Disec
Disec
Disec
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Naman Sharma (Vice Chair of DISEC)
“More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can
master it only if we face it together. And that is why we have the United Nations.”
- Kofi Annan (UN’s 7th Secretary-General)
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Introduction
Introduction to the Disarmament and International Security Committee
(DISEC)
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clusters, namely: nuclear weapons, other WMDs, disarmament aspects in outer
space, conventional weapons, regional disarmament and security, other
disarmament measures and security, and the disarmament machinery. The mandate
of the General Assembly makes this a gateway to the notion that, through discussion
and debate, can become the engine of new policies and common norms (UNITAR,
n.d.). This is one of the main differences between the Security Council and the
Commission. More precisely, the Security Council tackles security threats, such as
international conflicts.
The Assembly seeks to maintain peace by establishing cooperative habitats.
That is, while the Security Council can authorize the use of force to combat terrorism
and freeze assets for illicit arms trafficking, it will work on the development of
international conventions to avoid the acquisition of nuclear weapons and other
WMDs by terrorists.
However, it should be pointed out that, when the matter is not addressed by
the Security Council, only the General Assembly addresses matters of international
security. At the heart of the UN structure, the General Assembly and its six major
Committees serve their central deliberative and policymaking bodies, as well as their
respective legislative bodies. The role of the General Assembly is to launch studies
and recommendations to encourage international cooperation in the political field;
promote the sustainability of international law; promote the enforcement of economic,
social, and human rights.
The General Assembly is advised by the Six Key Committees for the
allocation of the UN funds and programs. The General Assembly may also receive a
report from the other principal institutions formed in compliance with the Charter of
the United Nations and from its own subordinate bodies (Oxford, n.d.).
The First Committee is able to table resolutions authorizing new arms control
and disarmament negotiations, which can, in effect, establish and fund agencies or
meetings and ad hoc committees or working groups which discuss a particular issue
in order to report to the General Assembly. In the first committee, the General
Assembly Plenary must always approve resolutions passed before they are
introduced. However, it should be noted that the General Assembly resolutions are
not legally binding even though they are ratified by the plenary.
The unity reached in the First Committee also contributes to more concrete
United Nations initiatives. The First Committee works in close cooperation with the
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United Nations Disarmament Commission (UNDC) and the Commission on
Disarmament (CD). The CD plays a crucial role in tackling disarmament issues and
was central to international negotiations, such as the NPT.
In comparison to the CD, UNDC is a First Committee subsidiary body
composed of 193 member states. In the formulation of principles and guidelines,
which were subsequently endorsed by the Committee in its own reports, the General
Assembly made mainly recommendations. All entities report to the First Committee
either quarterly or more frequently. Civil society organizations have a strong
relationship with the General Assembly as a key member in the United Nations
system and are regularly invited to address the General Assembly.
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Imperial Japan formed Unit 731, a covert Biological and Chemical Warfare Unit,
during World War II (Roblin, 2021). In their eagerness to win the war, the scientists
involved perpetrated numerous horrible crimes, including human experimentation on
Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Mongolian prisoners of war, and then utilized the
information gathered to damage a large number of Chinese people (Jung, 2018).
The plague, a bacterial infection that wiped out much of Europe's population
during the Black Death in the fourteenth century, appears to have been one of the
biological weapons selected by Japanese biowarfare experts (Roblin, 2021). A
plague-infected person may develop symptoms such as hideous buboes, high fever,
gangrene in the extremities, chills, or convulsions a few days after infection, with a
fatality rate of roughly 50% for those who go untreated. For instance, under
Operation Sei-Go, the Japanese included the use of bioweapons such as cholera,
typhoid, plague, and dysentery, which, in addition to killing tens of thousands of
Chinese, may have also killed 1,700 Japanese troops, according to one estimate
(Roblin, 2021).
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Many efforts have been made to get rid of the world’s threat posed by these
weapons, with some success. International actors realized that weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) cannot be uninvented. However, they can be forbidden, much
like biological and chemical weapons, and their use is made inconceivable by the
help of global treaties (Commission, 2006). But again, these global treaties must be
generally accepted and thoroughly enforced. Nuclear weapons must be prohibited as
well. Before this goal can be fulfilled, new steps to lower the number of nuclear
weapons and the threat they pose must be implemented. Preventing proliferation
and taking special precautions to guarantee that terrorists do not obtain weapons of
mass devastation are equally important.
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Body
Key Terms
● CBM
Confidence-building measure
● CBW
Chemical and biological weapons
● CTBT
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
● GTRI
Global Threat Reduction Initiative
● HCOC
Hague Code of Conduct
● IAEA
International Atomic Energy Agency
● ICJ
International Court of Justice
● NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
● NPT
Non-Proliferation Treaty
● NSG
Nuclear Suppliers Group
● NWFZ
nuclear-weapon-free zone
● NWS
nuclear-weapon state
● OPCW
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
● P5
Five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council
● PTBT
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Partial Test-Ban Treaty (Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the
Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water)
● SSOD
Special Session on Disarmament (of the UN General Assembly)
● START
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
● UNDDA
United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs
● UNIDIR
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
● WMDC
Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission
The three significant obstacles that the world faces – existing weapons,
further proliferation, and terrorism – are politically and rationally intertwined: the
larger the existing stockpile, the greater the risk of leakage and misuse. The terrorist
attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001, demonstrated to the world in
an instant that if terrorists successfully collect WMD, they won't wait to use it directly.
