The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

12 OCTOBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL ing the binding arbitration option, and maintains it is making unreasonable comparisons between substantively dif- ferent jobs in the public service, PAFSO President Tim Edwards says that Clement is negotiating in bad faith by insisting on a series of preconditions before agreeing to binding arbitration. PAFSO has already accepted the government’s two key demands, wage increases of 1.5 percent per year (well below average national wage growth and inflation) and the elimination of sever- ance pay on retirement and resignation (in effect a 2-percent annual pay cut). “PAFSO can only conclude that the government is behaving prejudicially toward the Foreign Service, and is there- fore negotiating in bad faith, ” Edwards told CTV News on July 26. “ This should be of serious concern to all Canadians.” “You wouldn’t know it from the bar- gaining tactics of the Treasury Board of Canada, but diplomacy matters,” wrote Paul Heinbecker, a former Canadian am- bassador to the United Nations Security Council and a former chief foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in The Globe and Mail on June 26. In the interest of promoting public understanding, Heinbecker put the diplomats’ action into perspective and exploded some of the myths about diplomacy that the government is using to stonewall. PAFSO’s fight has received widespread news coverage, both in Canada and inter- nationally. “Challenging our employer in such a public way goes against our very nature as diplomats and dedicated professionals, ” PAFSO states in an official document explaining the strike. “Our goal is simple: to have the Trea- sury Board recognize the real value of the high-quality work we perform, often under difficult circumstances, in deliver- A s we go to press, weapons of mass destruction—specifically, chemi- cal weapons—are, lamentably, back in the news. The August shelling of suburban Damascus by nerve agents represents the third large-scale use of chemical weapons in the Middle East, and has broken the longest streak in his- tory for the world to go without such an attack: 25 years. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons website is a comprehensive one-stop shop for information about this terrible challenge and international efforts to combat it. For instance , an Aug. 28 press release posted there reports that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü met in The Hague and called on all parties in Syria to extend their full cooperation to the U.N. investigation of the incident. Elsewhere on the site, an historical overview of the issue notes that the first international agreement limiting the use of chemical weapons dates back to 1675, when France and Germany came to an agreement, signed in Strasbourg, prohibiting the use of poison bullets. The modern campaign to eradicate chemical and biological weapons efforts began with ratification of the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. As the OPCW points out, a major weakness of the treaty is that it does not prohibit the development, production or possession of chemical weapons— merely the use of chemical and bacteriological (biological) weapons in war. And even that provision is qualified to some extent. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into effect in 1997 fol- lowing U.S. Senate ratification, is intended to rectify that omission. It consists of a preamble, 24 articles and three annexes (on chemicals, verification and confidentiality). —Steven Alan Honley, Editor SITE OF THE MONTH: Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons ing on the government’s international priorities. Ultimately, we want them to agree that basic fairness—a fundamen- tal Canadian value that our members promote abroad every day—dictates that we be paid at least the same as those performing the same work. “After eight years of seeing the can kicked down the road by our employer, the Foreign Service has declared resoundingly that the time has come to insist on a fair deal. Canada’s face and frontline abroad deserves noth- ing less.” —Susan Brady Maitra, Senior Editor Following Syria on Twitter I n a n Aug. 30 posting on WorldViews, the Washington Post ’s foreign affairs blog, Max Fisher nominates “23 Twitter accounts you must follow to understand Syria.” He breaks his list down into four categories: Syrians, journalists, analysts/ thinkers and general observers. Recognizing that following so many commentators, however compelling, is a daunting task, Fisher recommends start- ing with the general observers: (1) Laura Rozen: Picks up every detail, assiduously fair-minded, insight-