Conference on Disarmament: Time for Change

These are some notes that formed the basis of a talk on the Conference on Disarmament to the UN Disarmament Fellows on 21 August 2017.

1. In 1978, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) established the CD as a ‘single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community’ (see para 120 of the report of the First Special Session on Disarmament (UNSSOD-1)). It is a ‘single’ forum in the sense that it is a standing body with its own secretariat that can conduct negotiations sequentially on agreed topics. In that sense it is a convenient venue for disarmament negotiations, but it is not an exclusive one—it is NOT the ‘sole’ forum.

2. The CD was set up as a ‘negotiating body’. This is in contrast to the UN Disarmament Commission and the First Committee of the UNGA that are ‘deliberative’ forums—venues for developing understandings at most rather than legally-binding treaties. The last negotiations carried out in the CD were from 1994 to 1996 to develop a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons (CTBT). Since then, the Conference has briefly begun negotiations on banning fissile material and on negative security assurances (both in 1998) but neither negotiation was sustained beyond that year. Increasingly, States have turned to alternative forums – UNGA (e.g., for the ATT, FMCT and TPNW), Diplomatic Conferences (APMBC and CCM).

3. The CD is a negotiating forum of limited membership (65 States). UNSSOD-1 attached ‘great importance’ to the participation of all the nuclear-weapon States. To ensure this, decision-making has to be by consensus (i.e., the absence of a formal objection). This avoids situations, for example, where those States would find themselves in a minority, out-voted on matters affecting nuclear weapons. The consensus rule in the CD is not in itself the reason for the CD’s longstanding deadlock. But because consensus is the sole decision-making rule, there is a responsibility on all members to apply it in a principled way. It should not be treated as a blunt veto but should be used sparingly, ideally only in situations where genuine and exhaustive efforts to seek consensus have been made and where a State’s national interests would be palpably jeopardized. In any event, the difficulty of separating substance from procedure in relation to the weighty security topics on the CD’s agenda means that it is unlikely that members would agree to finessing the consensus rule in any way far less incorporating additional decision-making rules.

4. The terms of reference of the CD include practically all multilateral arms control and disarmament problems. Currently the CD primarily concentrates on four ‘core’ issues:

- nuclear disarmament,

- banning the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons (FM(C)T);

- preventing an arms race in outer space (PAROS); and

- assuring non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons (NSAs).

The terms of reference of the CD should not to be confused with its annual agenda, or with the Programme of Work (PoW) which is required to be negotiated and adopted at the beginning of each year (Rule 28).

5. The Rules of Procedure of the CD are sometimes blamed for inhibiting the Conference. But the problem is less the rules themselves—after all, they served satisfactorily in the past—and more the manner in which the members choose to apply them. For instance, throughout these past 20 unproductive years the practice of linking mandates for dealing with all four core issues within a single Programme of Work is at odds with the rules. The PoW needs be no more than a schedule of activities - there is no need for it to embody any mandates let alone linking all four where, given the consensus rule, if there's a formal objection to one of the mandates in the PoW they all fail. Mandates, of course, are required for each negotiation the CD launches, but they don't have to be actually incorporated in the PoW.

6. During debates in the CD, States often lament the ‘absence of political will’ amongst members. But the problem is the clashing of political wills, not their absence. Some States want action and progress, but others prefer the status quo. Traditionally, security issues take time to negotiate. Sadly, however, efforts to recognise and overcome the clash of wills have been fitful and feeble. Hesitant attempts have been made to move away from PoWs that link all four core issues, to change the focus of the Conference to new issues, to intensify discussions via an informal Working Group on the way ahead, etc. These attempts have yet to bear fruit.

If the CD is to prosper once again, members are faced with a more existential choice. Is the CD going to surrender in effect to irrelevance in the face of the challenge of negotiating in a highly disturbed global security environment? Or is it going to respond to that challenge by getting back to basics:

- acknowledging that the longstanding and stale clash of political wills is bankrupting the legitimacy of the CD;

- interpreting the RoP constructively rather than the reverse;

- accepting that active diplomacy amongst the members is urgently required to find mechanisms for re-building long-lost trust and confidence—mechanisms for staggering the attention of the CD on its core issues rather than trying to deal with them simultaneously, mechanisms for developing pre-negotiations on technical issues and matters of definition, etc:

- recognising that the task of restoring confidence requires accepting the realities of the consensus rule while at the same time insulating it from abuse; and

- being always mindful that the advantages of existing as a single (but not sole) multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community will continue to atrophy as negotiations take place elsewhere and the CD’s stature diminishes.

