United Nations (UN)

UN First Committee Bulletin, October 8, 2001

By Jenni Rissanen

UN First Committee Opens

The UN First Committee on Disarmament and International Security began its work on Monday, October 8. The Committee is one of the six main committees of the UN General Assembly and prepares and adopts some fifty disarmament resolutions for submission to the UNGA each year. The first day saw an address by Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Jayantha Dhanapala, opening a two-week general debate in which over a hundred countries are expected to participate. Ambassador André Erdös of Hungary will head the Committee's deliberations during the next five weeks, until the Committee concludes its work on November 9.

Under-Secretary-General Dhanapala opened his address by saying that the First Committee was convening in the shadow of the "dark and ominous cloud" of the September 11 attacks on the United States which he called "acts of unmitigated brutality that defy description". Dhanapala believed that the First Committee had a role in "reinforcing the roads and bridges leading to the fulfilment of multilateral disarmament commitments, while exploring new paths to reach the same destinations". Dhanapala urged delegations to "learn the lessons of this unspeakable tragedy" and, in this context, to take a close look at what UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed as specific initiatives aimed at preventing future terrorism: first, expanding the membership to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and strengthening control over nuclear facilities as well as storage and transportation of nuclear materials; second, making new efforts to negotiate a convention for the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism; and third, creating a global database to exchange information on acts, threats of acts or suspected acts involving weapons of mass destruction.

Dhanapala said the Committee's starting point this year needed to be the "sobering realization that last month's tragedy could have been so much worse had nuclear, biological or chemical weapons been used". He argued that the international community had the "duty to protect innocent citizens throughout the world by reinforcing the multilateral disarmament regime". However, as the Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters had recognised in July, there was a crisis in multilateral diplomacy. Disarmament was facing "difficult times". At the non-governmental level, Dhanapala was worried that civil society, whose participation, understanding and support had a crucial role to play, was faced with a funding challenge as foundations and other agencies moved out of the field or reduced their commitments. At the inter-state level, Dhanapala was worried about the growth in the global arms market and military expenditures. At the same time, resources to disarmament in the UN and other organizations were becoming more scarce.

Dhanapala also expressed concern about the incompleteness of the global disarmament treaty regime. Many treaties had not entered into force, including START II and the CTBT, and efforts to conclude a verification Protocol to the BWC had "ended abruptly", though Dhanapala believed the issue should be revisited at the upcoming BWC Review Conference. Although it was still too early to "to predict the faith" of the thirteen nuclear disarmament steps agreed at the May 2000 NPT Review Conference, delegates were looking for "hard evidence of a good faith effort". Landmines continued to harm the economic development and security of populations. The arms control regime was particularly underdeveloped in a number of key areas: conventional weapons, small arms and light weapons, preventing an arms race in outer space, and missiles and other delivery vehicles for WMD. The Conference on Disarmament (CD) continued to be deadlocked in Geneva. Dhanapala hoped the September 11 attacks would breath new life into the world's sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum. All these obstacles suggested that disarmament was "facing a very difficult road ahead". Dhanapala suggested that the crisis in multilateral arms control might be a reflection of a deeper crisis in the nation-state system grappling with "the new forces of globalization". He believed the UN offered "indispensable tools" to deal with twenty-first century problems such as terrorism and WMD proliferation. In addition to the First Committee and other UN disarmament machinery, Dhanapala urged delegations to re-visit the proposal to convene a Fourth Special Session of the General Assembly on Disarmament.

Turning to the First Committee's role, Dhanapala wondered whether its primary focus should change from disarmament to the mere regulation or limitation of arms? Although there was a need for both, he argued in favour of pursuing as a priority the total and verifiable elimination of all weapons of mass destruction. The world would be better off working to eliminate these weapons than "in perpetuating the fantasy that their possession can be permanently limited to an assortment of exclusive, but by no means leak-proof clubs". He recalled the conviction expressed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference that "the total elimination of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons" and asked was international peace and security not best preserved by an absolute guarantee of WMD, rather than partial or conditional guarantees? Dhanapala believed the First Committee should keep its focus "on the search for absolute guarantees" because "the more it searches, the more it will return to disarmament".

In addition to Dhanapala's address and an opening statement by the Chair, Ambassador Erdös, statement were delivered by the European Union (EU), Guatemala, Jordan, Mexico, the New Agenda (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden), the Rio Group and Ukraine. First Committee statements and related material can be viewed at the website of the women's International League for Peace and freedom (WILPF) at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org.

Jenni Rissanen is the Acronym Institute's Analyst attending the UN First Committee in New York.