On December 5, 2018, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 73 / 71 resolution by which it decided: “to convene the Fourth Conference of Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones and Mongolia as a one-day conference to be held in New York on April 24, 2020.”
The resolution welcomed Mongolia's offer to act as Coordinator of the Fourth Conference and mentioned that the objective of the Conference would be to examine how to intensify consultations and cooperation between nuclear-weapon-free zones and Mongolia, the bodies established in under treaties and interested States, in order to promote coordination and convergence in the implementation of treaty provisions and in strengthening the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime.
Resolution 73/71 was presented by Argentina, Brazil, Mongolia and Nicaragua in the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly and was adopted in plenary by 179 votes in favor, none against and 5 abstentions. Among other aspects, he mentions that:
• Recognizes the right of any group of States to conclude regional treaties in order to ensure the total absence of nuclear weapons in their respective territories.
• Welcomes the important contribution of the Treaties of Tlatelolco, Rarotonga, Bangkok and Pelindaba and of Central Asia, Mongolia, as well as the Antarctic Treaty to achieve the objectives of disarmament and non-proliferation.
• Urges the establishment of other nuclear weapon-free zones, particularly in the Middle East.
The holding of the Fourth Conference of Nuclear Weapon Free Zones and Mongolia is an opportunity to, among other issues, improve communication between States Parties and Signatories to the treaties establishing nuclear weapon free zones and Mongolia. Likewise, it can contribute to affirming the legitimacy of the treaties and decisions that establish nuclear weapon-free zones as valuable instruments for the disarmament and non-proliferation regime of nuclear weapons.
To date, three Nuclear Weapon Free Zone and Mongolia Conferences have been held. The first conference It was proposed by OPANAL and was carried out in Mexico, with the coordination of Mexico. The second and third, in 2010 and 2015, were held in New York one day before the NPT Review Conference and were coordinated respectively by Chile and Indonesia.
The proposal to create an International Conference of Nuclear Weapon Free Zones is an OPANAL initiative that dates back to the XVI Session of its General Conference (Lima, Peru, November 30, 1999) through the Resolution CG/Res.388 “Strengthening of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL)”, which determined:
1. Request the Secretary General of the Agency, with the approval of the Council, to prepare a proposal containing the specific objectives for holding an International Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Weapon Free Zones; and to establish contacts with the authorities of other NWFZs in order to convey to them the interest in holding said Conference and to know their opinion […]
A Nuclear Weapons Free Zone It is a delimited geographical space where, through a treaty or convention, its parties legally commit to prohibit nuclear weapons in all their aspects. Likewise, by acceding to the protocols to the treaties establishing the Zones, the nuclear weapon States undertake not to deploy nuclear weapons in the areas of application of the Zones and also not to use or threaten to use their nuclear weapons against the parties to the treaties.
There are currently five Nuclear Weapons Free Zones in force. They are made up of a total of 114 States Parties and Signatories, all of them free of nuclear weapons: Latin America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco, opened for signature in 1967); South Pacific (Treaty of Rarotonga, 1985); Southeast Asian (Bangkok Treaty, nineteen ninety five); Africa (Treaty of Pelindaba, nineteen ninety six); Central Asia (Central Asian Treaty, 2006); and the territory of Mongolia, which in 2000 obtained international recognition as a nuclear-weapon-free state through the Resolution 55/335 S of the United Nations General Assembly.