REMARKS AT THE LAUNCHING & EXHIBIT OPENING OF THE NEW PHILIPPINE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CLUSTER MUNITIONS (PCCM)

By Atty. Soliman M. Santos, Jr.
Coordinator, Philippine Campaign to Ban Landmines (PCBL)
Member, Civil Society Initiatives for International Humanitarian Law (CSI-IHL)
Quezon City, 15 September 2008

            Greetings of Peace to All!  It is an honor, as Coordinator of the Philippine Campaign to Ban Landmines (PCBL) and as a Charter Member of the new Civil Society Initiatives for International Humanitarian Law (CSI-IHL), to give this address at the launching of the new Philippine Campaign Against Cluster Munitions (PCCM). PCBL is proud to have helped pave the way for and become an affiliate of the PCCM.  Though, together with our pre-formation partner, the Philippine Action Network on Small Arms (PhilANSA), we were actually considering the acronym PACMAN instead of PCCM.  But PACMAN, the monicker of Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, might only confuse people as to the destructive power that we are campaigning about.  

We are campaigning against cluster munitions:  weapons made up of multiple explosive submunitions or bomblets which are dispensed from a container which opens in mid-air after being deployed mainly by aircraft.  They pose a unique and grave lethal threat to civilians both during and after armed conflict in which they are used.  For one, the wide area and indiscriminate effects, over an area the size of 2-4 football fields, effectively carpet bombing that area, increase the threat to civilians at the time of use in or near populated areas.  For another, the high likelihood of their becoming unexploded ordnance (UXO) makes them a serious and continued threat after use.  If this sounds abstract to you, considering that we have no cluster munitions experience in the Philippines, don’t worry – the exhibit that PCCM will open to you shortly will graphically show what we mean.

This year, 2008, is perhaps the most important in the history of cluster munitions.  Last May, a new treaty banning cluster munitions as a class of weapons was successfully negotiated.  This December, the new treaty will be opened for signature, as part of a process for its rapid entry into force.  The Philippines has been and will continue to be part of this making history, making it happen, making a difference.  At this point, I wish to give credit to the Philippine Delegation at the Dublin Diplomatic Conference and we are honored by the presence here of Delegation Head DFA Assistant Secretary Evan Garcia and Delegation Vice-Head DND Assistant Secretary Lamberto Sillona.  We in the PCBL worked in cooperation with them during the treaty negotiations.  The PCCM exhibit shows photos of this.  This followed a new model of diplomacy characterized by governmental-civil society humanitarian partnership.  The result was a cluster munitions ban treaty which carried five substantive and one procedural, a total of six, Philippine contributions to the new treaty.  It’s like winning six gold medals in the Olympics (Not quite like Michael Phelps but very good).

Having helped achieve that, PCBL and PhilANSA have decided to “retire” as the main Philippine campaign groups against cluster munitions, and instead form a new and younger country campaign group called PCCM to focus on this issue.  This will also allow PCBL and PhilANSA to properly focus on their respective issues of landmines and small arms, which both still have an actual problematic presence in the country. In this way, we do the best justice to all these respective issues. 

Some of you may ask, since there is no actual problematic presence of cluster munitions in the Philippines, why even campaign here on this issue?  The quick answers are these.  First of all, we do not want them to become an actual problematic presence here.  Second, they are in fact an actual problematic presence in other countries or areas where overseas Filipinos are found.  One such area was southern Lebanon and northern Israel in August 2006 where, respectively, Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah non-state armed group used cluster munitions to horrendous effect, as the PCCM exhibit shows. 

Third, we express our humanitarian solidarity with all such victims of cluster munitions, and most especially to those closest to home – in our Southeast Asian neighbors Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.  This is the most bombed region resulting from the Vietnam War of four decades ago.  Again, the PCCM exhibit will show this. Fourth, and related to the third, we do not want our territory to be ever used again for the infliction of devastation by cluster bombs on our Asian neighbors.  There are indications that the former U.S. military bases in the Philippines were used as staging or transit points, even if not the main ones, for U.S. B-52 cluster bombing during the Vietnam War.

Fifth and last, we have a foreign policy committed to international peace and security as shown by Philippine adherence to most humanitarian, weapons and disarmament treaties.  In our premium region of the ASEAN, we share the longtime aspiration for a “Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality” (ZOPFAN). 

