UNDC general statements

After finally adopting its agenda on the morning of 15 April (see previous posts for information on the struggle to adopt the agenda), the United Nations Disarmament Commission (UNDC) began hearing general statements from delegations. Few delegations commented on the specific nature of the agenda or the work of the UNDC, except to express hope that this three year cycle would be more productive than the last two. Most outlined their governments’ general positions on all subjects related to disarmament.

A few brief notes

• The US delegate largely quoted from President Obama’s Prague speech and called for the declaration of the fourth disarmament decade to include “a new security paradigm to replace nuclear deterrence as an essential step in creating the conditions for nuclear zero.”
• The Brazilian delegation emphasized the importance of confidence-building measures, which will be taken up by the UNDC in 2010 or 2011, for altering inaccurate perceptions between states, fostering stable political relations, transforming states’ ideas about their security needs, and identifying shared security interests.
  
• The Russian ambassador noted an “inseparable link between strategic offensive and defensive (…anti-missile defense) weapons,” arguing, “It is impossible to succeed in nuclear disarmament if this link is undermined by the unilateral development of strategic [anti-ballistic missile] systems.”
• India’s delegation noted that previous disarmament decades have seen successes such as the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and expressed hope that the 2010s could bring a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
• China’s delegation observed that the financial crisis has demonstrated the interconnectedness of the world and suggested that multilateralism is on the rise, arguing that only by maintaining mutual trust and cooperation and new outlook on security and insisting on multilateralism can we address variety of challenges.
• Australia’s ambassador lamented that the Chairs of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament were not invited to speak to the UNDC, arguing that the UNDC’s stance against non-government involvement is detrimental to the body’s credibility.
  

Please see the Reaching Critical Will website for more statements and the agenda.

The UNDC will now work within closed working groups for the next two weeks, hopefully taking concrete steps toward fulfilling the items on its agenda. A final plenary meeting will be held on 1 May at which reports from the working groups will be presented.