The Philippines has been appointed as chair the Group of Government Experts (GGE) of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in 2010. Assuming the Chairmanship will be Minister Jesus S. Domingo, officer for Disarmament and Humanitarian issues at the Permanent Mission of the Philippines to the United Nations in Geneva.
Minister Domingo was appointed due to his extensive background in disarmament, humanitarian and security affairs, dating from his stint in the UN Philippine Mission to New York in the 1990s, service with the Department’s Office of UN and Other International Organizations (UNIO) from 2002-2006, and active participation in the work of the UN disarmament community in Geneva since 2007.
The UN “Convention in Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects” is also known as “CCW” or the “Inhuman Weapons Convention”. The purpose of the CCW is to ban or restrict the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately such as landmines, cluster munitions, explosive remnants of war, and improvised explosive devices.
The CCW-GGE will focus on creating a Protocol to the CCW which will cover matters relating to cluster munitions to complement the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) concluded last year. The Philippines is both a High Contracting Party to the CCW and a signatory to the CCM. The CCM was concluded outside the UN while the CCW is a UN treaty, thus the CCW Protocol will have a more universal application. A number of state users and possessors of cluster munitions have been reluctant to sign on to the CCM, but would be bound by the CCW. The Protocol will also place emphasis on the humanitarian dimensions of cluster munitions, particularly the adherence to the norms of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the needs of the victims.
The Philippines’ CCW-GGE Chairmanship complements and reinforces the country’s international leadership in disarmament affairs, as demonstrated by its Presidency of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, current Vice Chairmanship of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) Disarmament Committee, and hosting of the 2010 Asia-Pacific Conference of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development (GDAVD). END