It wasn’t always so

Geneva Call celebrates its tenth anniversary in a spirit of humility and gratitude towards its donors and partners. To be sure, a great deal has been achieved: Since 2000, 41 armed non-State actors on three continents have pledged not to use anti-personnel mines. In its 10 years of activity, Geneva Call has gone from non governmental outlier to a respected partner of many of the actors who work in the area of the protection of civilians caught up in conflict. It has extended its operations towards non-State actors and the protection of women, and children in armed conflict.

It wasn’t always so. In the beginning, Geneva Call’s proposal was met with disbelief in some quarters. The international community was skeptical: “Armed non-State actors have never been formally invited to sign humanitarian agreements, and it will never work”, was a comment heard. Dire predictions were made at the beginning of the project: “Armed non-State actors will manipulate the situation for political purposes or in order to obtain legitimacy”. The criticisms could be summed up in a phrase: “It can’t be done”.

Events on the ground quickly proved that Geneva Call was on the right path. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front from the Philippines was the first to sign the Deed of Commitment banning AP mines the same month that Geneva Call was officially launched. A year and a half later the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army signed the same deed and thereby induced the government in Khartoum to sign the Mine Ban Convention one year later.

It was working. Geneva Call had looked at the obvious - that a lot of the people involved in putting innocent civilians in harm’s way were not being addressed by the good intentions established by international treaties - in a non-obvious way: by speaking to those armed non-State actors who are collectively participating in 90 percent of the armed conflicts around the world. It does this by asking them to assume responsibility in writing for the lives of civilians in territory under their control - by pledging to give up the use of AP mines, for instance. In an original twist to the Geneva Call process, the Deed is co-signed by the Government of the Republic and canton of Geneva, which becomes its custodian.

But people’s lives do not change at the stroke of a pen. Geneva Call’s ultimate mission is to improve the lives of the people who have the misfortune to live beyond the reach of international law. It is the follow-up missions of monitoring, and of evaluations on the ground that ensure that the promise is kept. The signature is only the beginning.

From the beginning Geneva Call has held to a few simple precepts. It is a neutral and impartial interlocutor to all parties in a conflict; it limits its work to humanitarian intervention; it deals with armed non-State actors who are clearly not linked to the state and that have a command structure. And it believes that if non-State actors are part of the problem, they must also be a part of the solution.

Real improvement in people’s lives

However difficult the work of Geneva Call and of its local partners in the field has been over the past 10 years, the easy part has been done, by definition. Geneva Call must now persuade the more recalcitrant non-State actors to enter into a dialogue on humanitarian concerns. The organization has already shown that it can usefully leverage the trust built in its relationships with the non-State actors to broach the issues of women and children with them as need be. But it does not get any easier for that.

For one, Geneva Call is concerned that one of the consequences of the global war on terror is the increasing reliance by states on lists of proscribed groups and persons. Geneva Call has been taken to task for engaging “bad guys”. There clearly are some very unsavoury groups hoping to impose themselves by force in some parts of the world. But if Geneva Call limited its engagement to only the “nice guys”, instead of trying across the board to mitigate acts of war that affect unprotected civilians, it would have had to admit to failure from the start.

Another of the difficulties Geneva Call faces is the danger of “a dilution of standards”. The position of Geneva Call on this is clear. If an armed non-State actor refuses to renounce the use of AP mines, but is ready to work together on clearing some mines, marking territory used by civilians, and to permit access to the civilian population to benefit from mine risk education programmes, then Geneva Call will accept that as a fair step in the right direction, while always striving for a total ban.

It is a fact that the nature of conflicts may change but the civilian populations caught up in them continue to suffer; it has always been necessary to invent new ways to address their suffering. The lesson learned by Geneva Call is that even if the new ways proposed seem unrealistic or even impossible, they may work. They may be worth trying.

If the uncertainty, the fear, and the horror of war for the many people who live it daily in many parts of the world can be diminished even modestly, Geneva Call believes it has made a difference.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some related links:

1000 Peace Women