Geneva is the principal multilateral platform for disarmament and arms control. It is home to the Conference on Disarmament, several international disarmament treaties and many of the international players in this field.
The Israeli delegation to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) aims to advance Israel’s national strategic security through multilateral diplomacy. It seeks to negotiate and implement effective arms control agreements. The agenda of the Conference on Disarmament comprises the following four core issues:
Cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament;
Prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters (to include FMCT = Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty);
Prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS);
Effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons (NSA = Negative Security Assurances);
The CD is the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community. Established in 1979, the CD’s current membership is made of 65 Member States. The CD and its predecessor bodies have negotiated treaties as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Israel has served as the President of the Conference in 2003 and 2014 and takes part at the Western European and Others regional Group (WEOG).
In addition to its active involvement at the CD, the Israeli delegation participates at the work of the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (CCW), the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), as well as the UN General Assembly’s First Committee responsible for disarmament issues.
The State of Israel signed or ratified the below-mentioned documents, which constitute the major multilateral arms control agreements:
The Geneva Protocol of 1925 for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, ratified in 1969
Chemical Weapons Convention, signed in 1993
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1996
Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM), ratified in 2002
International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, signed in 2006
CPPNM 2005 Amendment, ratified in 2012
The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, ratified Protocol I and Protocol II in 1995, Amended Protocol II and Protocol IV in 2000
Arms Trade Treaty, signed in 2015
(last updated in September 2017)