Outstanding Issues Under the NPT

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Outstanding Issues under the NPT

While the NPT is the world's most popular treaty, it is not without its problems. Part of the Preparatory Committee's raison d'etre is to table working papers, draft recommendations, and discuss ideas on how to strengthen the non-proliferation and disarmament bargain.

How can the international community strengthen the NPT, this cornerstone of disarmament? Some of us, NGOs and governments, have a few ideas:

•Reporting
•Negative Security Assurances
•Verification
•Nuclear Energy
•Non-strategic (tactical) Nuclear Weapons
•A Nuclear Weapons Convention
•An NPT Secretariat?
•Nuclear Weapons Free Zones
•NGO participation

Also be sure to check out "Major Proposals to Strengthen the NPT: A Resource Guide" from WILPF and the Arms Control Association.

Reporting

In the 2000 Final Document, which included the 13 Practical Steps to Disarmament, all States Parties agreed to submit regular reports on their implementation of Article VI and paragraph 4 (c) of the 1995 Decision on "Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament", and recalling the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 8 July 1996.

Reporting is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a useful confidence-building measure, a means by which States can promote transparency and accountability of their actions.

In 2005, Reaching Critical Will published The Model Nuclear Inventory: Accountability is Democracy, Transparency is Security, to be used as a model of reporting and transparency. It reports on the nuclear holdings of each of the 44 States that currently possess nuclear materials for peaceful and/or military holdings. There is also a separate chapter on the progress that the five Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) have made in upholding their promise to the 13 Steps.

Project Plougshares, a Canadian NGO, has prepared a comprehensive report on the implementation of this promise. Have countries been reporting? If so, to what extent? Read the Project Ploughshares report here. Click here for the reports that were submitted at the 2003 PrepCom. Click here for the reports submitted in 2004.

Canada tabled a working paper at the 2002 and 2004 PrepComs on the issue of reporting.

Negative Security Assurances

A Negative Security Assurance (NSA), is a promise by the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) made to the Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) never to attack them with nuclear weapons. Many NNWS believe that these assurances should be codified in an unconditional, legally binding instrument.

Historically, NSAs were implicit in the NPT bargain. In 1995, the Security Council passed resolution 984 on NSAs. But since the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, wherein the United States made it official policy to retaliate a biological or chemical attack with nuclear weapons, many NNWS and NGOs believe that a legal instrument codifying NSAs is long overdue. In addition, codified NSAs could also serve as an incentive for the last remaining hold-out countries (DPRK, Israel, India, Pakistan) to join the NPT.

The Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change also voiced tepid support for NSAs (as well as Positive Security Assurances) without calling for codification of these assurances. The panel recommended that: "The nuclear-weapon States...should reaffirm their previous commitments not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon States. (120)

For a more in-depth historical look at security assurances, see an NTI Issue Brief by CNS' Jean duPreez.

Read where States stand on the issue of NSAs at the Conference on Disarmament (2005 and 2004 sessions).

The New Agenda Coalition tabled a working paper on the issue at the 2002 PrepCom.

Iran also tabled a working paper on NSAs at the 2002 PrepCom.

At the 2004 PrepCom, NNWS were pushing hard for a subsidiary body on NSAs at the 2005 Review Conference. Read the Cluster 1 Statements on Negative Security Assurances.

In preparation for the 2004 PrepCom, Reaching Critical Will delivered a presentation to various governmental representatives on "Contextualizing the NPT", in which NSAs were a featured topic of discussion. Click here to download the PowerPoint presentation.

In preparation for the 2005 Review Conference, RCW published a briefing book with the Arms Control Association which provides a summary of States' positions on NSAs, among other salient issues.

You can also read reports on NSAs in the First Committee Monitor, or check out BASIC's newest contribution on the topic on their website.

Verification

All disarmament treaties need to establish and promote effective verification measures. The Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test-Ban Treaty, for instance, created the CTBT Organization, which operates the verification system needed to ensure that no State is conducting nuclear tests.

What verification measures are included in the NPT framework? How are States to be assured that the NNWS are not converting their "peaceful" nuclear technology into weapons? How are NNWS to be assured that the NWS are disarming their stockpiles?

The United Kingdom tabled working papers on verification at the 2003 PrepCom and at the 2004 PrepCom.

VERTIC, an NGO based in the UK, is the leading NGO expert on verification techniques and policy.

Visit the International Atomic Energy Agency's site to learn about their inspections, verification, and safeguards system.

Nuclear Energy

Article IV of the Treaty ensures that States which promise never to develop nuclear weapons (NNWS) are thereby given the "right" to "peaceful uses" of nuclear technology: nuclear power.

This "right" to technology that can be proved deadly is being called into question by NGOs around the world. How "peaceful" is nuclear energy? What effects does it have on the peoples of the world?

See the RCW factsheet on nuclear energy for detailed, up-to-date information on this subject.

