SWF Experts Participate in Launch of Space Security Index 2018

Friday, October 26, 2018

SWF Executive Director Peter Martinez spoke on current issues and challenges in space diplomacy at the Space Security Index side event at the United Nations General Assembly First Committee at United Nations Headquarters in New York on Monday October 22nd, 2018. The event, titled “Security Beyond Earth,” was a celebration of the 15^th Anniversary of the Space Security Index. In his remarks, Dr. Martinez presented the background to the development of the Guidelines for the Long-Term Sustainability (LTS) of Outer Space Activities in COPUOS as a technically-based, bottom-up approach that could complement the more politically-based top-down approaches to space security, such as Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures (TCBMs) and codes of conduct. He pointed to a number of LTS guidelines that are essentially implementations of some of the recommendations of the 2013 consensus report of the UN Group of Governmental Experts on TCBMs in Outer Space Activities. He also noted the importance of closer coordination and cooperation among the First and Fourth Committee entities of the UN to reduce the stove-piping of discussions, especially for those matters that are cross-cutting. He suggested that approaching discussions from the perspective of the safety of space operations, could help to identify common, safety-critical issues that would be of concern to all space actors, and that this might be one way to de-politicize some of the currently deadlocked discussions. SWF Space Law Advisor Chris Johnson was also on hand in New York for the UNGA’s First and Fourth Committees in its annual thematic discussions on space.