Thank you Mr. Chairman,
We appreciate all the important work that you and your team have done this week and for many months before. However, we find it a stretch to call this latest text “new” or “revised.” It is true in a technical or literal sense since there are new words on paper, but there is no change at all in substance or impact. Several other delegations have called the changes “cosmetic,” and another appropriate label might be “window dressing.”
This is definitely not a merger of the chair’s text and the alternative protocol proposal. As another delegate remarked, it is not the middle ground.
All of the worst aspects of the chair’s text have been retained. All of the loopholes and exceptions are still there. This includes the promotion of cluster munitions with one “safeguard,” such as a self-destruct mechanism, as the solution to the cluster munition problem, despite abundant evidence that such cluster munitions cause unacceptable harm to civilians.
States are still far from reaching consensus on a protocol. We have great difficulty in seeing how the vast differences can be bridged on humanitarian grounds. We hope that in the coming months leading up to the Review Conference, and during the negotiations, that political considerations and political pressures do not trump humanitarian concerns.
We once again encourage states to look at national measures and at a humanitarian-inspired declaration as the best ways to achieve positive results from the past four years of work on cluster munitions.
Thank you.
