Weekly Report: 2011-03-28 to 04-01

Well, instead of daily posts, I will make weekly reports.


For this week I was chairing the 2nd 2011 Session of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons - Group of Government Experts (CCW-GGE).  The CCW-GGE is mandated to come up with a new draft protocol on Cluster Munitions within the CCW framework. I was most ably assisted by my "Friends of the Chair" - Lt. Col. Jim Burke (Ireland), Mr. Philip Kimpton (Australia) and Ms. Anesa Kundurovic (Bosnia-Herzcegovina).  It was held at the UN Palais des Nations in Geneva.


On April 28 I met with the "Ginger Group" of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) Missions on the follow-up to the High-Level Meeting (HLM) of the UN SecGen on the CD.


On April 30 I also attended a meeting of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction  (ISDR) Support Group, where I am coordinator for the Asia-Pacific and ASEAN Missions.  We focused on preparations for the upcoming ISDR Global Platform which will be held in May.  I also met informally with ASEAN and GRULAC collegues to discuss possible joint activity in the Global Platform and beyond.