Conference on Disarmament Meeting Through March 27

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) convened yesterday in Geneva, and will periodically meet until March 27, for its first of three sessions in 2015, to discuss issues including nuclear disarmament. NGOs and disarmament groups, such as Reaching Critical Will, have criticized the CD for its lack of action in recent years. In 2013, the CD created an Informal Working Group to devise a clear program of work, but did not succeed in finding a path forward. The working group continued in 2014, and the CD discussed general agenda items, but the group was again unable to agree on a program of work. While a separate UN Office of Disarmament Affairs-sponsored Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) is meeting until Jan. 23 to discuss a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), substantial FMCT discussions have been dormant in the CD since 2012, when the CD established an open-ended working group that created the GGE.