UN HOLDING REGIONAL MEETING IN NAIROBI TO DISCUSS CONVENTIONAL ARMS ISSUES

NEW YORK, 23 May (Department for Disarmament Affairs) -- The United Nations is holding a regional workshop on issues related to conventional weapons in Nairobi, Kenya from 31 May to 2 June, with the financial support of the Governments of the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.  A primary aim of the workshop is to increase familiarity with and encourage greater participation in the two global instruments maintained by the United Nations, namely, the “United Nations Register of Conventional Arms” and the “United Nations Standardized Instrument for Reporting Military Expenditure”.  In addition, the workshop will discuss the United Nations Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons, including the issue of brokering of illicit small arms and light weapons.

The Workshop will draw its participants from the signatory States of the Nairobi Declaration (signed on 15 March 2000 by States of the Great Lake Region and the Horn of Africa) and the South African Development Community (SADC) Protocol, namely, Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.  Other participants include representatives from the Nairobi Secretariat, the SADC Secretariat, Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Germany, Netherlands, Norway, United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa (based in Lomé, Togo) and the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) based in Pretoria.

The Workshop derives its mandate from the biennial General Assembly resolutions 58/54 and 58/28 of December 2003, as well as the 2001 United Nations Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons, and is a continuation of a series of subregional and regional workshops that began in 2001 devoted to the issue of transparency in armaments.  Previous regional and subregional workshops were held in Cambodia, New Zealand (2001), Ghana, Namibia, Peru (2002), Indonesia (2003), and Kenya, Fiji (2004).

The workshop is intended to provide valuable feedback to the upcoming review of the United Nations Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons, which will take place in 2006, as well as the next periodic review of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, which is expected to be undertaken by a group of governmental experts in the same year.

For further information, contact Nazir Kamal, Department for Disarmament Affairs, United Nations, New York, tel.:  (212) 963-6195, fax:  (212) 963-3689, e-mail:  kamaln@un.org.

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