Disarmament

The United Nations Children’s Fund is providing emergency relief in Bangladesh to people stranded by recent floods — including 1.6 million children — and is dispatching, among other things, 400,000 water purification tablets for 80,000 households and emergency medical supplies for district health facilities.

After China and the Russian Federation vetoed a draft resolution in the Security Council on 26 May aimed at tightening the sanctions regime against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the General Assembly today held a debate on the issue, with speakers expressing diverging views on that country’s actions related to nuclear non-proliferation and security in the Korean Peninsula.

In a late-breaking meeting today, the Security Council failed to adopt a resolution that would have strengthened sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea over its recent ballistic missile launches, with the representatives of China and the Russian Federation denouncing the measure as counterproductive and inhumane.

On 24 May 2018, the United Nations Secretary-General published his Agenda for Disarmament, aiming to set our world on a path towards sustainable peace and security.

The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reports that 60 community members, including 20 women and 10 ex-combatants, are benefiting from its Community Violence Reduction project in a village in North Kivu’s Masisi Territory, where they are gaining skills in the installation and maintenance of street lighting.

The United Nations is not aware of any biological weapons programmes in Ukraine, a senior disarmament affairs official told the Security Council today, as it met to consider new information submitted by the Russian Federation alleging the existence of such weapons.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has intensified the pace of its launches using ballistic missile technology, having fired more missiles in the past five months than in the prior two years combined, a senior Secretariat official told the Security Council today.

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention, today:

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Barbara Woodward (United Kingdom):

Syria’s continued failure to remedy outstanding issues prevents the international community from confirming the elimination of its chemical-weapons programme, the top United Nations disarmament official told the Security Council today as members traded allegations that the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is being politicized to suit national interests.