United Nations General Assembly: First Committee – Thematic Cluster statement: Outer Space

Statement delivered by Christine Nam, Adviser

New Zealand is committed to promoting the peaceful, safe, secure, and sustainable use of outer space. For us, space security is essential to support our economic wellbeing, security in our Pacific neighbourhood, and respect for a strong and effective international rules-based system.

We welcome developments in recent years in the international space security discussion, and look forward to making further progress on reducing space threats.

We continue to support efforts to develop norms, rules, and principles to address these threats, including approaches that incorporate behaviour and capability-based approaches, as most appropriate.

We believe this is a pragmatic step towards mitigating the risk of miscalculation, misunderstanding and escalation in space.

We believe it's critical we continue to advance our shared thinking, and to develop international consensus on areas including:
• the applicability of international law to space, including international humanitarian law;
• the threat of space conflict to space systems which provide critical civilian services; and
• the need to share information about activities to build common understanding and support the eventual development of legally binding instruments.

We should collectively focus on areas where agreement has been emerging and continue to develop our shared understanding.

In this regard, we remain hopeful that consensus could be achieved to merge the two existing Open-Ended Working Groups in a manner that appropriately reflects the elements of both mandates, as well as the diverging views of member states, to provide a dedicated forum for constructive and open discussion. We have every confidence that the sponsors of this resolution will continue to work with the various groups to achieve broad-based agreement.

We look forward to continuing the momentum from previous space security discussions, including the recently concluded Open-Ended Working Group on reducing space threats through norms, rules, and principles of responsible behaviour, and the work of the Group of Governmental experts on prevention of an arms race in outer space.

Chair,

While progress is being made, space has become increasingly congested, contested, and competitive. We share significant concerns regarding potential activities that may endanger the free and open use of space.

In this regard, we call on all member states to abide by their international commitments in the Outer Space Treaty, in particular Article IV, and to not place nuclear weapons into orbit or develop the capability to do so.

Echoing this call, we also welcome the new resolution this year on weapons of mass destruction in outer space. We call on all member states to support this important text, in line with their obligations under the Outer Space Treaty.

Finally we reiterate our view that it is essential to engage voices from diverse communities and regions as we seek to advance our shared work on space security issues. Championing multistakeholder collaboration in space-related discussions will continue to be a focus for New Zealand.

Thank you Chair.

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