Professor at Universidad de Santiago will be part of the UN Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters

  • A security specialist at Universidad de Santiago will be the only representative of Latin America in the UN Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, which is made up of sixteen international experts on this matters.

 

 

Dr Lucía Dammert, a security specialist at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, will be part of the UN Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Early in January 2017, Dr Dammert received an invitation extended by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon to become part of the Board.

The Board has the goal of debating and commenting on the UN decisions on nuclear disarmament, cyber-attacks  and small arms and light weapons control and it is made up of 16 experts from all over the world. Professor Dammert, a Peruvian security specialist, will be the only representative of Latin America.

“Most of the Board members are experts on this matter or renowned academics,” Dr Dammert says. They come from Australia, Croatia, Jordan, USA, Philippines, China, South Korea, Spain, France, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Ghana, Norway and Finland.

With regard to her participation, she says that she will contribute from the Latin American experience. “I expect to learn from the different realities in other parts of the world and, particularly, to identify topics which are not currently part of the security agenda in the country or Latin America,” she says.

The Board meets twice a year, in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York, USA. “During these meetings, the Board reviews different issues on the disarmament agenda and debates on new global challenges,” she explains. After the meetings, the Board delivers a report with suggestions and recommendations to the UN Secretary-General.

Dr Dammert is a sociologist, PhD in Political Sciences and professor at the Bachelor’s Program in International Studies of the Faculty of Humanities, Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

She has a vast academic experience at universities in USA, Argentina and Chile. Her participation in the Board is not limited to a specific period, as it is an “open invitation in time,” she says.

Translated by Marcela Contreras