In short, the 'rationality and diplomatic solutions' sought of the CD by the UN Secretary-General at the outset of this year's session remain in urgent need of application.

Tim Caughley

Resident Senior Fellow
UNIDIR

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?

In an earlier posting on this site, I suggested that the Conference on Disarmament move away from the complicated, multi-mandate annual programmes of work of the past 20 years. It was proposed that in order to get the CD going again, its focus should be substantially narrowed ideally to a single issue. And, the work programme should, as in the distant past, be no more than a schedule of activities for the year.

The current President of the Conference (Ambassador Vierita of Romania) appears to have a similar idea. His ‘initiative’ is to call for the setting up of a working group of the CD with the sole task of taking stock of the progress on all agenda items and possible new areas in order to identify the way ahead. He has invited support from CD members for this approach.

The objective of such a subsidiary body could equally be discharged by the plenary itself, the default mode ordained by article 19 of the CD’s rules of procedure. The President may feel, however, that the exercise of taking stock of progress is more efficiently conducted in the more informal atmosphere of a working group.—The necessary rebuilding of trust and confidence among members after years of bitter disputes over its priorities may be facilitated in such a group. And the initiative sensibly envisages that the chair of the group would be elected for the full session of the Conference rather than rotate monthly like the presidency.

The initiative is not described as a programme of work or a schedule of activities (as will be required under rule 28), although it envisages that the chair of the group would establish a timetable for 2017. Nor is it clear whether members of the public would be able to observe its sessions as they are entitled to do in the case of formal meetings of the CD. These are important details that the President will no doubt wish to clarify over the next week or so during which feedback from member states can be expected.

If the intention of the new proposal is to move away from the unsuccessful multi-mandated approach of the past two decades, it should be taken seriously. Its simplicity is to be welcomed, although in my view its additional idea of also setting up “Informal Thematic Working Groups” adds unnecessary complexity.—Such bodies may indeed prove useful but they can readily be established if and when a demonstrable need emerges and a climate of trust and confidence has been engendered.

At the least, this single-mandate focus could serve as an overdue test of whether members of the CD are serious about overcoming their longstanding deadlock. Passing this test will depend on whether the Conference is not only able to break old habits but also on whether it ensures that such a working group is not just business-as-usual under another procedural guise. In other words, if they pursue the President’s initiative, can members successfully debunk the saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same?

Tim Caughley

Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

CD Back to Basics

As the 2017 session of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) is about to begin (on 23 January), here are 10 points which newcomers to the CD and others might wish to ponder:

1 The agenda of the CD covers some of the world’s most important security issues—nuclear disarmament; prohibiting the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons; preventing an arms race in outer space; agreeing on legally-effective means to assure non-nuclear-weapon states that nuclear weapons will not be used against them. These matters are also known as the four core issues of the CD.

2 The CD has made no concrete progress in dealing with these issues (or anything else) since 1996 when the negotiations on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) were concluded.

3 The CD was established by the UN General Assembly as a negotiating body, not a deliberative (or ‘talk-shop’) forum. It has failed to fulfil its mandate for over 20 years. Its role as a standing body of the international disarmament community has thus atrophied. Disarmament negotiations have found new or alternative negotiating vehicles and institutions—UN General Assembly (Arms Trade Treaty; treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons) and treaty bodies (Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention; Cluster Munitions Convention).

4 In terms of the CD’s failings, the Conference is not under-resourced. It has a budget for 30 hours every week of fully serviced meetings with simultaneous interpretation into the 6 UN languages for 24 weeks a year.

5 And the Conference has ‘workable’ rules of procedures (RoP) that, although somewhat idiosyncratic, have adequately met the needs of the CD (and its predecessors) during successful negotiations of the past (for example, the NPT, ENMOD, Seabed Treaty, BTWC, CWC and the CTBT.)

6 The RoP are workable if the 65 states that are members of the Conference want to get down to work. There are, however, some constraints. As all CD decisions must be taken by consensus, the formal opposition of just one state can block a decision. And every year, work only begins if no state prevents agreement on the proposed schedule of activities for the annual session (the so-called ‘programme of work’). The more complicated the programme of work, the greater the likelihood that one or more states will oppose it. With three very short-lived exceptions (in 1998 (twice) and 2009), no programme of work has secured consensus since the decision in August 1993 on the mandate for the CTBT negotiations (CD/1212).

