10th January 2020 Geneva, Switzerland
2020 is going to be a hugely important year for multilateral disarmament in Geneva. The biggest event of the year, of course, is the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which takes place in New York over April and May. The RevCon’s job is to look back over the last five years and “identify […]
4th October 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
The three principles of disarmament are usually held to be verifiability, irreversibility and transparency. Transparency underpins the other two principles. You can’t tell whether what’s been done is irreversible unless you can verify it; you can’t verify it unless it’s transparent. As such, transparency, often in the shape of reporting by States Parties, is a […]
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16th September 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
The Conference on Disarmament (CD) adopted its Annual Report to the UN General Assembly last week. Thanks to the skilful work of the sixth and final President for the year, Zimbabwean Ambassador Taonga Mushayavanhu, this was a quicker and much less fractious process than many of us were expecting. With that, a week ahead of […]
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2nd September 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
As August turns to September, the traffic jams return to Geneva and the evenings start drawing in. People start returning from the beaches or mountains. It’s ‘back to school’ time. In fact, the disarmament community has been back at work since 29 July, when the CD resumed its 2019 session. So I feel like I’ve […]
8th July 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
Virtually all peace, security and development goals are severely hampered in contexts where arms and ammunition are not effectively regulated. It sounds like a statement of the obvious, but conventional arms control is not well integrated with thinking and actions on conflict prevention and management. I noticed this when I moved from New York, where […]
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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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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 […]
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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