See also our "Indigenous Fact Sheet" to read about the perspective on nuclear energy and weapons of indigenous communities around the world.

NGOs set the record straight on nuclear energy in the new Truth Commission report.

How safe is nuclear energy? The Global Resource Action Center on the Environment discusses nuclear energy in the United States, and also explores other, sustainable sources of energy for the world's people.

Non-Strategic (tactical) Nuclear Weapons

Very generally speaking, non-strategic nuclear weapons (or tactical nukes), are smaller nuclear weapons regarded to be more "useable" in combat. During the cold war, the US stationed hundres of these tactical nukes in Europe under the NATO nuclear umbrella sharing policy. There are at least about seven different factors are used by different authorities to define a tactical weapon: range, yield, intended target, national ownership, capability, delivery vehicle, or exclusion.

Yet regardless of the categories of definition, tactical nukes continually remain outside the parameters of nuclear disarmament.

Austria, Sweden and Mexico submitted working papers on tactical nuke reductions at the 2003 and 2004 PrepCom.

The New Agenda persistently advocates for tactical nuclear weapons reductions, both in the First Committee and at the PrepComs. Read their General Assembly resolution here. Read more about the NAC at the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.

The Arms Control Center features a basic outline of tactical nuclear weapons and the debate surrounding them.

Then, see the NGO Shadow Report to see just how many of these genocidal weapons are still deployed.

A Nuclear Weapons Convention

The launch in April of 1997 of a model Nuclear Weapons Convention, drafted by a consortium of lawyers, scientists, physicians, former-diplomats and disarmament specialists and activists, made concrete and tangible what had been only academic and illusory for many years. The text was enthusiastically examined by NGOs, diplomats and submitted by Costa Rica to the United Nations as a discussion document (A/C.1/52/7 )

Read the full text of the model NWC here.

Read more about the NWC here.

An NPT Secretariat?

Some disarmament treaties, such as the Chemical Weapons Convention, establish a standing Secretariat to act as the administrator of the Treaty, a repository of documents, signatories, and function as the institutional memory of the Treaty. The CWC has the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Biological Weapons Convention has the Organization for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has the CTBT Organization.

What about the NPT, the world's most popular disarmament treaty?

Currently, the NPT lacks a standing Secretariat. Most of its institutional memory can be found on the RCW site, or on the sites of other NGOs such as the Acronym Institute.

While the NPT does not prohibit nuclear weapons, a standing Secretariat of some sort is still called for. Most states today do not call for an OPNW, but rather an Executive Committee, granted the powers to convene emergency meetings, function as the repository, and other authorities that would be granted unto it.

Read RCW's presentation on Ensuring Compliance to the NPT, delivered in Geneva at WIPO, December 8, 2003.

For now, NGOs have reserved the site, www.opnw.org, in anticipation of the creation of a standing NPT Secretariat. If you click on the link, it will lead you back to RCW, one of the de facto repositories for NPT materials.

Nuclear Weapons Free Zones

Nuclear Weapon Free Zones (NWFZs) at a minimum prohibit the stationing, testing, use, and development of nuclear weapons inside a particular geographical region, whether that is a single state, a region, or area governed solely by international agreements. They have been identified in many fora, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the UN General Assembly, as being positive steps towards nuclear disarmament.

Read the text of NWFZ Treaties on the RCW site.

NGO Participation

Of the many issues critical to human security that the United Nations discusses, perhaps no other issue is as vitally important to humankind than disarmament of nuclear weapons. Yet, among all of the other issues- human rights, development issues, the environment, technology, law, to name a few- civil society is shut out of most, if not all, of the important disarmament negotiations and deliberations.

At the NPT, for instance, NGOs are allowed to monitor the general statements only; three days of general statements delivered by the world's governments, before we are cast out of the meeting, relegated to roaming the halls in search of information. At the United Nations Disarmament Commission, NGOs are again shut out of the plenary sessions, allowed to listen to the general statements only. At the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, NGOs can listen to the discussions only on Thursdays, and we are not allowed to make statements on our behalf.

Prior to 1995, NGOs were not allowed any access to the NPT PrepComs and Review Conferences. The 1995 Rules of Procedure- which continue until today- state that NGOs should have access to all sessions under the Main Committees. However, since 1997 the cluster debates have been treated as closed due to a mistaken interpretation.

In 2004, this erroneous interpretation was recognized and NGOs were permitted into the cluster debates for the first time in PrepCom history. Despite the efforts of Mexico, Canada, Chile and other States which openly recognize the value of NGO participation, the States Parties failed to mention this precedent in the final report of the 2004 PrepCom.

Read Canada's working paper on the issue from the 2003 PrepCom here.

Also in 2004, the Conference on Disarmament adopted a decision on the issue of NGO participation, codifying for the first time the CD's stance on civil society interaction.