United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues in Osaka

19-22 August 2003, Osaka, Japan

"The United Nations First Biennial Meeting of States to Consider the Implementation of the Programme of Action on SALW"

Presentation by Mitsuro Donowaki

It was since 1995 that the international community started to seriously address the problems associated with the excessive availability of small arms and light weapons (SALW). I do not wish to bother you with the nature and gravity of the problems because most of the participants here today are already familiar with them. From the very beginning, Japan was at the forefront in taking initiatives by introducing General Assembly resolutions every year -- establishing a Panel and then a Group of Governmental Experts to prepare various reports, and eventually paving the way for the convening of the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in SALW in All Its Aspects in July 2001. The United Nations Conference, which was held at the ministerial level, adopted the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in SALW in All Its Aspects.

In endorsing the Programme of Action (PoA), the General Assembly decided in December 2001 to (1) "convene a conference no later than 2006 to review progress made in the implementation of the PoA", and to (2) "convene a meeting of States on a biennial basis to consider the national, regional and global implementation of the PoA". In the following year, in November 2002, the General Assembly decided to convene the first of the biennial meetings in New York in July 2003.

It was in accordance with these decisions that the United Nations First Biennial Meeting of States to Consider the Implementation of the PoA was held in New York from 7 to 11 of last month. As is clear from the decisions of the General Assembly, the mandate of the Biennial Meeting was "to consider the implementation of the PoA" and not "to review the PoA", which may be a task for the conference to be convened no later than 2006.

Why was it that such a two-tiered process was worked out in order to follow-up the UN Conference of 2001? This was because there was a widely-shared awareness among all the participants at the UN Conference that the adoption of the PoA was only the beginning of a process, and not an end in itself. The international community took an action for the first time in history to deal with the problems of SALW because it was "gravely concerned", as stated at the outset of the PoA, "about the illicit manufacture, transfer and circulation of small arms and light weapons and their excessive accumulation and uncontrolled spread in many regions of the world, which have a wide range of humanitarian and socio-economic consequences and pose a serious threat to peace, reconciliation, safety, security, stability and sustainable development at the individual, local, national, regional and international levels."

The challenge was enormous, and the action agreed upon to be taken would require sustained will, determination and efforts of the entire international community. Ensuring the implementation of the PoA adopted by the Conference was the matter of highest priority and urgency, and the momentum gathered had to be kept up and strengthened. The biennial meeting of states was a device to ensure that the momentum would be kept up and the PoA would indeed be implemented. If there was any need to review the PoA itself, such a task can be left for the future.

It was for this reason that Japan attached a great importance to the First Biennial Meeting of States, and volunteered for the chairmanship of the Meeting with Ambassador Kuniko Inoguchi, Permanent Representative of Japan to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, as its candidate. As soon as her candidature was unanimously approved at an informal meeting during the First Committee in October last year, Ambassador Inoguchi was fully engaged in the preparation of the First Biennial Meeting. She energetically conducted numerous rounds of informal consultations in Geneva and New York with the representatives of governments, regional and international organizations and the civil society including various NGOs in order to ensure that the Biennial Meeting would be well planned and organized. She also attended a dozen or so workshops and seminars related to SALW held in various places of the world in order to raise awareness about the importance of the Biennial Meeting.

It was in no small measure thanks to her dedication and sincere personality that the First Biennial Meeting turned out to be a remarkable success, although, of course, the credit should also go to all the participants of the Meeting. The success of the Meeting can be ascertained by several facts as given below.

First, since the Biennial Meeting was to consider the implementation of the PoA, its objective would be better achieved if participating States submitted national reports on how the PoA is being implemented at national levels. By the time the Meeting was held more than eighty states submitted such reports -- a very high figure for such a meeting, and many of them contained valuable information that was never available before. Ambassador Inoguchi has taken every opportunity to make a strong appeal to States to submit such reports, and her efforts bore tangible fruits.

