By: MacKenzie Hareland

During opening deliberations in General Assembly First Committee, Representatives hit the ground running. A notable moment from this meeting was both Representatives of Türkiye discussing collaborating with Member States to share information and technologies in order to build a stronger space network. Questions arose from all around the room, including one from Serbia wondering what incentives Türkiye has regarding the sharing of tech and information knowing the potential dangers of this plan. Türkiye then responded with no plan of incentivizing these States, rather focusing on how they hope to demilitarize space.

Representative Mayan Paz of Türkiye gave a press conference early Sunday morning regarding the ideas proposed during their speech, centered around demilitarizing and expanding a strong space network. During the caucus, Representative Jayden Vazquez of Serbia citing the working paper, “technological advancements would be shared between Member States,” questioned how this would incentivize countries who have little to no space programs. Representative Paz proceeded to respond, “The main incentive would be the option to develop your own space program as a small nation with shared technologies and maybe economic support as well. Türkiye however supports the general idea of developing more and more States into the realm of space. The incentive here is the future opportunities that you may gain from developing your space program.” 

The resolution brought forward by Türkiye is not the only one we have seen, it seems that every region has been able to combine their ideas for what their States need regarding space exploration. Ethiopia was able to speak and provide an invitation to any other Member State to join their African block and resolution, focusing on demilitarizing space and building up space programs for developing nations. Representative Ethan Luse of Ethiopia stated “Right now we are focused on each other, with getting States onboard with capacity building, developing all of our space programs, while also mitigating debris. I think our focus right now is developing our space programs and we’ll worry about mitigating debris later.” Since the African, Middle Eastern and Latin American blocs all hold similar ideas regarding demilitarizing space and developing programs, they likely will work towards drafting a joint resolution in order to develop consensus on the most efficient and effective conclusion to this discussion.