NSP Research - Updates

I just found out that Palau joined the Mine Ban Treaty on 18 November 2007 (my birthday!), bringing the number of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty to 156. The announcement of the accession was made on the first day of the Eighth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in Jordan. Palau’s close military ties with the United States, which has not joined the Mine Ban Treaty, complicated its ability to join the treaty. The announcement is really nice as I provided the Landmine Monitor update on Palau for this year’s report and have on several occassions met the diplomat who made the accession happen. Here’s a photo of Marvin T. Ngirutang that I took in Zagreb in 2005.

Today ICBL’s Landmine Monitor Report 2007 was released with events around the world. I provided the Pacific updates for this year’s report after the death of long-time landmine campaigner John Head. I handed the report over to David Hodge, principal of Auckland’s Rangitoto College (the largest high school in Australasia), at the conclusion of a day of activities on landmines and cluster bombs. The school’s media director Peter Harwood set up the launch to mark the conclusion of a school semester that had seen all 640 of the school’s Year 10 (Form 4) students learn about landmines as part of a national curriculum piece on social action. My film documentary film Disarm featured among the teaching resources. Landmine Monitor received some media attention here because, according to the South Korea update, New Zealand imported 1,000 Claymore mines in 2006. This mines are permitted under the Mine Ban Treaty if operated in command-detonated mode only. TV 3 also ran a piece on the launch event, but not until 8 December?

We had some fun this week with a visit from my Australian photographer friend John Rodsted. The NZ Cluster Munition Coalition decided to bring John out on a week-long speaking tour from Dunedin to Auckland. We did a pretty wild stunt in Wellington on 5 November, which concluded with fireworks for Guy Fawke’s Day. The actions helped give the campaign some profile ahead of the major treaty meeting that will take place in Wellington in February 2008.

I’ve accepted an invitation to participate on a committee that oversees the Peace and Disarmament Education Trust Fund, a body established by the government in 1988 uusing $1.5 million in reparations that France paid to New Zealand for its bombing of the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior ship in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985. It was a grant from the fund that enabled me to get started on my work banning landmines fifteen years ago so

From 3-4 May 2007, I participated in a Pacific-wide workshop on the Mine Ban Treaty held in Port Vila, Vanuatu. On the way out of the country I snapped this photo of a World War Two era unexploded bomb sitting by the airport departure lounge!

From 18-19 April 2007, I was in Fiji for a people’s consultation on the proposed global Arms Trade Treaty, basically a workshop convened by the Pacific Concerns Resource Center (PCRC). This was the only people’s consultation held in the Pacific region to help draw public attention to the need for governments to provide feedback on the scope, feasibility and need for stronger government restrictions on transfers of conventional weapons.

On 22 March 2007, I brought some New Zealand NGO colleagues together to see if they’d be interested in campaigning against cluster munitions. The idea had been on my mind around since Israel dropped millions of cluster bomblets on South Lebanon in August 2006. I decided it was really time to get started when I heard the outcome of the talks in Norway that governments would launch a process to establish a treaty outlawing the weapon. As part of this the New Zealand government had agreed to play a lead role and to hold a key treaty-making meeting. I contacted Brian at Toolbox and he adjusted the global campaign logo that he designed so we’ve establish a national chapter of the global Cluster Munition Coalition with Oxfam NZ as its coordinator.

I organized a reception last night at the family catering business (Wareham House!) to inaugurate Oxfam New Zealand’s Wellington office. It was a lot of fun. About eighty representatives of the capital’s diplomatic, political, media, and non-governmental organizations came. We were especially pleased that Hon. Luamanuvao Winnie Laban agreed to speak. She is Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector and also member of parliament for the Mana electorate, where my parents live.

This afternoon I’m headed to John Head’s funeral. He passed away on Sunday, 4 February 2007. John worked to ban landmines with people in government, military and civil society both in NZ and overseas from the early days back in 1992 until ill health forced him to slow down a couple of months ago. John still had a telephone next to his bed though and would call me up about the newsletter, Landmine Monitor research, and to talk about cluster munitions. The award of the 2001 Queens Service Medal (QSM) was a fitting acknowledgment of his work. I had a lot of fun working on our last campaign event at parliament together - his perseverance made it happen. John is survived by Avril, his wife of 57 years, two children, and nine grandchildren.

I did some shopping today at the heavily secured Boroka Foodworld supermarket. My expat colleague from the highlands wanted to pick up some hard-to-find produce like yoghurt and spinach. My shopping criteria was for products made in PNG that were not perishable. Picked up some ground coffee from Goroka for NZD$4.20/K8.20 per pound, a few cans of “Diana” tuna, a jar of banana-ginger jam, a pot of honey, and few savoury wafer biscuits that seem to be popular. While the packaging looked great, I decided against the cans of corned beef… Customs in Australia were a bit annoyed, but let me keep everything! Returning to New Zealand via Oz was a bit of a shock - poverty/wealth, black/white - all less than 2 hours apart…