Second, the Meeting was fully attended and a high spirit was kept up throughout its entire ten sessions -- five morning sessions and five afternoon sessions of the week. One hundred delegations took the floor during the first five sessions to report about their national experiences in implementing the PoA, or on behalf of regional or sub-regional groups of states. It was particularly encouraging to see that a large number of states seriously affected by the problems of SALW in Africa, Latin America and Asia and the Pacific actively participated in the general debate in order to make their voices heard.

Following the general debate, the sixth session in the afternoon of Wednesday was allocated for equally valuable presentations by representatives of the civil society, and the seventh session in the morning of Thursday was devoted to presentations by the UN and other international organizations. The remaining three sessions were used for thematic discussions, which turned out to be a unique feature of the Biennial Meeting. Four groups of thematic topics were taken up during these sessions, and lively exchange of views took place among delegations.

At the conclusion of the last session, the Meeting unanimously adopted its report, including the Chairperson's Summary attached to it. I should reiterate that the Meeting was a remarkable success because it was eagerly and fully attended throughout the sessions, demonstrating the strong commitment of the international community to the PoA.

Third, the Meeting duly carried out its task of making the first biennial assessment of the implementation of the PoA. It is true that two years may not be enough to make proper assessments, particularly in view of the paucity of base-line data related to SALW. However, some attempts are made in the Chairperson's Summary on the basis of over eighty national reports and well over one hundred presentations made during the Meeting.

For example, the Chairperson's Summary states that "A large number of developing countries directly affected by the problem of small arms and light weapons indicated, in their national reports, that current levels of international and regional assistance were inadequate", showing the direction where further efforts are needed. On the other hand, the Summary also noted that 97 States have already designated national points of contact, and a similar number of States established national coordinating agencies as was urged by the PoA. Out of an estimated total of over 4 million weapons collected and disposed of during the last decade world wide, almost half were collected and disposed of in the last two years. Twenty-one States adopted or revised export-import laws after 2001, or are in the process of adopting them. End-user certificate requirements were being met by 27 countries prior to 2001, but another 12 have introduced such a system since 2001. These data may be sketchy and far from enough, but indicate that some progress is actually being made.

The Summary also refers to the work completed by the Group of Governmental Experts on the study of the feasibility of an international instrument on marking and tracing as a concrete example of achievements in the implementation of the PoA. Also, it enumerates a number of regional and sub-regional initiatives as activities in support of the implementation of the PoA.

Fourth, I wish to stress that the Biennial Meeting was successful also in gaining a new momentum. The UN Conference two years ago was characterized by a confrontational mood that existed between the United States and a few others on one side and most of other states, particularly those from the African continent, on the other. The impasse was resolved only after the African states reluctantly agreed to the deletion of what they regarded as the two key paragraphs from the PoA, making it possible for the Conference to adopt the remaining 83 paragraphs by a consensus.

In the two years since, it became gradually clear that once the controversial paragraphs were dropped, the United States was not against the PoA, but was supportive of it. This was evidenced by the national report submitted by the United States at the end of April this year. The sixteen-page report detailing its implementation of the PoA was entitled "United States Support for the UN PoA."

Moreover, on the first day of the Biennial Meeting, a letter of State Secretary Colin Powell addressed to the Chair, Ambassador Inoguchi, was delivered to her and read out. The letter expressed his strong expectation to the success of the Meeting, as well as his appreciation to the stewardship role played by the Chairperson.

At the Meeting, the United States made it clear that its basic position remained unchanged, but that it was more than willing to cooperate with others in implementing the PoA. According to the statement delivered by Assistant Secretary Bloomfield, the comparative advantage the United States had in such cooperation was in the area of destruction assistance programs, because the United States supported such programs in 10 countries since 2001, which resulted in the destruction of over 400,000 excess or illegal SALW.

