A three-day substantive session of the UN Disarmament Commission chaired by Permanent Representative of the Republic of Croatia to the UN in New York ended 25 April. The Commission’s task is to submit recommendations to the General Assembly concerning disarmament and to identify measures that the UN member states need to take. The Commission has an advisory role, reaches all of its decisions by consensus, with 193 UN member states participating in it.
This year again the member states failed to reach an agreement on the disarmament recommendations, with the main dispute being led about the holding of a conference on the nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The Commission’s Chairman Drobnjak acted as an informal mediator between certain Middle Eastern countries in trying to find a solution for the conference that would be acceptable to all sides. Although a solution was not found, the fact remains that all of the sides put forth a considerable negotiating effort and came closer to agreeing on the final document than ever before in the past 15 years.
The UN Disarmament Commission aims to revitalize the issue of disarmament and pass concrete recommendations, but complex geopolitical relations have been hindering it for years. This year’s progress in the convergence of different views sheds a positive light on the whole process, but the lack of a concrete results points to a need to rethink the Commission’s existing way of work. At the closing plenary session, Croatia was commended for its leading of the three-day session.