The reality has proved to be almost the total opposite. Now there is increasing pressure for the General Assembly to hold a fourth Special Session devoted exclusively to disarmament issues. Now what is needed is intensive discussion for the preparation of an acceptable agenda. The UK United Nations Association believes that a number of significant matters need to be included. The two former categories have been the subject of international conventions.
Nuclear weapons pose a different problem.
The 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion, which stated that the threat to use or actual use of nuclear weapons is an illegal act, with one or two let-out clauses, was a step towards their being outlawed which was not to the liking of the actual or threshold nuclear weapons states. Weapons that actually kill. Invariably, in modern warfare, the great bulk of casualties are civilian, not military. Their control is much harder to achieve. In 1992, as a follow-up to the Gulf War, which frightened so many politicians when they saw the scope of Saddam Hussein's armoury, a basic UN Arms Register was created, in order to make more transparent who was manufacturing, selling or importing what weaponry.