First Committee Monitor, Vol. 23, No. 1
Editorial: Disarmament Is What Gets Us to International Security
6 October 2025
By Ray Acheson
The United Nations General Assembly will convene its First Committee on Disarmament and International Security from 8 October to 7 November 2025. The pairing of these two subjects—disarmament and security—is not a mistake. The concepts are not anthetical, even though treated that way by the most militarised states in the world. Instead, disarmament is imperative to achieving international security. Thus, delegations to this year’s First Committee need to urgently take up the task of disarmament and demilitarisation, even as the world spins in the other direction.
Over the past year, genocides and armed conflicts have intensified, some countries have violated international laws restricting the arms trade, others have withdrawn from critical humanitarian disarmament treaties, and the introduction of artificial intelligence into weapon systems is already causing grave harm.
These developments have been a boon to the military-industrial complex, arms brokers, and others who profit from death. Military expenditure last year reached 2.718 trillion USD, the highest it’s ever been. In June, the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with the exception of Spain, committed to increase their military spending even further, to 5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. Meanwhile, the nine nuclear-armed states spent more than 100 billion USD on their arsenals, while billions more dollars are going to tech companies to build new weapon systems. The special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories published a report in July 2025 finding that private companies are playing a key role in enabling the occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Meanwhile, financing for peace and “development” languishes, as highlighted in recent UN reports such as the UN Secretary-General's The Security We Need.
Urgent action is needed to protect people and the planet from weapons and war. The First Committee is a key place for this work. The United Nations, after all, was established to prevent war and demilitarise the world after the butchery of World War II. Since then, the UN has facilited the adoption and implementation of many commitments and constraints against international violence. The UN’s current flailings and failures are not an excuse for inaction but a motivation to do better.
The First Committee, through its discussions and resolutions, has the opportunity to confront and dismantle the structures of power and violence that cause grave suffering around the world. Delegations need to not get trapped in the fracturous dramas over competing resolutions and paragraph-by-paragraph votes created by the violent, militarised states, but instead work among the majority to generate new collective diarmament projects.
Disarmament demands at the First Committee
In Reaching Critical Will’s First Committee Briefing Book 2025, activists working across a range of weapon-related issues offer recommendations to governments that urge the development of new law, implementation and protection of existing laws and norms, and the adoption of policies that pursue disarmament and demilitarisation over war and violence. It’s also important that the coalitions and organisations working on these issues collaborate to advance humanitarian disarmament and global demilitarisation. Pursuing our goals in siloes only undermines the broader objective of the UN Charter of “sav[ing] succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
Some of the recommended actions focus on adopting new or stronger international laws. New treaties should prohibit and regulate autonomous weapons systems and depleted uranium weapons, and end the trade in equipment used for torture. Rules and norms around incendiary weapons and drones must be strengthened to protect civilians and uphold international law.
Other recommendations call for states to fully implement existing treaties and instruments. Treaties highlighted include: the Mine Ban Treaty, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, the Arms Trade Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Other instruments discussed are: the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons, the Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict, the Political Declaration on Protecting Civilians from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas, and the Global Framework on Ammunition. On a specific note, several Briefing Book entries urge states and other actors to implement provisions for victim assistance and clearance or remediation of remnants of war, notably with regard to antipersonnel landmines, cluster munitions, and nuclear weapons.
The Briefing Book’s recommendations further emphasise the importance of protecting the norms of disarmament treaties from external challenges. They should condemn the development, possession, and use of antipersonnel landmines, cluster munitions, biological weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons, among others. It’s similarly imperative that states condemn unlawful arms transfers and ensure respect for international law by holding each other to account for violations.
Finally, the recommendations urge states to take action to prevent further militarisation and war by halting the development and use of “malicious cyber capabilities,” stopping the weaponisation of outer space, not developing or using autonomous weapon systems, and reducing military spending. Instead, states should advance and amplify perspectives that bring credibility and urgency to disarmament, including gender analysis, disability rights, disarmament education, and youth participation.
It is important to see all these recommendations in relation to one another. Rather than attempting to manage or address one weapon system or law violation at a time, states should approach these recommendations as a group in order to pursue global demilitarisation. Weapons and war profiteering are part of an overarching system of capitalism, militarism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy that are best confronted together.
As Ambassador Maritza Chan of Costa Rica said in her closing remarks at last year’s session, “Weapons do not keep the world safe or deter war. We can only build true security by working together to address the root causes of violence. We must cooperate, not compete, with each other, in order to survive and thrive in our dynamic world.”
This editorial draws upon an article by Ray Acheson in the Humanitarian Disarmament Blog and their introduction to the First Committee Briefing Book 2025.
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