The future of the UN Department of Disarmament is in doubt after Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlined controversial plans to restructure the organisation.

The UN Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) will be downgraded under a restructure by the new Secretary General (SG). Early reports of SG Ban Ki-Moon’s planned restructure included a proposal to remove the DDA’s departmental status and relocate it within the Department of Political Affairs. NGOs working on disarmament issues responded rapidly to the news. IANSA was one of 10 civil society organisations that signed a joint letter of protest and delivered it to the SG on 17 January. 

The troika of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – comprising its current president Cuba, past president Malaysia and next president Egypt – pressed on senior officials the need to maintain the Department’s separate structure and the high priority of disarmament issues. Following a meeting between the UN Chief of Staff and the NAM troika on 17 January, the original plan has reportedly been scrapped and a new one negotiated that would see DDA would lose its status as department and be moved under the Office of the Secretary General, rather than DPA.

Read the letter sent by IANSA and other civil society organisations to the SG