Newsletter June 2024
Book Launch: Open Source Investigations in the Age of Google
How did a journalist find out who was responsible for bombing hospitals in Syria from his desk in New York? How can South Sudanese monitors safely track and detail the weapons on their communities and make sure that global audiences take notice? How do researchers in London coordinate worldwide work uncovering global corruption? What are the policy-makers, lawyers, and intelligence agencies doing to keep up with and make use of these activities?
Join us for informative roundtable discussions with world-leading practitioners and scholars about the opportunities and challenges of open source investigations to mark the publication of “Open Source Investigations in the Age of Google”
This free e-book, available here, is a compelling exploration into how threats to human security are being tracked in revolutionary new ways. It delves into the intricacies of monitoring and documenting human rights abuses, political violence, nuclear weapons, corruption, radicalization, and conflict through open source investigations.
Speakers:
- Muhammad Idrees Ahmad (University of Essex)
Dan Liu (Conflict Armament Research)
Dan Plesch (SOAS)
Clionadh Raleigh (ACLED)
Olamide Samuel (University of Leicester)
Benjamin Strick (Centre for Information Resilience)
Henrietta Wilson (King’s College London)
Lydia Wilson (New Lines Magazine)
Date: Tuesday 2nd July 2024
Time: 7-9.30pm
Location: Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London, W2 1QJ
Pact of the Future Rev.1
The call for a Fourth Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD-IV) was echoed by Member States who expressed “serious concern at the continuous and progressive erosion of international norms and rules and obligations in the field of disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation” in the updated version of the Pact for the Future, known as Revision1.
This is a crucial document that represents the starting point for the intergovernmental deliberations throughout the Summit proceedings, and resulted in the following wording:
“We agree to: (a) Revitalize the role of the United Nations in the field of disarmament, including by recommending that the General Assembly hold a fourth special session of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament (SSOD-IV)”.
Under Action 22 on upholding disarmament obligations, States recognized the importance of “restoring and enhancing the role of the United Nations’ disarmament machinery.”
Called to be Peacemakers
Called to be Peacemakers is a document of the International Affairs Department of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales that presents a Catholic approach to arms control and disarmament.
“Despite the loss of human life, displacement of people, misallocation of resources, and damage to our planet, multilateral efforts towards General and Complete Disarmament have effectively stalled. A new special session of the UN General Assembly, the first in over three decades, would provide an important focal point and impetus for progress.
..In these unprecedented times, we appeal to states and others to harness their capabilities to achieve collective security through cooperative international agreements, by reinvigorating efforts to achieve sustainable, verified and irreversible disarmament.”
ImPACT Coalition Submission
SCRAP Weapons formed an ImPACT Coalition and submitted this to the UNCSC, in partnership with Ágora Lab (Mexico), Canadian Network for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (Canada), Canadian Pugwash Group (Canada), CISLAC (Nigeria), International Peace Bureau (Germany), IPHRD- Africa (Kenya), Justice For All NGO (USA) accredited with the UN, Moruroa e Tātou (Māòhi Nui, French-occupied Polynesia), NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace, and Security (USA), Oxfam (UK), Pax Christi England and Wales (UK), Re-Imagining New Communities (Kenya), Thrive Together Community Based Organization (Kenya), Women Volunteers for Peace – WOVOP (Kenya), and Youth for peace and rural development (Congo). Together they wish to widen the scope of the Special Session by collaborating with organisations working on intersecting fields, such as Climate Change, Human Rights, and Gender Equality.
To join the ImPACT Coalition calling for a Fourth Special Session on Disarmament, as a global disarmament conference, kindly email scrap.weapons@soas.ac.uk
Past Events
UN Civil Society Conference, Nairobi
SCRAP’s Project Assistant, Ms. Grace Orao, participated in the UN Civil Society Conference held in Nairobi between May 9 -10 which offered civil society organizations an opportunity to put a global perspective on a specific issue and brings together senior UN System officials, prominent international civil society organizations, youth changemakers, academia, public opinion makers, and international media to discuss issues of global concern.
Activating a UN Special Session on Disarmament
At the sideline of the conference held in Nairobi, SCRAP hosted an online side event on May 9 titled “Activating a UN Special Session on Disarmament”, to discuss the current disarmament landscape and how as civil society we might ensure the effective implementation of recommendations in the New Agenda for Peace, as well as the Pact for the Future. It featured speakers Ms. Eloisa Romani, Prof. Daniel Plesh, Ms. Monalisa Hazarika, and Mr. Sean Conner who spoke on an array of topics including the role of a UN Special Session, gender perspectives to disarmament, proliferation of 3-D printed firearms, Zero missiles, and on the notion of Common Security. The event was co-organized by SCRAP Weapons, SOAS University of London and the International Peace Bureau (IPB).
Watch the recording here.