Compared to the UN Conference of two years ago, this represented a drastic change of atmosphere. As is stated in the Chairperson's Summary, a more supportive global climate for implementing the PoA was created. This may have been partly due to the growing awareness in the international community about the linkage between the problems of SALW and the fight against terrorism after the September 11 incident that took place less than two months after the adoption of the PoA.

The newly gained momentum for the implementation of the PoA was noticeable not only in the attitude of the United States, but also in the attitudes of some other key countries. Two years ago, some of them were not enthusiastically supportive of the PoA, but could keep quiet because of the confrontational stance taken by the United States at the time. It was particularly noteworthy that a number of Arab states came up with statements in support of the PoA, which was not the case two years ago. The newly gained momentum certainly was a significant achievement made by the First Biennial Meeting.

Lastly, I wish to conclude by making a few remarks on the future tasks that have to be carried out in the region of Asia and the Pacific, because this United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues is organized by the Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific. As is well known and is also stated in Japan's national report to the Biennial Meeting, Japan has been supporting the implementation of the PoA by organizing various seminars and workshops in this region. Also, Japan has been actively assisting the so-called "Weapons for Development" programs and other peace-building activities in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

It is true that weapons collection and destruction and other activities related to peace-building in post-conflict regions constitute a major area where the struggle against excessive spread of SALW ought to be carried out and strengthened. This is particularly the case in Africa where dozens of regional and civil conflicts were fought and most of them came to an end, or about to end.

The situation in the region of Asia and the Pacific is slightly different. Cambodia, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands may be said to be post-conflict nations in need of assistance for peace-building activities. However, for most nations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, post-conflict peace-building sounds unfamiliar, and their more immediate concern is the smuggling of weapons, drug trafficking and terrorist activities in view of their long and porous borders surrounded by vast territorial waters.

For example, in its national report to the Biennial Meeting, Indonesia stated that "Like other Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia tends to view the problem of SALW in the context of transnational crime." This view was reaffirmed by statements made by Myanmar and Thailand at the Biennial Meeting. It was pointed out that combating trafficking in small arms is one of the components of the Work Program on the ASEAN Plan of Action to Combat Transnational Crime approved and endorsed at a Ministerial Meeting in May 2002, and that in September this year Thailand will host the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime which will also address cooperation issues with regard to illicit SALW.

It should be recalled that there were two parallel initiatives that were taken within the United Nations system. One was the disarmament initiative to control SALW which was initiated in 1995 in New York, culminating in the adoption of the PoA at the UN Conference in July 2001. The other was the initiative to conclude a legally binding instrument to combat illicit trafficking in firearms as one of the protocols supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The negotiations for the Firearms Protocol was initiated in Vienna in 1999 and concluded in 2001, just before the UN Conference on Small Arms. While the former process was carried out mostly by the disarmament experts of participating states, the latter was carried out mostly by law-enforcement officials.

It has been recognized all way along that the two processes were not contradictory to each other, but mutually reinforcing. However, in reality, there have not been enough efforts to make the two processes truly reinforcing to each other. Those who were engaged in the fight against transnational crimes had little opportunity to be informed about the importance and relevance of the PoA to their activities, while the latter was worked out mostly by disarmament experts in spite of the fact that many of the provisions of the PoA were related to crime prevention activities.

Indeed, the PoA urges States to put in place or strengthen laws and regulations to exercise effective control over the production, trade, possession and so forth of SALW. It also urges sub-regional and regional cooperation and information-sharing among law enforcement, border and customs control agencies in order to combat illicit trade in SALW. The need for external assistance in capacity-building in such areas is also stressed in the PoA.

Therefore, what is needed in further implementing the PoA in the region of Asia and the Pacific is the better coordination and cooperation among those who are engaged in the combat against transnational crime and those who are working for the implementation of the PoA. Japan, on its part as a nation willing to assist its neighboring nations both in their fight against transnational crime and in their fight against the excessive availability of SALW, will have to do its homework in working out better coordination and cooperation among various governmental agencies concerned.