7 The draft work programmes that have failed to achieve agreement or implementation for two decades now have been unnecessarily complicated.  Rather than follow earlier CD practice of simply setting out a schedule of activities for the year ahead, for 20 years the programmes have also incorporated mandates for negotiating or otherwise dealing with all four of the core issues, to zero effect. Such mandates are indispensible, but there is nothing in the rules of procedure that requires them to be set out in the annual work programme.

8 This unfortunate current practice is not just complicated. It has the effect of holding work on any one of the four mandates hostage to each of the other three. A state that blocks consensus on the programme of work because of its opposition to one of the four mandates, prevents work taking place not only on any of the mandates but on the annual schedule of activities embodying the mandates.

9 This extraordinary state of affairs is not an accident. Some members regard it as a symptom of the tense global security environment, which is inhibiting progress on these kinds of issues. If this is so, then the CD should operate merely on an as-needs basis, re-convening only when there is a demonstrable new and promising development. Other states, however, believe that the Conference depends for its existence on being able to make a difference in times of global tension, the more so in the light of the relevance of the four core issues on its agenda. In relation to nuclear disarmament, for example, the words of the previous UN Secretary-General come to mind: “Some may claim that security conditions today are not ripe for the pursuit of further nuclear disarmament. I say this view has it completely backwards. The pursuit of arms control and disarmament is precisely how we can break the tension and reduce conflicts.” 

10 After 20 years of empty returns on its annual investment of 24 weeks, the CD’s integrity is dependent on it finally acknowledging either that its impasse is—and is likely to remain—chronic,  or that a new beginning is required. If the 2017 session is to arrest the CD’s decline, it should aim for a straightforward, business-like programme of work simply setting out a schedule of activities for the year. That schedule should foreshadow immediate negotiations on an individual core issue (or issues), or an emerging issue, to get the Conference going again. In short, rebuilding confidence and credibility from a less convoluted platform will require going back to the basics of the CD’s heyday. Otherwise, the sense that the Conference has become anachronistic - powerless to make a difference in addressing today’s international security challenges, may intensify.

Tim Caughley

Resident Senior Fellow

UNIDIR

CD: Face-to-Face

Fifteen years have elapsed since the Conference on Disarmament last engaged in substantive work.  Briefly in August 1998 the CD tried to fulfil a newly agreed mandate to negotiate a ban on the production of fissile material.  Those efforts lasted three weeks.  Since then, negotiations on that issue have never risen beyond a procedural level.  The same is true for the other core agenda items – nuclear disarmament, preventing an arms race in outer space and negative security assurances.

During these barren years, no less than 90 presidents of the conference have grappled with the task of developing a programme of work for dealing with these four topics in a manner that is tolerable to the CD’s membership.  As required by the CD’s rules, the responsibility for chairing the 24-week annual session of the conference changes no less than six times each year. 

Sharing the presidency in alphabetical order of member states may be democratic, but it takes a toll on continuity.  And during this past decade and a half it has also proved a very lonely task.  In the absence of consensus on mandates for getting down to serious work, it has fallen to successive presidents to conduct constant shuttle diplomacy among individual delegations to find a breakthrough.  While those consultations take place off stage, the CD is effectively at a standstill.  Disarmament experts have begun to turn their attention to opportunities offered by new forums and approaches outside the conference.

Recently, the CD took a decision to mitigate both the effects of the discontinuity of the presidency and also its loneliness.  An informal working group has been established to produce the elusive programme of work. 

The duration of the new body will not be constrained by the rapid rotation of presidents.  Even better, as the group is open to all CD members and observers, a more transparent and inclusive process for uncovering and narrowing rooted differences of view should result (although this benefit will be tempered by the apparent exclusion of civil society, again).  Successive presidents will still have a role in conducting private consultations with concerned delegations, but that will no longer be the central dynamic.

One other reflection, in passing, on the rule to confine each CD presidency to four working weeks... If the conference does eventually succeed in elaborating and agreeing a programme of work, the issue of presidential rotation will fall away.  Attention would turn instead to the chairs of the subsidiary bodies established to carry out the real work of the conference.  The chairs of those bodies will become the key actors, and on past practice they won’t – and shouldn’t – be rotated month-by-month.  At that point the CD president’s role will revert largely to a titular one. 

