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UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA)
Summary:
The UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA) was established by UN Resolution 46/36L on Transparency in Armaments and adopted without dissent on 9 December 1991 by a vote of 150-0, with Iraq and Cuba abstaining and China and Syria not participating in the vote.
UNROCA calls on all member countries to report the number of arms in seven categories (battle tanks, attack helicopters, armored combat vehicles, large caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, warships, missiles and launchers) exported or imported from their territory during the calendar year. Information contributed by countries to UNROCA is available to all countries and is compiled by the Secretary General in a report to the UN General Assembly.
UNROCA is intended to serve as a confidence-building measure and may encourage countries to develop national procedures for reviewing the potential impact of arms transfers on regional and international security, and could encourage countries to develop appropriate means of control over the export and import of arms. However, the register is not an arms control measure, nor does it provide a means of measuring the military capabilities.
For more in-depth information, please consult the Inventory of Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes, which can be found on the CNS website at: http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/.
China and UNROCA:
Although, China did not participate in the initial vote to create UNROCA, it has participated in the Register and in subsequent reviews of it since the Register was created. Every year, until 1997, China voluntarily submitted to the UN a declaration of its conventional arms exports and imports. China apparently failed to submit a declaration in 1997 in protest to the US listing its exports to Taiwan in its UNROCA declaration. China noted its protest in its 1996 submission to the UNROCA in the form of a note verbale. The note was submitted on 11 August 1997. It said:
"The Permanent Representative of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations takes note with regret that the United States has included its arms transfers to Taiwan, a province of the People's Republic of China, in the footnote of its annual reports provided to the Register for the calendar year 1995 and 1996 and reaffirms China's position on the issue as follows. The United Nations Register of Conventional Arms is the register of legitimate transfers of certain categories of conventional arms between sovereign states. Taiwan is a province of the People's Republic of China, not a sovereign state. The arms transfers from the United States to Taiwan are neither legitimate nor transfers between sovereign states. The People's Republic of China does not accept any reference in whatever form to the arms transfers to Taiwan in the RegisterThe Permanent Representative of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations hopes that the Secretary-General of the United Nations will take appropriate steps to delete the above-mentioned reference from his Report on the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms and to make sure that no reference whatsoever to the arms transfers to Taiwan appear in future Reports on the Register, in order to safeguard the authority of the relevant resolutions of the General Assembly and the seriousness of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms."
The United Nations has tried to distance itself from the dispute by responding that it is not responsible for the information that is received. The United Nations stated:
"The documents have been reproduced as received. The designations employed do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory or area, or of its authorities."
No other nation except the United States includes their arms transfers to
Taiwan. According to one report, "France, for example, is estimated to
have delivered 24 Mirage 2000-5 aircraft, associated air-to-air missiles and
three LaFayette class frigates to Taiwan during 1997: 62% of total French arms
exports during that year. Yet these exports are not mentioned in France's
Register reply." The United States has also recognized the special status
of Taiwan by including its arms exports to Taiwan as a footnote. Despite
this, China again refused to provide information to the Register in 1998 on the
grounds that the US report included arms exports to Taiwan.
[Malcolm Chalmers and Owen Greene. "The UN Register of Conventional Arms: A
Progress Report," Disarmament Diplomacy,
p. 14, March 1999.]
For more on UNROCA and Chinese conventional and missile nonproliferation issues, see:
[CHRONOLOGY OF CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS-RELATED STATEMENTS AND DEVELOPMENTS]
[CHINA AND CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS NONPROLIFERATION]
[CHINA'S MISSILE EXPORTS AND ASSISTANCE]
For other UN arms control and nonproliferation related committees in which China has participated, see:
[CHINA AND THE UN FIRST COMMITTEE (UNFC)]
[CHINA AND THE UN DISARMAMENT COMMISSION (UNDC)]
[CHINA AND THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY (IAEA)]
[CHINA AND THE CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT (CD)]
[CHINA AND THE UN SPECIAL COMMISSION ON IRAQ (UNSCOM)]
This
material is produced independently for NTI by the James Martin
Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the
opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or
its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2007 by
MIIS.
