Annual report of the CD adopted at final meeting

Mia Gandenberger
11 September 2014

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) met on Tuesday, 9 September 2014, and Wednesday, 10 September 2014, to finalise the draft of the annual report of the CD. Statements were delivered by the CD President, Ambassador Dato' Mazian Muhammed of Malaysia, United States, Egypt, the Russian Federation, China, Algeria, United Kingdom, Myanmar, and Pakistan.

Prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS)

During the brief Plenary on Tuesday, the United States delivered a statement on outer space. Ambassador Robert Wood voiced concern with anti-satellite systems and outlined his government’s analysis of the new treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space (PPWT), contained in document CD/1998. He highlighted the lack of a verification regime and provisions that would prohibit the possession, testing, and stockpiling of weapons that could be placed in outer space. Finally, Ambassador Wood recalled the importance of transparency and confidence building measures (TCBMs) and highlighted the report of the groups of governmental experts on the matter.

Both the Russian Federation and China welcomed these comments and called on states to make specific proposals to improve the text. Mr. Alexander Deyneko of the Russian Federation highlighted the need for specific measures that will ensure PAROS and explained that the draft PPWT is a possible solution. Ambassador Wu Haitao of China stressed that issues such as verification could be addressed at a later stage during the negotiations of a treaty. He also explained that TCBMs and a future treaty would be mutually reinforcing.

Adoption of the final report

After a brief public meeting on Tuesday morning, CD member states continued their informal consultations on some paragraphs of the annual report. On Wednesday afternoon, following a section-by-section reading, the revised draft report was adopted by consensus.

Notes from the gallery

Once again the CD has failed to meet it’s task of negotiating disarmament treaties. This is a serious challenge for all governments and civil society organisations that want to move forward here in Geneva. The discussions under the Schedule of Activities and the Informal Working Group have mirrored those from previous years and while the agreement itself to hold these informal discussions was seen as progress by some, the lack of any concrete results speaks volumes. When it came down to it, member states of the CD could not pass a factual report of its activities without a number of, again informal, consultations to agree on very basic language.

Very disappointing for civil society is that one of the changes agreed on during the consultations over the past weeks was to delete the sentence of the first draft welcoming enhanced engagement with civil society. Civil society was excluded from many meetings this year, raising serious questions about transparency and accountability. Civil society engagement is not only important for progress on multilateral negotiations, it is essential. But after almost two decades of meetings without results, civil society has certainly turned elsewhere in the interest of achieving concrete progress on disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation issues.

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