The United Nations Council will hold a special thematic debate on January 18 on the topic of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction and Confidence Building Measures'.
The debate will be chaired by Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev, and will have a strong focus on diplomacy and trust-building as important elements to prevent proliferation of WMD and to advance disarmament.
Kazakhstan has undertaken national and regional disarmament initiatives, including relinquishing all the nuclear weapons that were on their territory and negotiating a Central Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. They have also put forward a number of disarmament proposals to the United Nations, including:
- a call 'on all Member States, especially the Security Council's permanent members, to set a goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons by the UN's 100th Anniversary in 2045.'
- a proposal for UNmembers to contribute 1% of their military spending to fund the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).
The veto power of the permanent Members (China, France, Russia, UK and USA) makes it difficult to adopt resolutions on these proposals at the Security Council.
However, support from other Security Council members on January 18 could help pave the way fora successful UN High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament in May 2018, which will not be subject to such veto power.
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