DYB2011-Part-II-web

C h a p t e r V
Related issues, including information and outreach
In our increasingly interdependent world, weapons-related technologies and
materials flow more readily and easily across borders. And, in such a world, the
use of such weapons anywhere jeopardizes security everywhere.
Developments and trends, 2011
Ban Ki-moon, United nations secretary-General 1
the stalemate afflicting the United Nations disarmament machinery for more
than a decade showed no sign of abatement in 2011. Both the Conference
on Disarmament (CD) and the United Nations Disarmament Commission
(UNDC), the negotiating and deliberative bodies of the United Nations,
respectively, failed to make any headway, raising difficult questions about the
way ahead.
The absence of a programme of work continued to paralyse the work of
the CD on a range of issues, most notably a fissile missile cut-off treaty, while
the UNDC ended its three-year cycle without reaching agreement at any of its
three working groups, which were mandated to deal with: recommendations
related to achieving nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation; elements of a
draft declaration of the 2010s as the fourth disarmament decade; and practical
confidence-building measures in the field of conventional weapons.
The impasse led not only to expressions of heightened frustration but
also to a more intense debate about the problems besetting the disarmament
machinery and what needs to be done to safeguard its future. While some
delegations wanted urgent procedural changes to expedite the work of these
bodies, others maintained that procedural reform would not necessarily lead
to substantive progress because they believed that the crux of the problem
was essentially of a political nature. Nevertheless, others felt that the time
had come to seriously consider alternatives to relying wholly on the United
Nations machinery to advance the global disarmament agenda.
The paralysis plaguing the CD and UNDC also received the focused
attention of the Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters.
1 The Secretary-General’s “Remarks to the Conference on Promoting the Global
Instruments of Non-proliferation and Disarmament: The United Nations and the Nuclear
Challenge”, New York, 31 May 2011. Available from http://www.un.org/News/Press/
docs//2011/sgsm13608.doc.htm (accessed 19 June 2012).
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