Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 59, July - August 2001

Editorial

Is Disarmament Being Left To Rust?

In April 2000, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that "much of the established multilateral disarmament machinery has started to rust - a problem due not to the machinery itself but to the apparent lack of political will to use it." Like any other type of machinery, international instruments and mechanisms for arms control and disarmament require regular use and proper care and maintenance. Today, however, the UN's disarmament machinery is straining under the pressures of new demands and tight budgets, while the arms juggernaut just rolls merrily along.

Existing treaties, covering weapons ranging from nuclear, chemical and biological to landmines, are under attack from short-sighted approaches offering one-sided notions of defence. Recent efforts to curb small arms and light weapons ran up against powerful interest groups such as the US National Rifle Association and arms traders, who did not want to lose a lucrative market among 16-25 year-old males in cities and battlefields across the world. Some of the biggest powers are also holding international regimes hostage to short-term national interests by withholding resources for verifying treaties or placing onerous conditions on their share of payments towards the implementation of agreements and the upkeep of the UN-related machinery.

In addition to the treaties, with their implementing organisations from Vienna to The Hague, our multilateral disarmament machinery comprises the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, the First Committee (Disarmament and Security) of the UN General Assembly, the UN Disarmament Commission, and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). The hub of this machinery is the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA), upgraded in 1998 as a key element of the Secretary-General's proposals for organisational reform.

Despite some difficulties, DDA has done much to provide a more effective institutional focus for disarmament activities throughout the UN system. Yet the gap between the importance of DDA's growing tasks and its meagre means appears to be widening at an alarming rate. DDA remains the smallest department in the UN, consisting presently of some 50 people. Its annual budget is around $7 million - less than half what the UN spent last year on cleaning services and new furniture. Weapons production and deployment, sales and use have exacerbated problems of poverty and development, wreaked havoc on many economies and environments, and caused particular suffering to civilians, especially women and children. Disarmament is a necessary component of all the UN's objectives. Yet at a time when effective voices are needed to make a strong case for multilateral disarmament and collective security on behalf of the peoples of all 189 UN members, DDA is confronting a new wave of funding and hiring restrictions.

What does that say about the priorities of UN Members in this new millennium? DDA might be able to fulfil its routine administrative functions, but at this level of support, how can the Department perform its necessary substantive roles, recruit and retain top-level professionals, and develop its capacities to research, analyse, plan ahead, coordinate strategies and take effective action to address the major problems in a swiftly changing political environment? In an irony worthy of George Orwell, the lack of financial and political support from UN Member States is the biggest hurdle facing DDA in its efforts to help these very nations achieve their own agreed disarmament objectives.

What, then, does DDA need now, in order to avoid rust and disintegration? For a start, Member States need to support the Secretary-General's proposed 4.1 percent increase in the Department's regular budget. Last year, the General Assembly adopted some 49 resolutions on a wide range of disarmament issues. Eight requested new work "within existing resources". The recent UN Conference on small arms and light weapons gave DDA further responsibilities in monitoring the implementation of its agreed programme of action.

Come the next UN General Assembly and First Committee, the Special Conference on CTBT entry into force, the Fifth Review Conference of States Parties to the BWC et al, fine words and national statements will extol the importance of action on disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation. Rust prevention could begin by closing the gap between ends and means - not by sacrificing the ends, but by providing DDA and the rest of the international disarmament machinery with the support and tools to do what the people of the world need them to do: to identify and disarm the instruments of death.