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required to produce enriched uranium or plutonium for arms and ammunition.
Terrorists, on the other hand, could steal nuclear weapons and weapon
supplies from storage or during road transport. Since 1995, the IAEA has
maintained an Illicit Trafficking Database, which contained 662 confirmed
incidents of theft since about December 2004, 18 of which involved highly
enriched uranium or plutonium, with a few matters involving kilogram quantity
of products (Commission, 2006). Terrorist goals could also be achieved by
using a dirty bomb, which is an instrument intended to scatter radioactive
materials. Such materials could be obtained by a terrorist group from nuclear
waste or radioactive materials used in health facilities and other industries.
Although such armaments are not typically regarded as WMD because they
are unlikely to result in a massive number of fatalities, they are much easier to
produce than nuclear fusion weapons and also can cause terror and mass
interruptions, particularly if blown up in the center of big cities.
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(Shoko Asahara - the founder and leader of the Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo)
Past Actions
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conference in this letter. The aim of this conference was to put a stop to the
global arms race and to find means to avoid the war. It prohibited the use of
certain types of modern technology in war, including airstrikes, biological
weapons, and hollow-point bullets, in an effort to set standards for
international conflict resolution (Hague, 2017). Many were skeptical about this
conference, but in the end, this conference managed to gather hundreds of
delegates from 26 countries for 3 months at Huis ten Bosch (the royal
residence of Queen Wilhelmina) for the First Peace Conference. One of the
main results of this conference was the creation of the Permanent Court of
Arbitration (PCA) (Hague, 2017).
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nuclear-weapon powers — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom,
and the United States. India, Israel, and Pakistan are the only countries
that have not joined (Kimball & Bugos, Arms Control Association, 2020).
North Korea has stated its withdrawal from the treaty. The NPT has
attracted more countries than any other weapons control or
disarmament agreement. The NPT is the only multilateral pact that
contains a legally binding commitment to nuclear-weapon nations'
disarmament.
(NPT states-parties voted to extend the treaty indefinitely on May 11, 1995 at UN
Headquarters in New York)
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Chemical weapons invention, manufacture, stockpiling, transfer, and
use
are all prohibited under the CWC. There are 178 countries that have
signed the CWC (Kimball, Arms Control Association, 2018). Members
of the CWC must declare any chemical weapons-related activities,
safeguard and dismantle any chemical weapons stockpiles within
specified timeframes, and deactivate and destroy any chemical
weapons manufacturing capacity within their authority. Chemical
weapons have been declared by six nations' parties. The CWC is the
first disarmament treaty to call for the total elimination of a class of
weapons of mass destruction under universal worldwide control
(Kimball, Arms Control Association, 2018). The OPCW (Organisation
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) is in charge of its operational
functions.
Bloc Positions
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announced that they have nuclear weapons. Israel, which is also a non-NPT
participant, is widely thought to have nuclear weapons – some estimates put
the number in the hundreds – despite the fact that it has never admitted to
having them (Commission, 2006).
● North Korea
North Korea has claimed to have nuclear weapons but has produced no
evidence to back up this statement. It has twice declared its exit from the NPT
after violating the pact. Although the scale of North Korea's enrichment
capabilities is unknown, Pakistan's President Musharaff said in August 2005
that the A. Q. Khan network had delivered centrifuge units and blueprints to
the North Korean regime. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty has
not been signed by North Korea (Commission, 2006).
● Middle East
According to most unofficial estimates, Israel has a nuclear arsenal in the
hundreds, probably larger than the United Kingdom's (Commission, 2006).
Both fission and fusion bombs are thought to be in Israel's arsenal. It has an
unguarded plutonium production reactor and reprocessing capacity, as well as
perhaps some uranium enrichment and other uranium-processing equipment.
It is the only nation in the region that is not a signatory to the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (Commission, 2006). No other country in the region is
said to have nuclear weapons, however, the US and others have alleged that
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Iran has a program to create such weapons, despite the fact that it is still in
the initial stages of fuel-cycle ability. Iran has a uranium enrichment plant
under development, along with accompanying infrastructure, as well as a 40-
MW heavy water reactor, thanks to Pakistan's A. Q. Khan supplier network.
Iraq had a long-term nuclear weapons program; Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak
reactor in 1981, and a UN coalition struck other nuclear facilities in 1991; the
rest of Iraq's nuclear weapons capabilities were eventually destroyed under
IAEA supervision (Commission, 2006). Iraq also has not been signed the
CTBT. Syria and Saudi Arabia have also refused to sign the CTBT, owing to
the fact that neither country has the infrastructure to support a nuclear
weapons program. The CTBT has been signed but not ratified by Egypt, Iran,
and Israel.
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Tackling the Issue
Questions A Resolution Must Answer (QARMAs)
1. How can we prevent the Non-State Actors from accessing WMD and WMD
materials globally?
2. How can the committee persuade Member States to join the NPT and other
key WMD treaties?
5. Looking back at 9/11 and the Aum Shinrikyo attack, we can see that the
possibility of terrorist groups carrying out daring attacks in the future is high.
So, what are the national efforts and international cooperation to prevent such
attacks and significantly improve measures to protect the public from these
lethal and indiscriminate weapons?
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