Day 9: Emerging Consensus on Aggression?

We have little in the way of an update over the past two days, principally because the situation with respect to aggression has been extremely fluid. There have been few substantive meetings of the delegations in plenary, as the vast majority of the time has been allocated for bilateral (and “mini-lateral”) meetings among the Chairs of the Working Group and Assembly of States Parties and various state delegates. Various proposals have been presented, each of which seeks to incorporate elements of previous ones, in the interest of building towards a document that is acceptable–or at least tolerable–to all delegations. These are too detailed, and unsettled, to describe in detail here. Suffice it to say that the “facts on the ground” are changing relatively quickly, and appear to be moving towards a consensus. But this too could still change.

As I write this, the Chair of the Assembly of States Parties has suspended the plenary session until 10:30pm tonight. It is hoped that the intervening time will allow delegates to hammer-out final points of disagreement. It should become apparent relatively soon after we reconvene whether this effort has been productive. The endeavour this evening takes on added significance as many delegations depart tomorrow, before the official close of the conference. This raises potential challenges for reaching a necessary quorum for a consensus agreement, whereby all parties agree (by not raising objections) to the adoption of the amendment. There almost certainly will not be a vote on this, as the clear position of many States Parties has to been to avoid this outcome at all costs.

For the moment, there is little to report. As they say: further details to come as they become available.