Discuss India’s contribution to the efforts of UN for disarmament.
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Answer:
The United Nations which came into being on Oct. 24, 1945, has been the most important international organisation since the Second World War. The formal basis for UN activities is the UN charter.
The UN has a vital role in world affairs. For more than fifty years the UN has helped to manage relations between states and regulate a broad range of international activities.
It has worked to protect the security of people and promote peace and development. One way in which UN has contributed to world peace is by taking up the cause of disarmament India has also contributed immensely to the UN’s disarmament efforts.
Disarmament is a limitation, reduction and possible elimination of dangerous (like nuclear) weapons. Since independence, India has consistently pursued the objective of global disarmament based on the principles of non-discrimination.
Given the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons, India has always believed that a world free of nuclear weapons would enhance global security.
Thus India has always advocated that highest priority be given to nuclear disarmament as a first step towards general and complete disarmament. India has contributed to UN significantly on disarmament in terms of ideas, resolutions, initiatives and bridging differences through action plans.
In 1948, India had proposed limiting the use of atomic energy to peaceful purposes and elimination of nuclear weapons from national arsenals. In 1950, India suggested the formation of a UN Peace Fund created through peaceful reduction of arms and directing the amount thus released towards development purposes.
In 1954, India advocated the cause for a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. India was the first to become a party to the partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Hence India strongly and consistents refused to join the Treaty.
In 1964, India took the initiative to place the item ‘non-proliferation of weapons’ on UN agenda. However, the purpose was defeated by the (1968) carried that a large numbering of counties from going nuclear, without firm restrictions on the few nuclear weapon countries activities Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Although our country alleged to the opposite to the problem.
In 1984, India launched a Six-Nation Five Continent Peace Initiative along with Argentina, Greece, Mexico, Sweden and Tanzania. Four years later (in a joint declaration issued on the occasion of the visit of President Gorbachev of Soviet Union the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi made a forceful plea for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The Delhi declaration enumerated ten principles for building a nuclear-weapon-free world). In 1988, Rajiv Gandhi proposed an Action Plan for ushering in the nuclear-weapon-free and nonviolent world order.
The Action Plan envisaged a binding commitment by all nations to the elimination of nuclear weapons in stages by 2010. India is also an original signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, having signed it on Jan. 14, 1993 and was among the first 65 countries to have ratified the treaty.
In 1993 India sponsored a resolution on comprehensive test ban along with the US within the overall framework of advancing towards nuclear disarmament. India was distressed when the final version of the CTBT was rushed through without consenses. And it failed to address the security reasons of India.
Hence it bravely stood against the steady fashion in which some tests use canned while sophisticated nuclear tests were not in a way, India’s conduct of nuclear tests in 1998 could we linked to the unfair framework of CTBT, though many initially misunderstood India’s tests as a negative development for disarmament; India pledged to continue to work for inaugural and nondiscriminatory nuclear disarmament.