In the meantime, if the informal working group is to salvage the CD’s credibility, it will recognise that its creation has surmounted a current short-coming in the conference’s methods of work.  An obstacle to face-to-face efforts, delegation-to-delegation, to forge the necessary compromises on matters of real substance has been removed. The issue of presidential continuity has been dealt with, and the responsibility for settling the CD's long-standing differences has been placed where it belongs - on the membership as a whole. Let the thawing begin...

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

CD: Three Mysteries

Three aspects of the Conference on Disarmament’s longstanding paralysis are particularly mystifying.

First, despite all the agonising among the 65 CD members about the current deadlock, there has been no emergence of a group of concerned countries to explore a way though the impasse.  Every month a new president alone takes on the responsibility of finding a breakthrough.  Why is this such a lonely task?  Have members tacitly accepted that the CD’s usefulness has come to an end?  After all, 16 years have elapsed since the Conference last fulfilled its mandate as a negotiating body.  If this is not the case, why is there no coordinated activity – sustained across the monthly presidencies – to shore it up? 

The Secretary-General of the Conference, Mr Tokayev, recently proposed the establishment of an informal working group with a mandate to produce a Programme of Work that would lead to negotiations. This idea has struck a chord with a number of member states. It will be interesting to see whether those members actively lobby and meet among themselves - ideally as an informal cross-regional group - to pursue this promising avenue, or whether it is simply left to successive presidents to painstakingly consult on its general acceptability.

Another mysterious aspect of the CD’s malaise is this.  Strong statements are made regularly by members of the Conference about the need to negotiate on the topic to which they attach priority.  The trial of strength over which of the core issues is “ripest” for negotiation amounts to a direct clash of political wills. The result is that there is no agreement on anything. The consensus needed for the Programme of Work and the conduct of negotiations is altogether absent.

Why is this so strange?  Well, take the case of a fissile material negotiation, or “fissban”.  The principal proponents of this issue profess to being frustrated by their inability to re-launch the negotiation that began and prematurely ended in 1998 and has never been resumed.  But what is stopping them from rallying their supporters and conducting a sustained debate in Plenary, focused ideally on a working paper containing a framework or elements of an eventual treaty?  They don’t need a Programme of Work for such an initiative – under the Rules, working in Plenary is the CD’s default option (Rule 18).

Assuming such discussions gather momentum in Plenary and build up the necessary trust along the way, a negotiating mandate will in due course be needed to intensify the work.  And time will have to be allocated to the working group in which the negotiations would be conducted.  So procedural hurdles would still remain.  The CD would, however, have rediscovered the will to work which is currently absent judged by the lack of initiatives of the kind just described.  This should in itself have a cathartic effect. By the way, a “simplified” Programme of Work (see previous postings on this site) would be the obvious vehicle for making time available for the intensified phase of negotiations just noted (to be pursued alongside other business agreed by the Conference).

Finally, it is interesting to speculate why no state has come forward with any concrete working paper on fissile material negotiations in recent years? Draft treaties were tabled in 2006 and 2009 by the US and by Japan and the Netherlands respectively, while Brazil, Canada and Australia each made proposals in 2010.  But since then, there has been nothing quite as specific apart from the working paper of Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey in June 2011.  The lack of any recent proposal on fissile material  - as a new focus for Plenary debate - is hardly a ringing endorsement of the CD. 

Maybe, as with nuclear disarmament, attention is turning elsewhere. UNOG’s website records that, in advance of the convening in Geneva in 2014 and 2015 of a Group of Government Experts (GGE) on fissile material, 25 states and the EU have recently responded to the UN Secretary-General’s request to submit their views to him on a fissile material ban.  The GGE will proceed on the specific understanding that if the CD meanwhile agrees and implements a programme of Work that includes the negotiation of a fissban, the GGE will cease and any product of its work will be passed on to the CD. 

With very little time left during the current session of the CD for the tabling of concrete proposals on a fissban, let alone a Programme of Work, and in the absence of any member-driven, cross-regional initiative to caucus to overcome the sorry deadlock, these mysteries about getting work underway seem set to remain unsolved.  Yet the solutions aren’t nearly as complicated as the current, discredited efforts to agree fatally-linked, multiple mandates in a single document. Persisting with the latter is the third and most worrisome mystery.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

CD: “Simplified” programme of work

The notion of a “simplified” programme of work is getting increasing airplay in the Conference of Disarmament (CD) these days. (For those unfamiliar with the chronic stalemate in the CD, agreeing a programme of work setting out the priorities of the Conference is a necessary precursor to real engagement in that body.)

