On Friday 18 October, Ambassador Manuel Dengo (Costa Rica) introduced a draft resolution to the United Nations General Assembly "Taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations" on follow-up to the incredibly successful UN Open Ended Working Group which met during 2013 in Geneva and 'opened the door to a nuclear weapons free world.'
The draft resolution, cosponsored by another 17 countries (Austria, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Samoa, Switzerland and Trinidad and Tobago), highlights the positive way in which the OEWG enabled governments and civil society to engage in a 'constructive, transparent and interactive manner to address various issues related to nuclear disarmament', calls on the Conference on Disarmament and other forums to take up the nuclear disarmament proposals in the OEWG report, and calls for a review of multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations at the UN General Assembly in 2014 to decide whether further work should be undertaken by the OEWG to take forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations.
Session of the OEWG on the role opf parliamentarians
The OEWG was established by the UN General Assembly in November 2012 (and commenced its work in May 2013) following widespread frustration at the lack of progress in other forums - including the Conference on Disarmament which has not been able to negotiate any disarmament agreements since the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996.
The momentum developed by the OEWG led to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) finally agreeing to establish an informal working group on nuclear disarmament in August 2013. The nuclear disarmament proposals in the OEWG report can now feed into this CD process. If successful, we could soon see the start of multilateral negotiations to achieve a nuclear weapons free world. If not, then the OEWG could restart again in 2014 to take the next steps toward such negotiations.
It's time to walk through the door to a nuclear weapons free world.
Mikhael Gorbachev walks through the door at the UN to support the OEWG
Call on your government to support the draft UN resolution - by cosponsoring or at least by voting in favour. We have produced a special OEWG briefing for governments which you can use to encourage your government to support the UN resolution.
Contact your Ambassador to the UN. See UN Member States for contact details.
For more information see:
- Abolition 2000 Task Force on the OEWG
- Open the door project
- UN body adopts report on advancing nuclear disarmament negotiations
Image by Colleen Ring, Canada