First Committee

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) met today for a brief organizational meeting to adopt its agenda and work programme for the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly.

As the sixty-seventh session of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) drew to a close today, Committee Chair Desra Percaya of Indonesia thanked delegations for “hanging with” him and the Committee during the session’s challenges since, as Benjamin Franklin said, “if we do not hang together, we hang separately”.

Forwarding 16 drafts to the General Assembly, the majority addressing nuclear weapons and the disarmament machinery, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today considered a range of texts that reflected shared and sometimes divergent positions on how best to spark progress across the wider international disarmament and non-proliferation agenda.

A raft of traditional texts were approved today by the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), with complementary and, in part, competing, provisions aimed at neutralizing the nuclear-weapon threat and forging agreement in the Conference on Disarmament for that purpose and, pending the total elimination of those weapons, casting a wider net of nuclear-weapon-free zones and putting in place interim measures to protect non-nuclear-armed States.

Acting without a vote in a meeting streamlined to accommodate time lost due to Hurricane Sandy, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today forwarded to the General Assembly seven draft texts spanning a range of its agenda items, from nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to efforts to strengthen the United Nations disarmament machinery.

The First Committee today, seeking to catch up in the wake of the hurricane that paralysed the host city and shut down the United Nations for three days, agreed to streamline debate by limiting statements to just a few minutes and encouraging delegations to have the full text posted on its “Quick First” website, in line with a proposal by the Chair — the so-called “Sandy formula”.

In a long-awaited address, the President of the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament shared with the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) his insights about the 16-year impasse in that treaty negotiating body and, summing it up this way, said, “Do not ask what the CD can do for your country, ask what your country can do for the CD”.

Widespread agreement was evident today in the First Committee on the need for arms restraint, but chronic ambivalence in policies aimed at promoting exports and transfers while preventing their diversion to illicit markets and protecting national interests stirred debate on finalization of an arms trade treaty whose text was already on the table.

Achieving space security and defusing the need for countries to weaponize outer space were issues of urgent priority, as an ever increasing number of space actors had made that environment vulnerable, and progress to fill in the gaps in space law was fragmented and only a prelude to what was needed, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard today as it concluded its thematic debate on outer space and began its round on conventional weapons.

Weapons of mass destruction dominated debate in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today, as delegations warned of their catastrophic potential, commending both the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions for their achievements, while also warning that “real challenges and sobering realities” remained.