Disarmament Commission fails for 12th consecutive year

On Thursday, 21 April 2011, the UN Disarmament Commission (UNDC) held its final plenary meeting of the 2011 session, which also marked the final meeting of the latest three year cycle. For the twelfth year in a row, as noted by the European Union in its closing remarks, the Commission was unable to agree to substantive recommendations on any of its three topics.

Member states adopted the final report of the Commission along with the reports of the three working groups: nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, a declaration of the 2010s as the next disarmament decade, and confidence-building measures around conventional weapons. All three reports end with the note that the working group was unable to achieve consensus.

In their closing remarks, several delegations, including Cuba, Mexico, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, expressed concern with the lack of substantive results from the UNDC. While many praised the deliberative nature of the Commission’s work, they also criticized its failure to fulfill its whole mandate, which includes adopting recommendations. The Mexican delegation argued that this paralysis is “inadmissible” when the world is “threatened by nuclear weapons and excessive accumulation of destabilizing conventional weapons.” It concluded that the only tangible consequence of the UNDC has been the expenditure of resources provided by taxpayers around the world.