What are the challenges and opportunities to the disarmament and arms control machinery and treaties? What role do these mechanisms play at a time of uncertainty in international politics? Are and can these mechanisms and treaties contribute to peace and security?

In June 1945, as a catastrophic global conflict of unprecedented scale was coming to an end, the United Nations was created, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”. A central goal of the new organization was “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”.

In the decades that followed, the disarmament and arms control community sought to turn the tide on militarism and initiated mechanisms and key instruments on disarmament and arms control. With the establishment of the Conference on Disarmament, Geneva was recognized as the principal multilateral platform for disarmament and arms control. Both inside and outside the Conference on Disarmament, there have been considerable successes such as the Arms Trade Treaty, Biological Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention, Non-Proliferation Treaty, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, Convention on Anti-personnel Landmines, Convention on Cluster Munitions and Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as well as strategic bilateral, and regional agreements.".

Despite the recognition of the founders of the United Nations that disarmament was a fundamental requirement for peace, the commitments undertaken have been steadily replaced by a short-sighted determination to pursue security through force of arms. Disarmament and arms control fora and treaties are abandoned, obstructed, neglected or simply ignored, in favor of increasingly frantic and expensive races to acquire more, newer and better weapons and the political freedom to use them.

At this time what are the challenges and opportunities to the disarmament and arms control machinery and treaties? What role do these mechanisms play at a time of uncertainty in international politics? Are and can these mechanisms and treaties contribute to peace and security? And if not, why not? Is the all-pervasive rule of consensus the problem? What could be the way forward?

Opening remarks:

• Professor Dan Plesch, Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy, SOAS University of London

Speakers:

• Flávio Damico, Special Representative of Brazil to the Conference on Disarmament
• Amanda Gorely, Australian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva
• Aidan Liddle, United Kingdom Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva
• Aixa Paumier López, Third Secretary of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Cuba to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations
• Ambassador Khalil Hashmi, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva.

Moderator:

• Simon Cleobury, Head of arms control and disarmament, GCSP

Please note that this event will be livestreamed, recorded and photographed and may be shared publicly on the GCSP channels.