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The Geneva–based Conference on Disarmament (CD) was established in 1961 as the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee. It comprised five NATO countries, five from the Warsaw Pact and eight non-aligned or neutral countries. It was established jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union at the behest of the United Nations General Assembly, which urged the CD to undertake multilateral disarmament negotiations. The CD has since been enlarged six times.
The CD is the only multilateral organisation charged with negotiating new disarmament treaties. All decisions in the Conference are made by consensus. Recent treaties negotiated in the CD were the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993 and the the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996.
Between 1997 and 2009, however, the CD was unable to agree on a programme of work for actively engaging in new negotiations. In 1995, a mandate for an Ad Hoc Committee banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons purposes was agreed, but the Committee was established only briefly in 1998.
Work on a fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) remains a priority for the majority of CD members, including New Zealand. In May 2009, the CD agreed on a programme of work which mandated the beginning of negotiations on an FMCT as well as the establishment of working groups on nuclear disarmament, prevention of an arms race in outer space and negative security assurances. Unfortunately the CD was unable subsequently to agree on the implementation of the programme of work during 2009.
So far it has not proved possible to agree on a new programme of work in 2010 (as the CD’s rules require).
New Zealand became a member of the Conference in June 1996.
New Zealand continues to work constructively with other members to get the CD back to work.
New Zealand ’s involvement in the Conference on Disarmament is covered by staff at the New Zealand Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva.
