Conventional weapons

The reduction of conventional armaments and armed forces was a matter of concern to the Security Council in the early years of the United Nations and, following the cessation of substantive work by its Commission for Conventional Armaments in 1950 and the Council’s dissolution of that body in 1952, the subject has been considered continually by the General Assembly, though with varying degrees of emphasis. Subsequently, interest in other aspects of conventional disarmament arose. Efforts to regulate the transfer of such armaments emerged in the latter half of the 1960s. The first initiatives engendered considerable controversy between supplier and recipient countries, which has not so far been totally allayed. The idea of imposing prohibitions or restrictions on the use of certain conventional weapons regarded as particularly indiscriminate or inhumane was introduced at the end of the 1960s as a legal issue, and developed as a disarmament matter during the following decade. In the mid-1970s attention turned to consideration of the hypothesis that questions of conventional disarmament might better be dealt with on a regional basis, because of the varying security conditions among the world’s regions.

Related Subject(s): Disarmament