Peace and Security
The 1945 UN Charter envisaged a system of regulation that would ensure “the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources”. The advent of nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the Charter and provided immediate impetus to concepts of arms limitation and disarmament. In fact, the first resolution of the first meeting of the General Assembly (24 January 1946) was entitled “The Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy” and called upon the commission to make specific proposals for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction. The UN has established several forums to address multilateral disarmament issues. The principal ones are the First Committee of the General Assembly, the UN Disarmament Commission, and the Conference on Disarmament. Items on the agenda include consideration of the possible merits of a nuclear test ban, outer-space arms control, efforts to ban chemical weapons and land mines, nuclear and conventional disarmament, nuclear-weapon-free zones, reduction of military budgets, and measures to strengthen international security.
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