It is not surprising that interest in simplifying the annual work programme should be growing.  Since 1999, drafts of the programme have been unnecessarily laden with mandates that have defied the consensus required for their adoption except in 2009 when there was an-all-too short-lived breakthrough (CD/1864). Mandates included in draft work programmes since 1999 are to begin real work on up to four “core” priorities dealing with nuclear disarmament, fissile material, outer space and security assurances.

The Rules of Procedure, as well as CD/1036 (a decision on the “Improved and Effective Functioning” of the Conference adopted on 21 August 1990), envisage a streamlined approach whereby the programme of work would be no more than a mere schedule of business rather than an overarching mandate or mandates for beginning to elaborate a treaty or memorandum of understanding on one or more of the core issues.

Decision CD/1036 led to the current rule on the work programme, rule 28, with its emphasis on establishing rather than adopting. This is not a matter of semantics. It means that having established through his or her consultations that no reasonable objection exists to the schedule of business for the year, the CD president would get work underway without a formal decision. In theory at least, the work programme, shorn of mandates, would be so simple as not to require a formal, consensus decision of the Conference.

Things haven’t panned out as envisaged.  Mandates on the 4 core issues have become inseparably linked, and worse, they have been embodied unnecessarily in draft work programmes. These linkages aren’t accidental.  They are deliberate.  Therefore they can be broken. A simplified programme of work might help in that regard.

What would a simplified programme look like? This column has been offering ideas since 2009 – see list below – and suggested a possible format in 2011.  Boiled right down, a simplified approach would have these features:

1. There would be an allocation of time to be spent during the annual session on each of the 4 core issues and other substantive agenda items.  That timetable would also allocate space for the annual high-level segment and for agreeing the CD’s report to the UN General Assembly.  In addition, it would reserve time for discussion of the outcomes of the second feature of the programme.

2. Within the allocation of time for each of the core issues, the central matter for CD members to resolve would be: under rule 23 of the Rules of Procedure, is there a need to establish a subsidiary body in which engagement would be intensified? That is, does a basis exist for the negotiation of “a draft treaty or other draft texts”?  Note that a subsidiary body is generally regarded as being more appropriate for facilitating intense engagement than the comparatively stilted, formal option of conducting work in plenary, although under the Rules, plenary meetings are the default option and would be the venue for fulfilling this part of the simplified work programme.

3. As when and if the questions arising under rule 23 are answered in the affirmative, members would immediately apportion time from the reserved allocation (see 1. above) for the negotiation of the necessary mandate. Mandates would evolve independently of each other.

4. Agreement on the negotiated mandates would require consensus.  Decisions on mandates would take place singly rather than collectively, unless otherwise agreed (by consensus)(see further below).  Agreement on individual mandates is most unlikely to be achieved simultaneously.  The timetable would need to be flexible enough to deal with that reality.

In weighing the pros and cons of this simplified approach, the following key considerations arise:

- Does this approach involve bending the Rules of Procedure? No, it entails applying them more faithfully.

- Will the mandates that have been refined and embodied in successive draft programmes of work since 1999 remain on the table? Yes, of course, but they will be examined one-by-one, and judged on their individual merits rather than as a package of four.

- What is the main advantage of this approach? It will help members to gauge issue-by-issue whether there really exists a will to begin serious work on each priority and, if so, their readiness to compromise on the ingredients of the mandate that will be required.  This may assist in recalibrating the 4 priorities, for example, in downgrading the push for security assurances, an issue whose need may have subsided marginally relative to the other 3 issues.  And by considering each issue on its own merits, members should be able to weigh more acutely the CD’s capacity to make progress on elaborating more than one “draft treaty or other draft texts” at a time.

