The UN Disarmament Commission 2011

Reaching Critical Will and Global Action to Prevent War are monitoring the UNDC this session.

As the United Nations Disarmament Commission (UNDC) heads into the final session of its three year cycle, one can’t help but remember the finale to its previous cycle, in 2008. At that time, the UNDC was considering two of the very same agenda items it has been considering in this cycle: recommendations for achieving the objective of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons; and practical confidence-building measures in the field of conventional weapons. It failed to reach agreement on recommendations for either item.

In fact, the UNDC has essentially been considering these two agenda items for the past 11 years—from 2000–2003, the Commission’s agenda was: ways and means to achieve nuclear disarmament; and practical confidence-building measures in conventional weapons. In 2004 and 2005, the UNDC was unable to agree on an agenda and did not hold any substantive sessions. But then it resumed considering of these issues in the 2006–2008 cycle and the 2009–2011 cycle, the last of which added a third agenda item, preparing elements for a draft declaration for a Fourth Disarmament Decade.

Why hasn’t the UNDC, after more than a decade of work, been able to produce anything substantial on these items?

Is it related to the stalemate in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), where delegations have also not engaged in substantive work in more than a decade? It is often said that the CD has de facto replaced the functions of the Disarmament Commission; the CD is now a talk shop rather than a negotiating body, leaving very little for the UNDC to do.

Is it because the agenda items are not specific enough? They are indeed broad enough to incorporate discussion on an infinite range of issues—which often means that everything and nothing is discussed.

Is it the working methods of the Commission? For the last decade the UN disarmament machinery has been criticized for having failed to adapt to the 21st century. Indeed, the Chair of the 2008 session, Ambassador Piet de Klerk of the Netherlands, tried to urge reform of the working methods of the Commission. He suggested inviting experts from specialized agencies, intergovernmental organizations, research institutes, and think-tanks to participate in the UNDC. This plan was rejected then and has still not gained traction throughout the latest cycle.

It is probably a combination of the above three issues that have hampered productive work at the UNDC over the past decade. But it is also due to a reluctance of governments, especially those of the nuclear weapon states, to commit. We saw this at the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May 2010, when the nuclear weapon states forcefully excised any timebound commitments to nuclear disarmament from the outcome document. Of course, it should be noted that nothing is binding at the Disarmament Commission. It simply adopts recommendations that are forward to the UN General Assembly, which itself produces non-legally-binding resolutions. Yet some governments don’t seem to like things being put in ink, especially if it suggests that others expect them to do something in the future.

This fear of commitment is a problem not just at the Disarmament Commission—it is even more apparent at the CD, where governments have fought since 1998 to even commit to a programme of work. But it is definitely something that needs to be overcome, and fast. This is the last year in the cycle, the year that the Commission needs to produce something, on paper, that can be delivered to the General Assembly. Failure to do so does not just mark the end of another wasted three years. It marks a failure of good faith and of multilateral diplomacy.