As we launch PCCM, we recall and honor those who were several generations ahead of us and paved the way for humanitarian disarmament campaigning.  This year, 2008, is the 50^th anniversary of the 1958 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and its Ban-the-Bomb symbol which later became the more broadly meaningful Peace symbol.  The motif in this t-shirt I am wearing seeks to show the continuing relevance and link between the oldest and the newest bomb ban advocacies, as well as all that came in between.  In this way too, we seek to reach out to and link arms in solidarity with other generations and causes of peace activists in our country and in our region.  Let us learn the lessons from each other’s histories.  Let us connect the dots among arms control, disarmament, humanitarian law, human rights, and peace.  We invoke the spirit of the best in humanitarian disarmament and peace campaigning. 

Thanks to Jayme and Nikki for all your preparatory work, and congratulations for this launching and exhibit.  And thanks to all for your solidarity.

Ban the Bomb!  Ban Cluster Bombs!  No to War!  Yes to Peace!  

Congress set to hold first ever hearing on landmines bill

(2/27/09)

Congress is set to hold a first ever committee hearing for a comprehensive law on landmines this coming Wednesday, March 4, in the wake of the tenth anniversary of the entry into force of an international treaty totally banning victim-activated anti-personnel mines today, March 1.  This also comes at a time of an upsurge of landmine incidents as part of armed hostilities in the country on two war fronts, with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) since the August 2008 abortion of a memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain, and with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) calling for the intensification of tactical offensives as part of marching orders marking their 40^th anniversaries.    

            The House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs under its Chair, Rep. Antonio V. Cuenco, has set that hearing on Wednesday morning, inviting representatives of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National Police (PNP), Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), Sulong CARHRIHL (affiliate of the Civil Society Initiatives for International Humanitarian Law), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to present their respective position statements.  This will be preceded by a briefing on the landmines issue and bill to be provided by the bill’s main proponents, lawyer Soliman Santos Jr., Coordinator of the Philippine Campaign to Ban Landmines (PCBL) which drafted the bill, and its author who adopted it in the House, Rep. Ana Theresia Hontiveros-Baraquel, herself was an early member of  PCBL.       

The Philippine Landmines Bill refers to House Bill No. 1054 of Rep. Hontiveros-Baraquel and its counterpart Senate Bill No. 1595 of Sen. Gregorio Honasan II, a former soldier.  The bill involves implementing legislation on the two landmine-related international treaties already ratified by the Philippines.  These are the 1997 Ottawa Treaty totally banning victim-activated anti-personnel mines and the 1996 Amended Protocol II (to the 1980 Conventional Weapons Convention) on prohibitions or restrictions on the use of mines, booby-traps and other devices.  In gist, the bill seeks to comprehensively implement these two treaties and to reconcile their implementation by adopting the total ban regime when it comes to victim-activated anti-personnel mines.  Aside from criminalizing and penalizing the violations of the relevant treaty norms,  the bill also contains original, innovative or cutting-edge features.

Among these features are the application of the total ban on victim-activated anti-personnel mines to their transit and carrying by visiting foreign military vessels and forces, such as those of the U.S. which has not yet signed, much less ratified, the 1997 Ottawa Treaty.  Applying a principle used in cases of war crimes, the bill proposes universal jurisdiction over and extra-territorial application even to persons who commit the prohibited acts in other countries.  In the bill’s provisions on compliance by the AFP, corresponding changes in its military doctrine shall be effected, including the development and use of alternatives for perimeter defense of field detachments.  In cases of reacquisition of anti-personnel Claymore mines, it shall be ensured that these are usable and used in command-detonated mode only. By order of then President Ramos as early as 1995, the AFP destroyed its whole inventory of such Claymore mines by 1998.  

            In the bill’s provisions on compliance by rebel groups, the State welcomes their voluntary compliance with the norms established by the two relevant treaties, shall pursue the inclusion of the landmines agenda in peace negotiations with them, and recognizes the special role of impartial humanitarian organizations in engaging them on those norms.  The PCBL had in fact been able to secure declarations of adherence to the IHL on landmines from the MILF and three communist breakaway armed groups in 2008.  This underscores the role that civil society and its organizations have played in what has been called the “Ottawa Process” model of citizen diplomacy.  

