A twenty-first century without cluster munitions? Options for the Geneva negotiations on the UN Weapons Convention

In December 2008, the Oslo Process, an initiative of the Norwegian government to ban cluster munitions, was concluded with the signing of the 'Convention on Cluster Munitions.' The Convention, with its extensive prohibitions, will enter into force six months after the 30th Instrument of Ratification has been submitted to the UN Secretary-General. However, the negotiations on cluster munitions under the UN-based Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva have not yet reached an end. In contrast to the Oslo Process, the latter process involves representatives of the major stockpilers of cluster munitions, the US, Russia, and China, who reject most of the prohibitions agreed upon in Oslo. The precondition for ratification of a new protocol on cluster munitions would be consensus among the 109 CCW signatory states. It remains completely unclear, however, whether the proposed protocol could be designed to complement the Oslo Convention and thus to strengthen the existing weapons prohibition regime, or whether it would create a source of conflict between agreements of differing scope and quality. These two possibilities will be discussed in the following, and the potential failure of the Geneva negotiations will be addressed as well