- Will treating the mandates one-by-one guarantee that linkages among them are avoided? No, but any attempt to forge linkages will necessarily be more transparent.  Linkages may be needed, for instance, in developing a framework of issues as a compromise solution to the standoff over fissile material and nuclear disarmament.  Or there may need to be an understanding over the sequence of treatment of core issues to ensure that none is unacceptably overwhelmed by intensifying work on others.  Members protecting their interests in such a way on a given issue will necessarily do so openly on the record of the CD. 
The key difference from the present situation is that work on the mandates will be taking place under an agreed work programme, albeit a simplified one. The clock will actually be running. Members will no longer be wringing their hands waiting for the president to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2013/02/back-to-basics-in-conference-on.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2013/01/conference-on-disarmament-cd-echoes-of.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2011/07/last-throw-of-dice-for-cd.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2011/03/cd-getting-to-first-base-on-simplified.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2010/02/shannon-mandate-aged-15.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2009/10/conference-on-disarmament-getting.html

Back to Basics in the Conference on Disarmament

The website for the Conference on Disarmament lists a dozen draft programmes of work proposed during the CD’s long fallow period since the CTBT was negotiated in that body. All of those work programmes have been supported by an overwhelming number of member states, but to no avail. That planning tool by which the 65 members try to prioritise and provide order for each year’s work has either fallen foul of the consensus rule or been immediately undermined after adoption.

In the face of these frustrations, there has been speculation on reforming the rules of procedure of the Conference particularly to facilitate decision-making. But the chances of opening up, let alone amending, these rules are negligible.  Better then to focus on how to apply them more imaginatively. Failing that, looking for other ways to do business...

There is certainly scope for reappraising the CD’s approach to formulating its annual programme of work.  There is a discernible pattern to the last nine of the twelve proposals just mentioned.  All ambitiously seek to set up at least three subsidiary committees or working groups of the CD as well as specifying mandates for those bodies.

The manifold layers of that approach are staggering in terms of their complexity and intensity.  They involve:

 - agreeing the precise terms for tackling more or less simultaneously four major issues affecting international security (noted below),

 - establishing three or four forums to operate concurrently for the purposes of deepening discussion on each of the four issues to the point of negotiating binding agreements on one or more of them,

 - programming the means of dealing with all four issues in a single document, and

 - requiring that the decision to undertake such complex and demanding streams of work as set out in that document be taken without a single, formal objection.

Is it any wonder that the CD remains rooted to the spot? One country blocking, say, the mandate on nuclear disarmament, ensures that no progress is made on any of the other three core issues – i.e., a ban on fissile material, preventing an arms race in outer space or securing legally binding security assurances. Paralysis is total.  Worse, it is self-inflicted.

Would it make a difference if the treatment of these issues in the work programme were to be de-linked?  That is, if the CD returned to its practice of developing separate mandates for each issue, might it be possible to make progress on at least one of them?

We know from recent decisions that no progress is currently possible on banning the production of fissile material. But, what if the CD isolated the remaining three issues and took decisions on each of them one by one?  Unfortunately, it is known also that at least one member state is opposed to progress on each of the remaining issues, although in the absence of individual decisions on mandates taken one-by-one, this state of affairs has not been formally tested in recent years.

This suggests that whether the mandates are linked or separated the result would be the same: the CD would remain in deadlock.  If this were so, the main options are to:

 - adjourn the work of the Conference, convening it only when circumstances require (e.g., for a periodic gauging of new prospects for progress),

 - take up discussions of a lesser issue or an emerging one, or

 - try a new approach to developing a programme of work – a “low-key”, groundwork approach unencumbered by substantive mandates.

The low-key option would be predicated on recognition that the mandates for the four issues covered by the recent series of work programmes are too ambitious, individually and collectively.  Instead, the focus would be less on the end product of the CD’s work on a given subject and more on the groundwork and confidence-building steps needed to underpin concrete progress. Attention would be placed on identifying and laying the foundations for such progress – defining key terms, filling gaps in knowledge on technical and scientific capacity for verification or other mechanisms, forming groups of experts, etc.

These confidence-building discussions would be scheduled on a rolling basis, initially allocating equal time to each of the four core issues.  When interest in an issue began to wane, the time originally allocated to it could be respread across the other issues. The absence of sustained, lively engagement in an issue would be as telling as the reverse.  But if none of the issues was able to secure sustained, intensifying commitment, then that would tell an even more serious story - the future of the CD, or at least the future of dealing with these issues in the Conference, would be confirmed to be in real doubt.  
At that point, the integrity of the CD would best be served by conceding defeat for the meantime and adjourning it sine die.  Taking up a lesser issue would smack of desperation. Agreeing to deal with an emerging issue would require consensus, a hurdle at which the Conference on Disarmament so often baulks.  Having already failed last week to adopt its work programme for 2013, the CD could do worse than experiment with a new approach to agreeing its annual plan of work.

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

(with acknowledgement to ClipArt for the symbol for meeting points)