Reduction of military budgets

Several proposals on the reduction of military budgets, based on the conviction that such measures would facilitate the disarmament process and help release resources for economic and social development, were made in the General Assembly during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1973, a proposal submitted by the Soviet Union led to the adoption of resolution 3093 A (XXVIII), by which the Assembly called upon the permanent members of the Security Council to reduce their military budgets by 10 per cent and to designate a portion of the funds thus saved for the provision of development assistance to developing countries. The other permanent members of the Security Council opposed the proposal for various reasons. On the basis of resolution 3093 B (XXVIII), initiated by Mexico, the Secretary-General appointed a group of qualified experts to prepare a report on questions concerning the Soviet proposal. While recognizing the benefits of reducing military expenditures, the report dealt with the problems of arriving at a generally acceptable conceptual definition of military budgets and of developing a standardized system of measuring and reporting the military expenditures of States. By initiating other studies and surveys on the subject in the following years, the General Assembly sought to develop such a standardized system.

Related Subject(s): Disarmament