agency of International Humanitarian Disarmament
Law: The Case of Advocacy for Positive Obligations
in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 59
Matthew Breay Bolton and Elizabeth Minor
4 Religious Advocacy and Activism for the Treaty
on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 103
Emily Welty with Gabrielle Chalk
ix
x CONTENTS
Part II Challenges in Diffusing and Implementing Norms
5 US Arms Control Dynamics in the Era of Humanitarian
Disarmament: A Case Study of the Convention
on Cluster Munitions 141
Taylor Benjamin-Britton
6 The Politics of Non-recognition: Re-evaluating
the Apolitical Presentation of the UN Humanitarian
Mine Action Programs in Somaliland 169
Sarah Njeri
Part III The Wider Context
7 The Relationship Between Humanitarian Disarmament
and General and Complete Disarmament 199
Dan Plesch and Kevin Miletic
8 Addressing the Political Impact of Inclusion
and Exclusion in Multilateral Disarmament Forums 225
Elizabeth Minor
Epilogue: Whither Humanitarian Disarmament? 253
Sarah Njeri, Matthew Breay Bolton
and Taylor Benjamin-Britton
Index 261
n c
oTes on onTribuTors
Dr. Taylor Benjamin-Britton defended her Ph.D. in political science
at Temple University in August 2016. She has taught courses in inter-
national relations and international organization in the Department
of Political Science at Temple University as well as the Department of
International Relations at Lehigh University. She is currently transition-
ing to self-employment.
Matthew Breay Bolton is Director of the International Disarmament
Institute and Associate Professor of political science at Pace University
in New York City. He is an expert on global peace and security policy,
focusing on multilateral disarmament and arms control policymaking
processes. He has a Ph.D. in Government and Master’s in Development
Studies from the London School of Economics. Since 2014, Bolton
has worked on the UN advocacy of the International Campaign to
Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace
Prize. Bolton has published four other books, including Foreign Aid
and Landmine Clearance (I.B. Tauris) and Imagining Disarmament,
Enchanting International Relations (Palgrave Pivot).
Gabrielle Chalk is Donor Relations and Data Associate at Equality
Now. She is an M.A. in International Affairs and Global Justice student
at Brooklyn College and has a B.A. majoring in Political Science and
Peace and Justice Studies from Pace University.
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