International security environment deteriorated markedly: President Conference on Disarmament

ISLAMABAD, Aug 20 (APP): Ambassador Tahir Hussain Andrabi, Additional Secretary (Arms Control and Disarmament) and Spokesperson of Foreign Office, presided over the 1794th Plenary Meeting of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva — the first plenary under Pakistan’s Presidency of the 2026 session.

In his inaugural statement as President, he said that the international security environment has deteriorated markedly in recent years because of armed conflicts across several regions, the erosion or lapse of key arms control instruments, modernization and expansion of arsenals and due to the rapid advance of new technologies in outer space, the cyber domain and artificial intelligence and outpacing the frameworks meant to govern them.

The world has grown more dangerous, and the need for this conference more acute, he added.

Cautioning against attributing the Conference’s long impasse to its machinery, the CD President recalled that it was this same body — operating under essentially the same rules — that negotiated the landmark instruments of the international security architecture. When the passengers on a bus cannot agree on a destination, he noted, the fault does not lie with the bus.

He underlined that the Conference remains an institution the international community would struggle to rebuild if it did not exist — one that brings together all militarily significant States, on the basis of agreed rules, with decades of accumulated expertise behind it.

As the final President of the 2026 session, Pakistan’s central responsibility is the Conference’s Annual Report to the UN General Assembly. The President called on all delegations to bring cooperation, constructive spirit and flexibility to enable its timely adoption by consensus.

He assured members that the presidency’s doors remain open to every delegation.