by Dan Lee, Control Arms
From yesterday onwards the Conference has
started to extend its hours into the night, with negotiations also taking up the
delegates’ upcoming weekend before the final allocated week of negotiation time.
The commitment by governments to use this extra time to ensure they reach an
agreed arms trade treaty (ATT) is admirable, but it comes with certain risks. The
most obvious of these is that delegates will begin to tire, burn out, and exhaust
themselves from long and increasingly tense days of negotiating. These days
will almost certainly get increasingly longer as the week goes on.
As with many conferences, the risk is that
the Treaty could ultimately be decided by "negotiation by exhaustion".
This phrase was coined by the Tanzanian delegate on the final night of the
negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, when negotiations continued
through the final night of the Conference right through to the final plenary (Oberthür
& Ott, 1999). The Kyoto Protocol negotiations were also decided by
consensus, but Chairman Raul Estrada-Oyuela played a central role in the
way the final negotiations proceeded.
This sort of experience can be a good thing
in some ways. It may reduce the amount of time delegations spend trying to
filibuster or get in the way of certain issues they are less in favour of. It
may spur governments on to find agreement quickly and efficiently in order to
cover a lot of ground very fast. It may even lead them to find agreement where
there previously was none, with quick last minute compromises to get things
done.
But it can also risk damaging the quality
of the discussions taking place. At Kyoto, most delegates became highly
fatigued and had little willingness to engage in long and extensive discussions.
As such, vital pieces of information may be lost in the eagerness to get things
done as soon as possible. Extensive discussions can be inefficient and
self-serving, but at other times they may reveal arguments and information that
would not otherwise see the light of day. The same can be said of the
compromises that delegations may be forced into, towards the end of
negotiations. Already we are seeing governments making compromises, which is
positive. But compromises should only be there to ensure that in the end, as
strong a Treaty as possible results. The willingness to get the Treaty
completed should not come at a cost to its quality. The same goes for the
decisions made by the Chairs, and the work of the Secretariat, who will also
suffer from the exhaustive process.
Another drawback of this kind of
negotiation is the issue of capacity. Larger states are much more adept at
dealing with long, drawn-out negotiations. These are the states that are
already equipped with wide pools of resources, many advisors, and large
delegations. At Kyoto, the United States was able to benefit by having a
different negotiator head their team every few hours, to ensure they were
fresh, aware, and awake. It was argued that "[o]n a few issues, the
advantage of being awake and willing to invest some energy made a decisive
difference". Smaller delegations will be at a huge disadvantage as
negotiations wear on, and will need all the assistance and understanding they
can get to participate effectively and to have their voices heard. To some
extent, regional and cross-regional groupings will one way of ensuring the
burden is shared between groups of like-minded governments.
The
Conference on the ATT has already lost nearly a week of negotiating time at the
start, and nothing is yet agreed on any final text to send to capitals for
approval. If delegations are going to reach any agreement on a worthwhile
Treaty by the middle, or at the latest the end of the next week, they will need
to show much perseverance, but also a great deal of understanding for their
fellow delegates, who will be under increasing strain from the negotiations.
