Aidan Liddle
UK Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament
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6th June 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
I spent part of last week at the Space Security Conference run by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, which has become something of an annual fixture. It was excellent – the organisers brought together an amazing group of speakers from governments, academia, the media and industry, and I came away with a far better […]
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29th April 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
The third session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons opens today at UN Headquarters in New York. (Otherwise known as the NPT RevCon PrepCom; while we work tirelessly against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we’re quite happy to proliferate jargon.) Over the next […]
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22nd March 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
Four weeks ago, the UK assumed the rotating Presidency of the Conference on Disarmament. Today, we hand it over, with our best wishes, to the US. It’s been an intense four weeks. During the High Level Segment we heard from 30 Ministers over five plenary meetings. We presided over eight working formal and informal plenary […]
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19th February 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
The Presidency of the Conference on Disarmament rotates alphabetically amongst its members, who each take a turn for four weeks while the Conference is in session. That means that, over the 24 weeks of each year’s session, six countries are asked to take the chair. This week, the UK picked up the baton from Ukraine […]
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6th February 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) recognises five states as ‘Nuclear Weapon States’ – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US. In 2009, the UK took the initiative to convene a conference of those States to discuss matters related to the NPT. This ‘P5’ process has since become an important channel […]
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16th January 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
After a good break over Christmas and the New Year, I’m back in Geneva feeling refreshed for what will be a busy year in disarmament. Here’s a flavour of some the issues that will be on my mind in 2019. (I’ll look at some of them in more detail in future blog posts.) 2019 marks […]
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16th November 2018
Geneva, Switzerland
Last weekend we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting on the Western Front in the First World War. In the UK and Commonwealth, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month has become a time to stop, fall silent, and remember the sacrifice of those killed in […]
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9th November 2018
Geneva, Switzerland
On Saturday morning I returned to Geneva from four weeks in New York at the UN General Assembly’s Committee on Disarmament and International Security, known as First Committee. It’s a strange quirk that many countries staff First Committee from Geneva, as these are issues that are usually handled here. Some of my colleagues have notched […]
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11th October 2018
Geneva, Switzerland
I arrived at the UK Mission in Geneva at the end of July to take up my new post as Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament (CD). With my first session of the CD behind me, and before heading to New York for the UN General Assembly First Committee, I’ve been reflecting on my […]
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