CIAO DATE: 04/2012
October 2011
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
From 30 March to 1 April 2011, a high-level workshop was organized for parliamentarians from countries belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Partnership for Peace (PfP). The topic of this event was “The Role of Parliaments in Arms Control, Disarmament, and the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)”. It was a joint initiative of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and the WMD Non-Proliferation Centre of NATO. Some thirty-five parliamentarians (including several former government ministers) from twenty-three countries attended the workshop along with the same number of staffers, government representatives, and independent experts (see List of Participants in Annex 3). The aims of the workshop were the following: * To promote the role of parliaments in arms control, disarmament, and the non-proliferation of WMD through awareness raising among members of parliament about their role in these important policy areas; * To increase transparency and accountability of arms control, disarmament, and the non-proliferation of WMD; * To exchange information on experiences, best practices, and tools related to the role of parliaments in disarmament, arms control, and the non-proliferation of WMD; * To provide parliamentarians (including staffers) with the latest information on the current status and prospects of future arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation of WMD; * To discuss and exchange views on strengthening the role of parliaments in disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation of WMD. The workshop provided an opportunity to compare practices, depending on states’ policies and constitutional or institutional arrangements, in areas often regarded as technical or requiring secrecy, and are therefore generally left to executive handling. Considering that the issues involved in arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation are closely related to national security, defence expenditures, and procurement, but also to human security and the impact of arms reductions or the regulation of arms transfers on international security; there was a general consensus that parliamentarians, as elected representatives, had a critical role to play in those areas.
Resource link: The Role of Parliaments in Arms Control, Disarmament, and the Non-proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) [PDF] - 538K