APLN Policy Brief 6

The following is a summary. Click on the adjacent link to download the full brief.

There are advantages in the Conference on Disarmament (CD) being the venue for Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty and other nuclear disarmament related negotiations, particularly in securing participation by all the nuclear-armed states. Such negotiations will be more complex and sensitive than agreements such as the Ottawa Landmines Convention, the Oslo Cluster Munitions Convention and the Arms Trade Treaty, sometimes suggested as alternative models to negotiations in the CD. But the advantages of the CD as a negotiating forum do not justify indefinite tolerance of the present stand-off. The UN General Assembly, with its First Committee taking the initiative, must now actively engage in finding ways to resolve the disarmament machinery’s problems.

About the Author

John Page is a research officer at the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He is a former officer of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and served on the Secretariats of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons and the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

Image: Pixabay stock, Miguel Á. Padriñán.