Costa Rica to host disarmament workshop

Officials with the United Nations have made Costa Rica the backdrop for a disarmament workshop beginning today in San José.

With representatives from nearly every Central American country, as well as Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, the conference is expected to piggyback off of a 2004 U.N. Security Council resolution against weapons of mass destruction.

With the mission of enhancing “national capacities for the management of export-control processes at a practical level, and to improve information- and experience-sharing between participating countries,” the two-day event will touch on ways to stem nuclear, chemical or biological weapon manufacture and transportation.

Costa Rica, the host country for the event, wasn´t chosen by coincidence. The Central American country is one of the first in the Americas to disband its army and is home to the United Nation´s University of Peace. Its president, Oscar Arias, also received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for mediating a peace settlement to the region´s civil wars of the 1980s.

The workshop is the fourth of its kind, and is organized by an arm of the United Nations, the Office of Disarmament Affairs.