The United Nations (UN) Conference on Disarmament began its work this month amid a predicted increase in conflict levels across the world for 2025.
The warning of increased conflict comes from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) organisation which forecasts one in eight people internationally are exposed to conflict.
Against this background, the UN Conference on Disarmament is a multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community. It comprises 65 UN member states including the five NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) nuclear weapon states and 60 other states, said by the world body to be “of key military significance”. Additionally non UN member States can participate, by request.
The first part of the annual session of the Conference on Disarmament started on 20 January and runs through to 28 March.
The Conference on Disarmament was recognised in 1978 by the tenth Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Disarmament as a single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community. It succeeded Geneva-based negotiating fora, including the Ten Nation Committee on Disarmament (1960), the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament (1962-68), and the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (1969-78).
The CD and its predecessors negotiated major multilateral arms limitation and disarmament agreements including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BWC), the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (CWC) and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
It currently focuses on seven issues.
They are: cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament; prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters; prevention of an arms race in outer space; effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons; new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons including radiological; comprehensive disarmament programme; and transparency in armaments.
