United Nations General Assembly: First Committee – Explanation of Vote on Cluster 1 Nuclear Disarmament

Statement delivered by Ben Schaare, Adviser

I take the floor to explain New Zealand's vote on two resolutions.

On L.41, entitled "Steps to building a common roadmap towards a world without nuclear weapons", New Zealand once again abstained on this resolution. While we note some improvements over last year's version, and have supported these paragraphs, overall we remain disappointed with a number of aspects of the current text. In view of limited time, I will mention only a few of those concerns.

On PP5, as we noted in previous years, the clear expectation in the 1995 NPT outcome was that subsequent NPT PrepComs should adopt their reports by consensus. Welcoming the practice of 'Chairs' Papers' is incongruent with this principle. We are also not convinced that a UN General Assembly resolution is a suitable place for what is an internal matter for NPT States Parties.

PP7 includes the unhelpful qualifications 'non-transparent' and 'opaque', rather than communicating concern about all expansion of nuclear forces. Again, we also have concerns with the reference to "irresponsible" nuclear rhetoric, which suggests there is such a thing as "responsible" nuclear rhetoric.

We continue to have significant reservations about PP16, including how the concept of international stability, peace and security based on the principle of undiminished and increased security for all. Given the common interpretation of this language as imposing conditionality on disarmament measures, New Zealand does not support this language.

We remain deeply concerned at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, and we support awareness raising about them. We regret that our feedback was not taken on board to reflect humanitarian consequences separately from the other points also added to PP19.

On PP23, we wish to reiterate New Zealand's commitment to finding ways to progress transparency and reporting with a view to improving accountability with nuclear disarmament obligations and commitments. We note that despite a welcome increase on engagement on this theme in the NPT, including from the nuclear-weapon States, we are yet to see evidence of new steps they have yet taken to demonstrate transparency with respect to their nuclear weapons, for example additional numerical and qualitative information. We therefore abstained again on this paragraph.

On OP3, we still have a number of concerns. For example, the phrase "to provide frequent and detailed reporting on the implementation of the Treaty" in OP3 extends the scope of reporting to all pillars of the Treaty rather than on Article VI, which is actually the pillar with the deficit.

As previously, we have concerns with OP4, and urge the drafters to be more direct in stating the problem, which is that overall nuclear weapon numbers appear to be increasing once again.

Chair

On L.68/Rev1, entitled "Comprehensive study of the question of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones in all its aspects", in addition to the joint EoV delivered by Tonga, I make the following point in my national capacity. We voted in favour of this resolution. We put on record our understanding that the views of existing Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones in OP6 incorporates all States Parties to the Zone, even where they may not be a UN Member State.

I thank you.

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