Brev till Ban Ki-Moon om FN:s nedrustningsdepartement

1 Jan 2007:

Brev till FN: s generalsekreterare Ban Ki-Moon om bevarandet av ett självständigt nedrustningsdepartement inom FN

24 January, 2007

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary-General of the United Nations
United Nations Headquarters
New York, New York

Dear Mr. Secretary-General:

I am writing to you in support of keeping an independent Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA), with its own mandate and Under-Secretary-General. I am concerned by reports that DDA might be subsumed under the Department for Political Affairs, a shift that is unhelpful and unnecessary, both in terms of the UN fulfilling its mandate, and servicing inter-governmental meetings and treaty bodies.

Disarmament is one of the central tasks of the UN, as evidenced by the first UN General Assembly resolution calling for nuclear disarmament, and the UN Charter’s vision for the “the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources” (Article 26). The UN must live up to its mandate and prioritize disarmament in the Secretariat, maintaining the independent DDA instead of subordinating it to other agendas.

The UN should not be reducing the stature of disarmament within the UN at a time when the problems posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, as well as small arms, are escalating. The DDA, which was designed to address post-cold war disarmament issues, is even more necessary in an era with increased opportunity for, but decreased attention to, disarmament. Moreover, the world’s disarmament machinery, norms and regime are embattled right now, and reducing the stature of the primary global institution responsible for implementation of UN decisions is the wrong course.

It is important for DDA to remain its own entity with its own mandate and Under-Secretary-General whose primary concern is disarmament. It is also important that a department dealing with nuclear disarmament answer to an Under-Secretary-General from a non-nuclear weapon state. This allows DDA to make independent assessments with disarmament as the goal. DDA houses years of expertise and institutional memory that is invaluable to governments and civil society, and which could be quietly lost under a different department. For example, when something similar happened in the United States, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was moved into the State Department, technical expertise and institutional memory was lost, as was internal advocacy for disarmament. Finally, disarmament is very technical; having a disarmament-focused department actually allows decisions to be made more quickly than having them processed through a department dealing with disparate concerns that may be less familiar with the issues.

The Department for Disarmament Affairs must not lose its unique identity, mandate and its ability to report directly to the Secretary-General through its own Under-Secretary-General. The quantity and technical nature of the Department’s work is sufficient to warrant a dedicated department, and the issue the Department covers is sufficiently urgent to justify expansion rather than absorption. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Lisa Hagström,
Secretary General

On behalf of:
Women´s International League for Peace and Freedom Sweden
Norrtullsgatan 45, 1 tr.
11345 Stockholm
Sweden