|
Research programmes
Arms
control and disarmament
Researchers: Angela
Woodward, Andreas
Persbo and Rocio
Escauriaza
Funders: Ford Foundation, Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands,
UK Global Opportunities Fund (GOF), Government of the Kingdom of Norway.
VERTIC maintains a watching brief over all developments in the verification
and monitoring of arms control and disarmament agreements. VERTIC promotes
the development and implementation of effective verification measures
for arms control and disarmament treaties, and contributes to the public
debate on such issues.
VERTIC’s principal areas of research in this field include:
The
basics of arms control and disarmament verification are explained in the
pamphlet, A
Guide to Verification for Arms Control and Disarmament, produced
in 2002 in cooperation with the United Nations Association of the United
Kingdom (UNA-UK).
For
a 'General
overview of existing verification mechanisms' see Trevor Findlay's
presentation to the Seminar on Promoting Verification in Multilateral
Arms Control Treates: Future Verification Regimes—the Fissile Materials
Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) Geneva, 28 March 2003. The conference was jointly
organised by Japan, Australia and UNIDIR.
Coming
to Terms with Security: A Handbook on Verification and Compliance
provides a wealth of models and previous experience to draw on in developing
appropriate and effective monitoring, verification and compliance systems.
It includes agreements, terms and in-depth analyses and will interest
the expert and the layperson alike. It is published in back-to-back English
and Arabic format jointly by VERTIC and the
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). For more information
contact Jane Awford.
The environment
Researcher: Larry
MacFaul
Funder:
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
VERTIC's environment
programme seeks to promote effective verification systems for multilateral
environmental agreements (MEAs). These systems can include monitoring,
reporting, review and compliance mechanisms. For an introduction to this
topic please see 'A
guide to verification for environmental agreements' (VERTIC, 2003).
VERTIC maintains a watching brief on monitoring and verification developments
across the MEA field. Regular updates on the progress in monitoring and
verification systems in MEAs and analyses of verification trends in the
environmental field appear in Trust
& Verify , the Verification
Yearbook and VERTIC
Briefs
The environment programme's principal area of work currently focuses on
the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
its 1997 Kyoto Protocol, proposals for the post-2012 climate change regime
and related areas. VERTIC has worked on climate change verification issues
since 1991.
• Climate
change
The environment programme is also working on illegal logging with Chatham House.
• Illegal logging
Peace agreements
VERTIC’s
peace agreements programme focuses on the monitoring and verification
of peace accords. Verification and monitoring may be applied to the whole
range of elements that constitute a peace implementation process, ranging
from the military aspects, through electoral monitoring and human rights
monitoring, to the monitoring of local police using international civilian
police. The monitoring and verification of the military aspects of peace
agreements has the longest lineage historically: ceasefire agreements
have often called for monitoring by impartial international observers.
Since the end of the
Cold War the deployment of multi-function peace operations as part of
comprehensive peace settlements has vastly expanded the possibilities
for monitoring and verification. Such activities have also become increasingly
significant because the results are much better publicised by the global
media, because modern peace agreements tend to be more explicit and elaborate
and because experience in monitoring and verification in other fields,
such as arms control and disarmament, is gradually being extended to the
implementation of peace accords.
'Peace Missions Monitor'
is a regular feature of Trust & Verify,
which also includes periodic
articles on particular peace operations.
Recent VERTIC projects
include verification and monitoring mechanisms for a future Middle East
peace settlement; verification of decommissioning of paramilitary weapons
in Northern Ireland; and the monitoring and verification of peace accords
in Africa.
The Middle East
In 2003
VERTIC examined
the options for monitoring, verification and compliance arrangements for
a future peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians as part of
a project being run by the Jerusalem-based Israel-Palestine Center for
Research and Information (IPCRI). Besides Israelis and Palestinians, the
project also involved the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping
Training Centre based in Nova Scotia, Canada. Funded by the UK Foreign
and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the project’s objective was to devise
workable monitoring, verification, dispute resolution, compliance and
enforcement options for a future Middle East peace settlement. The project
examined possible verification and monitoring mechanisms, including for
the so-called Road Map which was publicly released in May 2003.
Coming to Terms with Security: A Handbook
on Verification and Compliance, one of VERTIC’s contributions
to the project, was released in June 2003. Published jointly with the
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), the Handbook
was written with the Middle East peace process in mind and features back-to-back
Arabic and English versions.
Northern Ireland
VERTIC maintains
a watching brief on the verification of decommissioning of paramilitary
weapons in Northern Ireland. Such decommissioning was intended to be part
of the implementation process for the 1997 Good Friday Agreement designed
to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Decommissioning is overseen by the
Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). On 26
September 2005 IICD reported that they had ‘observed and verified
events to put beyond use very large quantities of arms which the [IRA]
Representative has informed us includes all the arms in the IRA’s
possession’.
A separate body, the International Monitoring Commission (IMC), was established
in April 2003 to promote public confidence in the Northern Ireland peace
process by independently monitoring, identifying and exposing serious
acts of non-compliance by paramilitaries and their associated political
parties. In April 2004 the IMC denounced continuing paramilitary activity
in its first ever report. Highlights of the report can be found in 'Monitoring
peace in Northern Ireland' in Trust & Verify no. 114, May-June
2004.
Other
peace agreements
VERTIC
also researches the monitoring of other peace accords including through
UN and other peace operations and UN sanctions.
Sanctions have been
a particular tool used by the Security Council to enforce compliance with
peace agreements in Africa and to diminish the capacity of opposing sides
to sustain fighting. In 'Monitoring
UN Sanctions in Africa: the role of panels of experts' in Verification
Yearbook 2003, Alex Vines evaluates the comparative successes and
failures of sanctions monitoring in Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia since
the 1990s.
The above
publications are available in portable document format (PDF) and require
the installation of Adobe Reader 4.0 or higher. To download a free copy
of the software visit the Adobe
website.
Images: United Nations
and D-NET
|
