Three Recent Meetings

Report on the three meetings/briefings I've attended in the last week:

Guatemala Subgroup Meeting (2/7/08)
Since I was writing my femicide article for NewsNotes at the time, I found this meeting very helpful--especially the parts about the Violence Against Women Senate Resolution (for Guatemala) and CICIG (the new Guatemalan Commission Against Impunity). Another big focus of the meeting was discussing a recent hearing on the Merida Initiative (sometimes nicknamed Plan Mexico). The subgroup is somewhat unsure how to respond to this aid package to Mexico and Central America. First of all, it is really complex and difficult to understand, and while it correctly targets the need for building security in those countries, it fails to address important issues of the weakness/corruption of the Mexican/Central American institutions that would be receiving the funding. Additionally, there is a cut in funding to U.S. drug demand reduction/prevention and concern that, since the second year of this initiative is set to be approved before the results of the first are known, it could be setting a precedent that will prove to be unhelpful. Also, FYI, the subgroup is planning some sort of event around the 10th anniversary of Bishop's Gerardi's assassination in April.

Briefing on International Law and Cluster Weapons (2/7/08)
Virgil Wiebe, a law professor at St. Thomas University, presented his research on recent landmark cases related to cluster weapons. Spanning the years 1995-2007, he explained cases in Nis and Zagreb (former Yugoslavia) and Lebanon. These cases show the development of building a case against cluster weapons in general. In the first case, the international court ruled in favor of the implementor of cluster munitions, saying that there was not intent to kill civilians. But in the next case, the court decided that regardless of intent, the weapons that were used were themselves illegal for reasons of their margin of error, age, etc. In the third case, the investigating commission practically said that Israel used cluster bombs illegally against Lebanon because of how they were used, duds, and going against internal military regulations. The speaker also made the point that even high-tech bombs that are supposed to not kill civilians because of their smaller radius of error (in location hit) and low dud rate are still unacceptable because their actual dud rate is 10%.
This is not a topic I had studied at all before, so it was very interesting to observe what the current debates are, as well as encouraging to hear about positive progress toward outlawing cluster bombs.

Border Subgroup Meeting (2/13/08)
Most of the meeting focused on EAD, specifically with brainstorming "asks," questions for EAD participants to later ask candidates related to the issues in our track. The group is also moving forward with compiling a packet of information related to the border to give to EAD participants. They plan to start considering what projects to work on in the slower summer months (especially related to the fence and patrolling).