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

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: “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

ATT Consensus: Voting – what if...?

With the dust beginning to settle after the high drama of the negotiations of the Arms Trade Treaty, some reflections on the decision-making process are beginning to emerge. Here's another one ...

To recap, in 2009 the United Nations General Assembly agreed in A/RES/64/48 to convene a UN Conference to elaborate a treaty setting the “highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional arms”.  The UNGA also agreed that the conference would proceed, on the basis of consensus, to “achieve a strong and robust treaty”.

In short, the goals were a strong, robust treaty containing standards that were the highest possible that could be achieved without any nation formally opposing the adoption of the final product of the Conference.

For the United States in particular the possibility of blocking the adoption of a treaty that did not meet its needs was a major factor behind the incorporation of the consensus rule.  UN Conferences are masters of their own rules: the ATT Conference could equally have adopted the rules of the UNGA under which decisions on important questions are made by a two-thirds majority of member states present and voting.  

In the event, consensus eluded the negotiators of the ATT. The culminating act of the Conference should have been the adoption of the draft Treaty but Iran, North Korea and Syria objected to the text.  Those 3 countries did not just shrug their shoulders and resign themselves to the reality that almost 180 other countries were more or less satisfied with the draft.  Nor did those 3 states decide simply to remain silent and content themselves with not signing, ratifying or acceding to the new treaty.  They chose instead to rely on the consensus rule to formally voice their opposition, so blocking consensus and burying the product of the Conference.

Well, not quite. The draft survived intact. Sixty-four countries tabled it a few days later for decision in the UNGA where consensus, as noted earlier, is not required.  It passed easily with 154 nations voting in favour including the US, but with the DPRK, Iran and Syria still against, and 23 abstaining.

Circumventing the consensus rule in this forum-shopping manner had its detractors amongst the naysayers and abstainers in the GA. But a prior question to ask is why the consensus rule was adopted by the Conference in the first place.  The rationale for the consensus rule in treaty negotiations is ostensibly to prevent the national security interests of a minority being jeopardized by a large majority.  Yet treaty obligations cannot be imposed on any state without that nation’s consent.  Consent is not implied by the mere act of being part of a consensus.  Consent must be expressed explicitly both through constitutional procedures as well as in the manner prescribed by the treaty (usually ratification or accession).  These are national decisions entirely within each state’s control.

At the international level, consensus means that negotiators must strive at all times for the greatest meeting of minds possible. There is nothing wrong with aiming for general agreement.  In the context of hundreds of thousands of deaths each year from armed violence, the objective of the ATT of producing “highest possible common international standards” patently requires it.  To hold any real meaning, however, that same expression surely recognises that a lowest common denominator outcome must be avoided.

And this is where voting comes in to play.  As we’ve noted before, the possibility of voting, however remote, concentrates the minds.  In so doing, it improves the ultimate product by raising the level at which compromise is finally brokered.  What if the ATT rules of procedure, in prescribing consensus, had also provided for voting by a very high majority but only after all feasible efforts to reach general agreement had been exhausted? Would the text have been stronger? Would the standards have been higher? Would consensus have been achieved? Would Iran, North Korea and Syria still have stood aside? Would the US even have participated in the Conference?

Difficult questions to answer.  But let’s finish with perhaps a more fundamental question.  Isn’t this a situation where the international community to its cost has overlooked the reality that the consensus rule can invest disproportionate power in the naysayers?  Or has the UN General Assembly become the de facto voting mechanism of last resort, as in this case and that of the CTBT?  Not a tidy way of proceeding, but arguably one that justifies the means - one that in effect “corrects” the misguided original adoption of the consensus rule by the GA in 2009. International comity, however, would be better served by a less haphazard way of developing treaty law, and especially by a more enlightened application of the consensus rule.


Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR 

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)

Conference on Disarmament (CD) - Echoes of the Past

“My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.

Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.”

