Conference on Disarmament

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) is the single permanent multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community. It was established in 1979 as the successor to earlier bodies, including the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) and the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD), following the first UN General Assembly Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD-I) in 1978.

The CD meets at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and currently has 65 member states, including all five recognized nuclear-weapon states under the NPT. While it is not formally a UN organ, it reports annually to the UN General Assembly, adopts its own rules of procedure, and its agenda is informed by the General Assembly. Its presidency rotates among member states, with each presidency lasting roughly four working weeks.

The CD operates by consensus, meaning any single member can block the adoption of a programme of work or a substantive decision. This rule has produced both notable successes and prolonged deadlock. Among its achievements, the CD negotiated:

• The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), opened for signature in 1993
• The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1996 after the CD failed to reach consensus on transmitting the text

Since the late 1990s, the CD has been largely unable to agree on a substantive programme of work. The principal stalled item is a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), which would ban the production of fissile material for weapons purposes. Other long-standing agenda items include nuclear disarmament, negative security assurances, and the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS).

Civil society participation is limited compared with other UN forums, and the CD's persistent gridlock has prompted some states to pursue disarmament initiatives in alternative venues, such as the negotiations that produced the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).