On the eve of their “Summit of the Future” (September 22-23) in New York, leaders of UN member states adopted a comprehensive document entitled “The Pact for the Future”. This consensus outcome document painstakingly negotiated over several months represented an effort to impart a new momentum to the preeminent international organization. Covering 39 pages with 56 Action items (plus two annexes), the Pact addresses the major chapters of international relations: Sustainable Development, Science & Technology, Youth & Future Generations, Global Governance and of course International Peace & Security – the core business of the UN.

Against a backdrop of intensified nuclear sabre-rattling (especially by Russia since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine) and the on-going dismantlement of the arms control architecture, there were hopes that the Pact would endorse a significant package of remedial action to prevent nuclear war and re-energize disarmament activity. What emerged in the final version of the Pact, despite some valuable input and strong language in earlier versions, was to say the least, underwhelming. This commentary will focus on the disarmament elements of the section on International Peace & Security and will discuss how it might have been strengthened and what action can still be taken to make progress on nuclear disarmament.

Like all such multilateral documents the language of the Pact was subject to a protracted process of negotiation and modification (there were four revisions of the Pact’s original “zero draft” leading up to the final version). The results tend to be a mixture of lofty rhetoric and prosaic positions often reflecting the “lowest common denominator” pressures that strip away more ambitious or substantive language in favour of reiterating past bromides or contorting new commitments to an extent that will drain them of all practical utility.

Still the document does acknowledge that nuclear weapons pose “an existential threat to humanity” and affirms, in its Action 25, “We will advance the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons” (albeit vaguer wording than the “accelerate progress towards” phrase used in the penultimate version). This objective is broken down into five components of a general nature to be assumed by all states and which, while paying lip service to the final objective of general and complete disarmament, stipulates that “the immediate goal is elimination of the........

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