In his recent monograph of war poet TE Hulme, David Worthington remarked that Hulme’s poem ‘Trenches: St Eloi” (from which the quote above is drawn) has obvious contemporary resonance.  In so saying, Worthington may not have had the desperately bogged-down Conference of Disarmament  (CD) specifically in mind, but an analogy with the CD is not far-fetched.

As the Conference prepares for its 2013 session (to run from 21 January to 13 September), its 65 member states will be acutely aware that their current paralysis is entering its 16^th successive year.
This is not any normal disagreement over the precise wording of a disarmament treaty.  If only it were. Rather, the CD is deadlocked simply over how to get the negotiation of a treaty underway. No lasting blueprint for negotiating a new treaty has emerged in 15 annual 24-week long sessions. The trenches have been dug so deeply that the warring parties hunkered down within them seem either entirely disoriented or immune from growing international pressure for an end to the hostilities. 

Whether or not the minds of CD member states resemble corridors, there is a strong sense amongst them of the futility - echoing Hulme - in having nothing to do but, in the face of continuous stalling by the nuclear powers, keep on enduring seemingly endless repulsion in the quest for an acceptable formula for a blueprint or mandate that will trigger a new negotiation.

Alternative ways forward within the Conference – including successful recipes of the past - have been regularly suggested on this site (see links below) and are not repeated now.  But concrete alternatives outside the CD have recently emerged at least in respect of two of the possible subjects for treaties on disarmament issues.

The decisions of the UN General Assembly to establish forums on nuclear disarmament  and on a ban on the production of fissile material for explosive purposes  may not challenge the actual legitimacy (as opposed to the effectiveness) of the CD.  But at the least they amount to an incentive to its members to rethink the repressive way in which  the rules of procedure of the Conference are applied particularly to the laying of foundations for launching treaty negotiations.  

More importantly, these developments should offer encouragement to members that the issues in which they are most interested do not have to be eternally trapped within the Conference.  It will be intriguing to assess at the end of this year’s 6 month session of the CD where the balance of effort of disarmament diplomats was expended – on revitalizing the CD or in pursuing fresh new ground beyond the current trenches. ... Any bets?

Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR

List of relevant links:

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

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

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

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2011/11/v-behaviorurldefaultvml-o.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/01/prospects-for-conference-on-disarmament.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/05/conference-on-disarmament-lifeline.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/06/revitalisation-of-conference-on_27.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/06/revitalisation-of-conference-on_4768.html

http://disarmamentinsight.blogspot.ch/2012/07/cd-2012-endgame.html

Photograph of a field gun at St. Eloi courtesy World War I Battlefields (http://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/flanders/south.html)

The Elusive Consensus

There are good reasons for the inclusion of the consensus rule in the Conference of Disarmament’s Rules of Procedure.  These are discussed below.  But the consensus rule is being eroded tacitly or directly by those who are most keen to preserve it.

Something has to give.  Unless a more enlightened approach is taken to the use of consensus in the CD, the utility if not the integrity of that institution will be further debased. Recent decisions of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly in agreeing three initiatives for dealing with issues from the CD’s agenda in forums outside the Conference are no coincidence.

Sound advice on consensus was recently offered by the current President of the Conference. Introducing the CD’s annual report in the First Committee on 1 November 2012, Ambassador Hellmut Hoffman (Germany) reminded delegates that “consensus is not identical with unanimity”. He explained that consensus is the result of a “fair and honest effort” to arrive at an outcome which reflects a view “vastly prevailing” among member States and is one which those members whose interests are not fully met by it can nonetheless tolerate.  In other words, where voting is not an option, a decision is able to be taken without any member feeling obliged to voice a formal objection to it and thereby block it.

As the CD’s rules of procedure allow no other means of decision-making, there is an unwritten duty in situations where a member is isolated not to block consensus except in extremis.  The consensus rule does not confer an unfettered veto on each member.  Rather it protects a member from the imposition of an outcome by the “vastly prevailing” majority that would demonstrably jeopardise its supreme interests, i.e. its national security.

