Disarmament

The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs is issuing a public call for candidates to serve on an independent Scientific Panel on the Effects of Nuclear War.

In Central and Southern Gaza, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that humanitarian partners had exhausted all supplies at their warehouses, at a time when Israeli authorities continue to deny most requests to bring food assistance from the Erez West crossing to areas south of Wadi Gaza.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has been actively working towards acquiring new military capabilities that undermine the global non-proliferation architecture, a senior United Nations official warned the Security Council today, as its members condemned that country’s 6 January launch of a new-type intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile.

Meeting again today to discuss Western arms supplies to Ukraine, the Security Council heard that civilians there continue to be killed and injured by a panoply of deadly munitions, while the organ’s members alternately urged a diplomatic end to the violence and condemned Moscow’s initial — and continued — aggression.

Following reports of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s troops killed in the Russian Federation’s war against Ukraine, the Security Council today examined growing military ties between Pyongyang and Moscow amid ongoing disputes over sanctions on the East Asian country.

With the clock ticking down towards the expiration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as conflicts proliferate in the Middle East, nuclear diplomacy is needed now, the Security Council heard today, even as its members disagreed on both how the Plan veered off-course and how to get it back on track.

Syria’s reported destruction or conversion of large quantities of chemical warfare agents and munitions prior to its accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention still cannot be fully verified, the United Nations’ disarmament chief told the Security Council today, noting that the unresolved 19 issues in the country’s declaration with respect to the elimination of its chemical weapons programme remain a serious concern.

On 4 and 5 December, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and its Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD), in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal and with financial support from Germany, will organize an Informal Regional Meeting on the New Global Framework for Through-life Conventional Ammunition Management in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The General Assembly, in two meetings today, acted on the recommendation of its First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), adopting 72 texts requiring nearly 200 separate recorded votes.

Following is UN Secretary‑General António Guterres’ message, delivered by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), to the Fifth Review Conference of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti‑Personnel Mines, in Siem Reap, Cambodia, today: