SWF Collaborated with UNIDIR and The Simons Foundation Canada to Organize the 2017 Space Security Conference

Friday, April 28, 2017

The United Nation's Institute for Disarmament Research's (UNIDIR) Space Security Conference series has proved to be an invaluable forum for policy dialogue and an effective vehicle for informing international space and security policy perspectives. 

The 2017 conference, organized by UNIDIR in collaboration with Secure World Foundation, The Simons Foundation Canada, and co-sponsored by the governments of China and Russia, focused on the regime established by 1967's Outer Space treaty. As more countries and commercial entities undertake space ventures, the near-Earth space domain has become more crowded and possibly hazardous. The international community has been engaged in multiple activities to enhance international stability and ensure that space operations can be safe, secure and sustainable over the long term. These include multilateral initiatives, primarily within the United Nations, to promote and build multilateral consensus on norms of behavior. Nonetheless, progress has been intermittent and further work is required.

UNIDIR's 2017 Space Security Conference reviewed the main multilateral international initiatives to safeguard access to, and use of, outer space and assess the adequacy of the outer space regime in an evolving space environment, where new threats to space systems and developments in space activities are believed to be potentially destabilizing. The Conference, organized at a time when situational awareness, preparedness, resilience and strategic autonomy have become critical factors for all our public policies, represented a much-needed complement to shaping more incisive security policies.

More information is available on the event page here.

Panel participants Joanne Wheeler of Bird & Bird, Nobu Okada of Astroscale, and Tanja Masson-Zwaan of Leiden University's International Institute of Air and Space Law.

SWF Executive Director Michael Simpson address the conference.