The Conference on Disarmament (CD) in its current format was established in 1978 under the provisions of the Final Document of the first Special Session on Disarmament of the United Nations General Assembly. The Conference is accountable to the UN General Assembly, is funded from the UN budget, and is designed to conduct negotiations on disarmament and arms control on a multilateral and consensus basis. The Conference on Disarmament is regarded as the international community’s sole permanent negotiating body in this field.

The Conference on Disarmament has 65 member states. Ukraine became a member of this forum in June 1996. The most recent admissions to the Conference on Disarmament, in August 1999, were Ecuador, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Tunisia.

In 2026, the chairmanship will be held by Mongolia, Morocco, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway and Pakistan. The chairmanship of the CD rotates among member states; the term of office covers four weeks of the session (six chairing countries over the course of a year).

The Conference agenda has remained unchanged for the past 20 years and includes the following items:

- Cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament;

- Prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters;

- Prevention of arms race in outer space;

- Effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against them;

- New types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons, including radiological weapons;

- Comprehensive program of disarmament;

- Transparency in armaments;

- Consideration and adoption of annual report to the UN General Assembly.

Within the framework of the Conference on Disarmament and its predecessors (the Committee of 18, the Conference of the Disarmament Committee), a number of important international agreements were drawn up and concluded at various times:

- Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968);

- Treaty on the Prohibition of placing on the seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction (1972);

- Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (1972);

- Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any Other Hostile Use of environmental impact (1977);

- Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (1992);

- Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (1996).

At the same time, for almost thirty years the Conference on Disarmament has been unable to commence its substantive work due to a lack of consensus on the content of the annual

Programme of Work, which stems from differences of opinion amongst member states regarding the priorities for this forum’s work, in particular regarding the conclusion of a Treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and other explosive devices (FMCT) and its potential scope of application.

Despite the Conference on Disarmament’s continuing inability to commence substantive work on the drafting of international treaties in the field of arms control and disarmament, this platform is being utilised effectively by Ukraine’s representatives, with the support of delegations from partner countries, to condemn Russia’s ongoing aggression against our state and the aggressor country’s actions aimed at dismantling the European and global security architecture.

Ukraine also regularly circulates, as official working documents of the Conference on Disarmament, joint statements condemning Russia’s large-scale armed aggression against our state, Russia’s breaches of its obligations in the field of arms control and disarmament, and its undermining of the foundations of international peace and security. Furthermore, in their statements at CD sessions, Ukrainian delegations, amongst other things, condemn the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine and its negative impact on the global security architecture, including the adverse consequences for nuclear safety and security assurances.