'pursue
negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to ... nuclear
disarmament'.
The
inability of the 5 year NPT Review Conference this May to achieve any
agreed outcome has meant that the duty to conduct those negotiations amongst
parties remains unfulfilled 45 years after the treaty entered into force.
This is
an extract from the most recent posting on the joint UNIDIR/ILPI site entitled
'Where are we on effective measures, and where are we going?': -
"We
have ... come to see the idea of a nuclear weapon ban treaty as one of the most
promising potential avenues for effective measures for nuclear disarmament,
although of course it is not without its risks and drawbacks. Over the coming
months, we’ll reflect further on the pros and cons of such an approach, and
we’ll be presenting our analysis later in 2015, both on [the Effective
Measures] blog and in other products. How strong really are the
arguments for such a treaty, and how serious are the counter-arguments against
it given the range of realistic alternatives? For that matter, how realistic is
such a treaty in the current international security environment—what would its
value be? What could its legal architecture look like? And how would states get
there?"
These are
issue that we plan to tease out in depth after the northern summer break.
Tim
Caughley
