At a remote session of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, held on October 8, 2021, nongovernmental organizations presented statements on a range of topics, including the arms trade, autonomous weapons, cluster munitions, landmines, nuclear weapons, and the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
Farah Bogani delivers civil society statement on humanitarian disarmament at First Committee.
Farah Bogani of Campaign to Stop Killer Robots delivered the following civil society statement on humanitarian disarmament. The statement was produced by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and Soka Gakkai International, the organizers of this year’s civil society Humanitarian Disarmament Forum, which dealt with themes of race and intersectionality. The statement was supported by the 96 nongovernmental organizations listed below.
As protests and discussions of racism and anti-blackness swept across the world following the murder of George Floyd last year, the humanitarian disarmament community has had to turn its gaze inwards to question and investigate how we advance peace and security. As tools of colonial and imperial power, weapons that fuel war and conflict disproportionately affect marginalized and vulnerable groups of different races, gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, socioeconomic status, faiths, and other social identities. Far from being limited to individual beliefs or acts of discrimination happening in some countries, structural racism and systemic oppression manifests in varied forms across all states. As a result, the global community is neither immune to its effects nor absolved of its role in being complicit and upholding current structures of power.
Nuclear weapons testing has displaced Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities, rendering their lands unsafe, uninhabitable, and toxic. Targeted killings and strikes by armed drones perpetuate gendered and racial biases in a vacuum of legal justification. Algorithmic bias in autonomous weapons systems risks entrenching historical systems of oppression, exacerbating inequality, and upholding disproportionate structures of power. The production, transfer, and use of arms facilitates and increases incidences of gender-based violence. Providing victim assistance is vital to address the challenges of care and support faced by victims and survivors with disabilities sustained from landmines and cluster munitions.
Racism, intersected with other systems of oppression, is upheld by structures of imperialist, colonialist, patriarchal, and white supremacist power. It is, in a manner of speaking, its own weapon of destruction. It poses a direct threat to the core values enshrined in international law: human rights, equality, peace, security, and human dignity. These values are strengthened by the humanitarian disarmament approach that centres freedom from want, freedom from fear, and freedom from indignity as the pillars of human security.
Taking an anti-racist, intersectional perspective to humanitarian disarmament is therefore fundamental for centring human security and peace, by understanding not only how people are affected by the use of these weapons but which communities will bear the burden of suffering and the aftermath. It is necessary that we question whose voices are valued in disarmament; whose voices lead the conversations and develop the policies; and whose voices, experiences, and expertise are missing from these spaces and processes.
Racial assumptions and unconscious biases in law, policy, and decision-making have a serious impact on disarmament. That a deliberate and intentional anti-racist approach has not been central to disarmament, even till today, is a monumental oversight. Without addressing these assumptions and biases, vulnerable communities and people will continue to be disproportionately affected by violence caused by weapons systems.
A future of peace and security that upholds human dignity and equality demands that we dismantle the systems of oppression and racism that both propel violence and conflict, and are perpetuated by the use of weapons.
In doing so, we make clear that the future we want is not about the weapons but truly about the people.
This statement was drafted by Farah Bogani, with input from Isabelle Jones, Clare Conboy, and Ousman Noor of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and Hayley Ramsay-Jones of Soka Gakkai International.
Supporting organizations (by time of delivery on October 8, 2021):
Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy (AIDD)
Action for Women and Children Concern (AWCC) Somalia
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV)
Afghan Landmine Survivors Organization (ALSO)
Amnesty International
Ethics in Technology
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
At a remote session of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, held on October 8, 2021, nongovernmental organizations presented statements on a range of topics, including the arms trade, autonomous weapons, cluster munitions, landmines, nuclear weapons, and the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
Farah Bogani of Campaign to Stop Killer Robots delivered the following civil society statement on humanitarian disarmament. The statement was produced by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and Soka Gakkai International, the organizers of this year’s civil society Humanitarian Disarmament Forum, which dealt with themes of race and intersectionality. The statement was supported by the 96 nongovernmental organizations listed below.
As protests and discussions of racism and anti-blackness swept across the world following the murder of George Floyd last year, the humanitarian disarmament community has had to turn its gaze inwards to question and investigate how we advance peace and security. As tools of colonial and imperial power, weapons that fuel war and conflict disproportionately affect marginalized and vulnerable groups of different races, gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, socioeconomic status, faiths, and other social identities. Far from being limited to individual beliefs or acts of discrimination happening in some countries, structural racism and systemic oppression manifests in varied forms across all states. As a result, the global community is neither immune to its effects nor absolved of its role in being complicit and upholding current structures of power.
Nuclear weapons testing has displaced Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities, rendering their lands unsafe, uninhabitable, and toxic. Targeted killings and strikes by armed drones perpetuate gendered and racial biases in a vacuum of legal justification. Algorithmic bias in autonomous weapons systems risks entrenching historical systems of oppression, exacerbating inequality, and upholding disproportionate structures of power. The production, transfer, and use of arms facilitates and increases incidences of gender-based violence. Providing victim assistance is vital to address the challenges of care and support faced by victims and survivors with disabilities sustained from landmines and cluster munitions.
Racism, intersected with other systems of oppression, is upheld by structures of imperialist, colonialist, patriarchal, and white supremacist power. It is, in a manner of speaking, its own weapon of destruction. It poses a direct threat to the core values enshrined in international law: human rights, equality, peace, security, and human dignity. These values are strengthened by the humanitarian disarmament approach that centres freedom from want, freedom from fear, and freedom from indignity as the pillars of human security.
Taking an anti-racist, intersectional perspective to humanitarian disarmament is therefore fundamental for centring human security and peace, by understanding not only how people are affected by the use of these weapons but which communities will bear the burden of suffering and the aftermath. It is necessary that we question whose voices are valued in disarmament; whose voices lead the conversations and develop the policies; and whose voices, experiences, and expertise are missing from these spaces and processes.
Racial assumptions and unconscious biases in law, policy, and decision-making have a serious impact on disarmament. That a deliberate and intentional anti-racist approach has not been central to disarmament, even till today, is a monumental oversight. Without addressing these assumptions and biases, vulnerable communities and people will continue to be disproportionately affected by violence caused by weapons systems.
A future of peace and security that upholds human dignity and equality demands that we dismantle the systems of oppression and racism that both propel violence and conflict, and are perpetuated by the use of weapons.
In doing so, we make clear that the future we want is not about the weapons but truly about the people.
This statement was drafted by Farah Bogani, with input from Isabelle Jones, Clare Conboy, and Ousman Noor of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and Hayley Ramsay-Jones of Soka Gakkai International.
Supporting organizations (by time of delivery on October 8, 2021):
Additional supporting organizations (updated October 13, 2021)
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