Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Non-Governmental and Civil Society Submissions to the CD

Non-Governmental and civil society organizations wishing to submit papers to the Conference on Disarmament can send the papers, with a cover letter requesting that delegations be informed immediately about the submission, to:

Mr. Jerzy Zaleski
Office for Disarmament Affairs
Geneva Branch
United Nations
Palais des Nations, Room C.119
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland

By Fax: +41 22 917 0034
By email: jzaleski@unog.ch

CD.PV/946
12 February 2004
CD's decision on enhancing the engagement of civil society in the work of the Conference

“1. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) shall continue to be allowed to attend formal plenary meetings of the Conference and to be seated in the public gallery.

“2. NGOs shall be entitled, upon request, to receive official documents of the plenary meetings of the Conference.

“3. NGOs shall be entitled, at their own expense, twice per annual session, to make written material available to the members of the Conference outside the conference hall.

“4. After the CD adopts a programme of work, it will allocate one informal plenary meeting per annual session to NGOs to address the Conference.

“5. Only NGOs whose activities are relevant to the work of the Conference will be able to address the Conference on Disarmament. Therefore, a formal selection process will be put in place to consider requests from NGOs to address the Conference. Requests from NGOs will be made to the President of the Conference on Disarmament through the secretariat of the Conference on Disarmament. These requests will be considered at Presidential consultations and thereafter at a formal plenary meeting of the Conference.”

After this text was adopted, the President of the CD noted the following:

The PRESIDENT: It is my understanding that with respect to the selection process on requests made by NGOs, the final decision for NGOs to address the Conference on Disarmament would be given by a formal plenary meeting of this Conference in the same way as it gives approval to decisions that are put before it by consensus.

[snip]

Now, with regard to the decision that we took on civil society, I just wanted to make clear what the understanding is with regard to plenary documents that will be provided to civil society if they so request. It has always been my understanding that the plenary documents that are referred to in that decision relate to the plenary meeting documents that bear the symbol CD, and not to any texts, any rolling texts, any negotiating texts, any informal texts that we may have before the CD.