14th January 2021 Geneva, Switzerland
For the last couple of Januaries I’ve used this blog to look ahead to the year to come in the Geneva disarmament world. After 2020, I hesitate to be definite in predicting anything… The pandemic is far from over. For at least the first part of 2021, it’ll still be impossible to hold large-scale in-person […]
7th July 2020 Geneva, Switzerland
The Conference on Disarmament resumed its 2020 session on Tuesday, after a break of 122 days. (We had been supposed to meet a week earlier, but technical problems with the new remote participation platform meant the meeting was cancelled at the eleventh hour.) But did anyone miss the CD while it was silent? Should it […]
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11th June 2020 Geneva, Switzerland
I last blogged in late February on the P5 Conference in London, looking ahead to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in April. The coronavirus outbreak in China was on our minds, of course, but none of us knew then how it would affect the rest of the world. Switzerland reported its first death from […]
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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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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 […]