Nuclear Weapons

Photo: UN Human Rights Committee session. Credit: Jaurocks

Canadian and French Nuclear Weapons Policies Challenged for Violating the Right to Life

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) — Spurred by civil society organisations, the UN Human Rights Committee has challenged the nuclear weapons policies of Canada and France as being in violation of the Right to Life, a right enshrined in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). These rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.

In addition to Canada and France, civil society organisations have also challenged the nuclear policies of Iceland, North Korea, Russia and the United States. The nuclear weapons policies of Denmark have been challenged as part of the periodic review of their obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Stop Muddying The Waters On The Appointment Of The CTBTO Executive Secretary

Viewpoint by Tariq Rauf*

“And so … ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”, President John Kennedy, 20 January 1961.

VIENNA (IDN) — For the better part of a year, diplomats from more than 180 countries have been feuding over the appointment of the Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) located in Vienna, alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) bans nuclear explosions “by everyone, everywhere: on the Earth's surface, in the atmosphere, underwater and underground”.

Photo: UN Women Executive Director Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka, and UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Ms Nakamitsu. Sources: UN Women and UNDOA

Put People Before Runaway Military Spending

Viewpoint by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Izumi Nakamitsu

Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka Executive Director of UN Women and Ms Nakamitsu is UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. This OpEd was first published on May 6.

NEW YORK (IDN) — For all of us, but especially women, the pandemic is a reminder that traditional notions of “security” that fuel the weapons industry cannot protect us from dangers and challenges we routinely face.

Photo: US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other members of NATO Ministers of Defense and of Foreign Affairs meet at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 14, 2010.

NATO Plans to Focus on Russia and China

By Robert Johnson

BRUSSELS (IDN) — “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared in a blunt interview with The Economist in November 2019. Europe stands on “the edge of a precipice”, he said, and needs to start thinking of itself strategically as a geopolitical power; otherwise, we will “no longer be in control of our destiny.”

Photo: The writer at the Vatican in 2019.

The Nuclear Threat in the New Information Age

Viewpoint by Daryl G. Kimball

The writer is the executive director of Arms Control Association and publisher of Arms Control Today since 2001. The following is the text of Mr Kimball's Foreword to 2021 Joint Media Project Report of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with IDN as flagship agency in partnership with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) — An informed and mobilized public is essential to human survival in the nuclear age—and effective and independent journalism is essential to revealing the hard truths, the consequences, and the choices that nuclear weapons pose for all of us.

Photo: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden at the White House on 2/10/2021 © Adam Schultz / The White House

Biden Should Return Quickly to the Obama-led Iran Nuclear Deal

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — It was the Americans who helped the long-ago-deposed Shah of Iran start Iran’s nuclear power research. He wanted a bomb. The Americans seemed insouciant about where this might lead.

After the revolution, the research was bequeathed from the wrong pair of hands to another wrong pair of hands—the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah in 1979.

The NPT Review Conference: Still Haggling for a Date

“The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results”……attributed to Albert Einstein, but first said by Rita Mae Brown (Sudden Death)

Viewpoint by Tariq Rauf *

VIENNA (IDN) — For more than a year, a vain search has been continuing to find an appropriate date to convene the Tenth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), as the deadly COVID-19 pandemic rages taking millions of lives with it.

Photo: Dr Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikhan (Credit: Global Peace Foundation) against the backdrop of Chinggis Khaan (Sükhbaatar) Square in Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city of Mongolia. CC BY-SA 4.0

Time to Think Beyond Current NWFZs

Viewpoint by Dr Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikhan

The writer is Chairman of Blue Banner NGO, Former Mongolian Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

ULAANBAATAR (IDN) — Post-cold war peace dividend has not realized. Though the number of nuclear weapons of the two largest nuclear weapon holders—Russia and the United States—was reduced but then the reduction process came to a complete halt. The number of states possessing nuclear weapons has almost doubled against the background of further modernization of such weapons, lowering the threshold of their possible use and the increase in nuclear weapon spending. The non-proliferation regime is gradually weakening.

Sleepwalking into Nuclear War?

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — On April 20, US Strategic Command, the part of the military responsible for nuclear weaponry and its use, posted an official Tweet that read, “We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option”.

Photo: The talks in the Joint Commission of the JCOPA in the Austrian capital on bridging what the US calls “tremendous and profound differences” over how to salvage the nuclear agreement. Source: Eureporter.

Optimism Over Progress in Vienna Talks on Iran Nuclear Deal

By Kelsey Davenport, Julia Masterson and Sang-Min Kim

While Kelsey Davenport is Director for Nonproliferation Policy and Julia Masterson, Research Associate at the Arms Control Association, Sang-Min Kim is Scoville Fellow.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) — The United States, Iran, and the other parties to the 2015 nuclear deal expressed varying degrees of optimism over the progress made during recent talks in Vienna on the necessary steps to restore full implementation of the accord.