ICBUW: 2011 campaign review

With no DU resolution scheduled at the UN General Assembly in 2011, ICBUW was primarily working on research for much of the year.

The main focus for this work was a controversial risk assessment undertaken by the European Commission. The EC’s Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER) was mandated by the European Parliament to address the wealth of new experimental data on how DU interacts with human cells and tissues. ICBUW was optimistic that their final report would be an accurate reflection of scientists’ concerns but alarm bells began to ring even during the public consultation process after it emerged that key data had been excluded.

Such was the disquiet with the final report that MEPs called on SCHER to present evidence to a hearing of the parliament’s Committee on Security and Defence (SEDE). ICBUW proposed two speakers and our researcher Dave Cullen spent several months preparing a review of the report. This is available here: http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/docs/169.pdf A full write up of the hearing is available here: http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/415.html

SCHER’s conclusion – that civilians were unlikely to be exposed to DU - turned out to be based on a single study of just 25 Kosovar civilians. Alarmingly this was presented to MEPs as a study of “hundreds of civilians”. There were a range of other issues – not least of which was that SCHER had failed to follow its own guidelines in preparing the assessment. It was alarming and discouraging to see science manipulated in this way.

In November, ICBUW travelled to Geneva during the negotiations in the Convention of Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) on a new protocol on cluster munitions. As well as meeting with state delegations we also ran a side event to present some of the other research topics we have been working on.

The main focus of this has been developing a conceptual framework based on precaution. In retrospect the SCHER study had been useful in terms of highlighting the limits of risk assessment methodology when many variables are unclear – such as the dose response to DU from different tissues. We have also been examining the risk management approach to DU taken by different militaries – as a basis for civilian protection and how the lack of post-conflict management of DU and issues around targeting impact on precautionary assessments.

We are now working closely with CADU on its UK campaign and looking ahead to autumn 2012 and a fourth UN resolution on DU.