By
Maxwell A. Cameron
The
movement to ban anti-personnel (AP) mines is a tale
of David triumphing over Goliath. A coalition of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), united under
the umbrella of the International Campaign to Ban
Landmines (ICBL), and working in concert with a
group of like-minded small and middle powers, was
able to negotiate, in just 14 months, a comprehensive
ban on the use, production, export, and stockpiling
of AP mines. At the signing ceremony in Ottawa in
December, the partnership between global civil society
and like-minded states was heralded as a new superpower.
Hyperbole aside, does the ban on land-mines portend
a shift or transformation in the post-Cold War global
system?
Civil
society refers to the networks of formal and informal
institutions through which groups and organizations
in society interact, and it becomes global when
these networks cross nation-state boundaries. The
ICBL, an umbrella group composed of more than 1,000
NGOs from some 60 countries, is a good example of
an organization that transcends national boundaries.
It is a loosely organized and unstructured network
of groups and individuals -- with only a handful
of key full-time and paid activists -- that draws
upon the resources, both financial and human, of
a broad spectrum of member organizations interconnected
by fax machines, the internet, and periodic conferences.
By bringing the plight of the most vulnerable victims
of war to the attention of the media and public
opinion around the world, the ICBL set the agenda
for the ban movement.
The
ICBL went beyond calling attention to the mines
issue; it participated actively in the negotiation
of the Ottawa convention. In what has come to be
known as the Ottawa Process, three innovations came
together: a partnership between states and NGOs,
allowing "two-track diplomacy" in which
both states and NGOs participated in the development
of the convention; small- and medium-sized states
working together in a coalition of the like-minded;
and negotiating outside normal channels and mechanisms
in order to place AP mines on a diplomatic fast
track to extinction.
In
many ways, the ban movement was unique. It was easy
to present the issue to the public in terms of a
simple moral and political choice: to keep a weapon
based on limited military utility or ban it on the
grounds of massive and indiscriminate humanitarian
costs. Ban advocates were fortunate to have the
support of prominent individuals like Princess Diana
and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and last minute changes
of government in France and England brought momentum
to the movement. Moreover, courageous leadership
was critical: the ban would not have been achieved
-- at least not with such spectacular speed -- had
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy
been unwilling to go out on a diplomatic limb and
set a 14-month deadline for signing a convention.
There
are three basic lessons to be learned from the Ottawa
Process. First, partnership delivers. Governments
working together with global civil society can achieve
diplomatic results far beyond what might have been
possible in the Cold War era. But partnership requires
that both governments and NGOs overcome their mutual
ambivalence about working together. Second, small-
and medium-sized states, in partnership with global
civil society, can overcome big power opposition;
the US does not always have to lead in the new post-Cold
War environment. Finally, traditional diplomatic
forums and mechanisms can and should be subverted
where they represent an obstacle to the achievement
of policy goals that are widely demanded by world
opinion. Multilateralism is fine as long as states
are prepared to move as fast as the slowest in the
pack, but coalitions of the like-minded are preferable
when the public wants results.
The
emergence of global civil society holds the promise
of making existing international institutions more
democratic, transforming them through innovation
and experimentation, and anchoring them in world
opinion. The era of nation-states is, of course,
far from over but the fact that an entire category
of weaponry, widely used by armies around the world,
has been banned from the arsenals of 121 states
following negotiations of astounding rapidity suggests
that world politics have been transformed since
the Cold War in ways that we are only beginning
to understand. The Ottawa Process provides reason
to believe that global civil society is a basic
ingredient of this transformation.
Maxwell
Cameron is a professor at Carleton University's
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
Return to: Vol.2, No.1 1998
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