VERTIC: Research programmes

Research programmes

• Arms control and disarmament
• The environment
• Peace agreements

Arms control and disarmament
Researchers: Angela Woodward, Andreas Persbo
Funders: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, UK Global Opportunities Fund (GOF)

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:

• national implementation measures for treaties and norms prohibiting weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and UN Security Council resolution 1540 (2004)

• verification issues relating to countries of concern such as Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea

• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards

• the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

• the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention

• the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention

• the 1997 Ottawa Landmine Convention, and

• Prospects for a standing United Nations verification mechanism for weapons of mass destruction

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, Polden-Puckham 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 projects

Peace agreements
Funder:

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