About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


1 The United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament 1 (2013)

handle is hein.unl/ungeneral0001 and id is 1 raw text is: The United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament The High-level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament of 26 September 2013 is convened in accordance with resolution 67/39 of 3 December 2012. It is the result of an initiative of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries. It complements other resolutions expressing frustration at the absence of substantial progress in nuclear disarmament and the stalemate in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), which has not yielded any substantive outputs since 1996. The objective of such initiatives is to create new momentum towards nuclear disarmament, in particular at the High-level Meeting, by attracting world attention to the issue and mobilizing the international community, including civil society organizations. This paper will examine how such an event could effectively contribute to achieving the goal of nuclear disarmament. In view of the protracted stagnation of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), many states have been searching for ways and means to break this deadlock and allow for multilateral negotiations on nuclear disarmament to commence. At the initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General, the General Assembly met on 24 September 2010 for a high-level meeting devoted to revitalizing the work of the Conference on Disarmament and taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations. At that meeting, 68 delegates spoke, including 37 ministers of foreign affairs and representatives of specialized organizations; the Secretary- General issued a summary of the meeting.' In 2011, at the request of 49 Member States, the General Assembly convened three plenary meetings on 27-29 July 2011 under agenda item 162, entitled Follow-up to the high-level meeting held on 24 September 2010: revitalizing the work of the Conference on Disarmament and taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations. Fifty-five national and group statements were made. In 2012, feeling that previous efforts had not resulted in sufficient progress, the Group of Non-Aligned Countries proposed a new high-level meeting of the General Assembly. The General Assembly is not the only organ that occasionally meets at a high level on the topic of disarmament. The Security Council also met twice at the level of heads of state or government-on 31 January 1992, marking the end of the Cold War, a Presidential Statement issued after such a meeting2 considered 1 General Assembly, Letter Dated 5 October from the Secretary-Genera/Addressed to the President of the Genera/ Assembly, UN document A/65/496, 14 October 2010. 2 Security Council, Note by the President of the Security Council, UN document S/23500, 31 January 1992.