Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC)

The Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC) is the first out of six main committees of the General Assembly (GA) of the United Nations, which deals with disarmament and related international security questions. It is also referred to as the First Committee of the GA.

The GA convenes each year in September. After two weeks of general debate in plenary session, the GA continues the debate in the six main committees on the items that the GA allocated to these committees. Every member state is entitled to participate in each of the committees, in which they consider proposals relevant to the substantive topics covered by the committee and present draft resolutions and decisions to a plenary meeting of the GA for consideration (and adoption). In the ZAGIMUN conference, 22 member states will be seated in the GA's First Committee, DISEC.

While these resolutions are not legally binding, they can be normative—that is, they can indicate the establishment of customs, standards, and guidelines for appropriate behavior.

Article 11 of the UN Charter authorizes the GA to consider “the principles governing disarmament and the regulation of armaments,” and empowers it to make recommendations with regard to these principles to the member states and the Security Council or to both.

DISEC provides the member states a forum to discuss their positions and proposals regarding disarmament and related international security issues. It offers the member states the opportunity to build consensus and to harmonize their various approaches. Thus, rather than ensuring “security” through the size of their arsenals, governments can discuss how to make cooperative security arrangements that minimize spending on weapons, reduce arms production, trade, and stockpiles, and increase global security. This consensus can subsequently be used in other disarmament fora, such as the Conference on Disarmament.

In this regard, it is important to point out that DISEC is to be distinguished from the Conference on Disarmament (CD). The CD is a multilateral negotiating forum established by the international community for the negotiation of multilateral arms control and disarmament agreements. Although the CD is not formally an organization of the UN, it is linked to it through a personal representative of the UN Secretary-General, who serves as the secretary general of the CD. A second link with the UN is that resolutions of the UN GA often request the CD to consider specific disarmament matters.

Given the general theme of this year’s ZAGIMUN, 'reform', DISEC will cover an area which is one of the biggest threats to world security, the area of space weapons. Strengthening regulatory policies in this important area is likely to help prevent a second cold war! To make things even more interesting, the second topic covers an uncharted area - the privatization of wars. Since their actions are mostly unregulated by law, private military and security companies can have a negative influence on their field of operation; henceforth it is necessary to establish strict standards by which they will operate. Plus, the world security is a dynamic affair. Who knows what further issues will require DISEC`s attention at the conference...