The prime purpose of the consensus rule in the CD is to assure members that decision-making on a multilateral negotiation of a treaty will not be dominated by the numerical superiority of any group of nations. The rule is also intended to facilitate the achievement of an agreement without the need for a vote and its “inevitable divisiveness”.

In addition, working by way of consensus can help facilitate the emergence of balanced texts that attract wider support, foster concerted uptake and implementation and prove to be longer lasting. The emergence of a dissatisfied minority, out-numbered under a voting procedure, is obviated.

In a body whose mandate is to negotiate matters affecting the security of all nations, those attributes of the rule surely amount to a sound basis for taking decisions only by consensus.  So, what is the problem?  The problem is that the impasse in the Conference does not reflect disagreement over anything as vital as the contents of a legally-binding treaty but simply over the basis on which treaty negotiations might be conducted.  There is no shortage of mandates that could ultimately lead to treaty negotiations – indeed there are four of them, but they have been unhelpfully fused together so that nothing constructive happens on any of them. For as long as agreement to a mandate on one core issue is held hostage to securing agreement to mandates on the other three core issues, the CD will remain rooted to the spot.

Boiled right down to just two central issues, some members who would like negotiations to begin on banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons aren’t yet prepared to concede that concrete efforts should also get underway on nuclear disarmament.  And vice-versa.  Perpetuation of the status quo serves no-one’s interests except those that, despite protestations to the contrary, wish to retain their nuclear arsenals or augment their stocks of fissile material.

But to return to the point.  The mere couching of mandates and prioritising of issues for the commencement of work in the CD can scarcely be characterized as constituting a threat to national security.  Therefore, “consensus” should be interpreted in its normal manner. That is, the decision should be taken by general agreement where no member believes that its security is so prejudiced by that decision as to impel it to voice its objection, thereby blocking it.

A member might object to a decision to adopt a draft treaty where it believed that the outcome, despite intensive negotiations in which it had participated, would prejudice its national security. A member might object to a decision to adopt a mandate which specifically precluded a particular outcome thereby demonstrably compromising that member's national security ab initio - an unlikely situation given the sensitivity traditionally shown by CD presidents in tabling only those mandates that have been the subject of exhaustive consultations. But a member would not normally object to a decision to adopt, for example, a document setting out the parameters and timetable for the CD's annual session even if that member’s preferred position was not fully met.

The regional groups of the CD, whose consultations are not covered by the consensus rule but have nonetheless fallen prey to it, might weigh the desirability of moving away from lowest common denominator outcomes and developing a habit of reaching more nuanced ones. For example, a group position that reflected a "vastly prevailing" viewpoint but that noted a different, minority approach albeit one that was not being insisted upon, or on which, perhaps in face-saving terms, instructions were being sought ... an outcome, in other words, that respected a minority position but that wasn't stalled by it.

In any event, as noted before in this column, indefinite blocking of decisions in the pre-negotiating stage of the CD’s work on a given topic serves only to reinforce doubts about the viability of the Conference.  There may not be a consensus that the CD’s days are numbered but the recent writings on the wall of the UN General Assembly are surely salutary nonetheless.

As Ray Acheson wrote in the final edition for 2012 of Reaching Critical Will’s excellent First Committee Monitor, “The important message coming from the majority of member states and civil society at this year’s First Committee is that a handful of countries must no longer be allowed to hold back the rest of the international community in tackling some of the most dramatic problems of our age.  Stalemates and watered-down outcomes must urgently be replaced by alternatives that can proudly be deemed “successful” for genuine human security and social and economic justice.  Governments and civil society alike should not settle for less.”

Posted by Tim Caughley, Resident Senior Fellow, UNIDIR, Geneva

Photographed is one of the Palais des Nations' beehives offered to the United Nations Office at Geneva by Switzerland on the occasion the 10th anniversary of Switzerland's membership of the UN.