            The Philippines ratified the 1997 Ottawa Treaty in 2000 and the 1996 Amended Protocol II in 1997, but it has yet to pass domestic/national implementing legislation on either of these treaties.  The Philippine Landmines Bill has been filed in the 12th, 13^th and 14^th Congresses, i.e. as early as 2003, but without even a first Committee hearing so far.  This has been largely due to other legislative and political priorities. Hontiveros-Baraquel and Santos say that it is about time that this bill finally move forward in the legislative mill toward passage into law in 2009.

RP contributes key ideas in new int'l treaty banning cluster bombs

DUBLIN, Ireland -- The Philippines succeeded in contributing at least four substantive proposals into the new international treaty banning cluster bombs adopted yesterday, May 30, at the close of the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions.
 
The two-week conference, attended by representatives of more than 100 countries, a number of international organizations, and NGOs led by the global Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), was organized to address this weapon condemned as causing unacceptable harm to civilians.

Cluster bombs consist of a large shell containing "bomblets" that can cover a wide area.   Handicap International estimates that 98% of those killed and injured by the weapons are non-combatants. They also say cluster bombs leave a large number of unexploded "duds" which continue to kill and maim long after a conflict has ended.

A Philippine proposal which addressed the possibility that non-state armed groups could also use prohibited cluster munitions is now reflected in the Preamble of the new treaty.   Human Rights Watch had once reported that the Hezbollah had fired cluster munitions-bearing missiles into northern Israel during the southern  Lebanon war of 2006.  Hezbollah, however, just recently denied this, showing that the weapon is already stigmatized even for non-state armed groups.

A second Philippine proposal has resulted in the inclusion of those "who have been killed" or have died, not just those who have been injured or wounded, in the new treaty’s definition of “cluster munition victims.”   This proposal is  also responsible for the diplomatic understanding that the definition of “cluster munition victims” covers “all” persons victimized, including migrants, refugees and other non-nationals, in the affected areas, in recognition of the big number of Filipinos migrant workers, many of them in cluster munitions-affected countries like Lebanon.

A third Philippine proposal accepted into the new treaty was the significant addition of international humanitarian law, aside from internal human rights law, as a term of reference for victim assistance to ensure that cluster munition victims will receive the full measure of assistance, rights and benefits due them.

 
A fourth Philippine proposal  resulted in a new formulation on national implementation measures which  now cover the whole range of legal, administrative and other measures, no longer just limited to criminal and penal legislation on prohibited cluster munition activity.   Other measures would include changes in military doctrine and operating procedures and the notification of organizations involved in arms development, production and transfer.

The Philippines is not known to be a producer, user, or stockpiler of cluster munitions.  It has also not itself been affected by this weapon so far, other than through the danger posed to overseas Filipinos, such as migrant workers, peacekepers and deminers, in the affected areas of the world.     
 
However, the Philippines' "special relations" with the U.S., the biggest producer, user and stockpiler of cluster bombs, creates the real possibility of the country's being used as at least a transit point for US cluster munitions in its global military operations.  In the past, US military bases in the Philippines were believed to have contained stockpiles and been used as launching pads of cluster munitions that were used during the Vietnam War.

 The US dropped cluster bombs in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, and Laos in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, including in the vicinity of civilian communities.  These munitions continue to kill and maim civilians, especially children, up to the present, even long after the armed conflict.  The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates that in Laos alone, nine to 27 million unexploded submunitions remain, and some 11,000 people have been killed or injured, more than 30 percent of them children. An estimate based on US military databases states that 9,500 sorties in Cambodia delivered up to 87,000 air-dropped cluster munitions.   

The Philippine Delegation was led by Assistant Secretary Evan Garcia of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), with Assistant Secretary Lamberto Sillona of the Department of National Defense (DND) as deputy head and Geneva-based Minister-Counsellor Jesus Domingo of DFA as member.  They were supported by a team of the CMC-affiliated NGO Philippine Campaign to Ban Landmines (PCBL) composed of lawyer Soliman Santos Jr., professor Paz Verdades Santos and Bangkok-based international representative Alfredo Lubang, the latter also working with the Thai Campaign to Ban Landmines.    

PCBL brought to the Dublin conference from the Philippines a petition in support of a cluster munitions ban treaty in the form of a long canvas cloth signed by and with hand imprints of more than 120 Filipino youth gathered by another CMC-affiliated NGO, the Philippine Action Network on Small Arms (PhilANSA).  The latter was also responsible for securing a letter last March from Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, as President of Pax Christi-Pilipinas, urging President Arroyo to support the treaty.