Economic aspects of disarmament

There is a close link between armaments, disarmament and economics. It finds official recognition in Article 26 of the Charter of the United Nations, which calls on the Security Council “to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources”. In this context, the possibility of reducing the huge financial, material and human resources devoted to the military sector and reallocating part of them to the civilian sector of national economies has been the object of deliberations within the framework of the United Nations for well over three decades. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the subject has received fresh attention on the part of the international community in the light of the momentous changes in the political environment brought about by the end of the cold war. These, however, have not yet had a major impact on military budgets and the reallocation of resources from military to civilian endeavours.

Related Subject(s): Disarmament