International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The following steps would go a long way to immediately reducing the nuclear dangers we face.

Reduce the likelihood of nuclear weapons use:

US and Russian nuclear weapons must be taken off high alert to greatly decrease the chance of accidental use.

As an interim step toward abolition and to reduce the stimulus to nuclear proliferation, every nuclear weapon state should commit itself to a “No First Use” policy – a pledge never to initiate a nuclear exchange.

Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones, which shrink the geographical space in which nuclear weapons can play a role, should be implemented and enforced globally.

No new nuclear weapons:

The nuclear weapon states must immediately stop upgrading, modernizing, and testing new nuclear weapons.

Producing new nuclear weapons provokes would-be proliferators, undermines the goal of nuclear non-proliferation, and violates the legal obligations of the nuclear weapon states under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to disarm.

The hypocritical claim that nuclear weapons are valuable instruments of policy and power projection in some hands but are intolerable threats when owned by others must be abandoned.

Negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention:

The abolition of nuclear weapons is achievable through a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). The majority of UN Member States call for immediate negotiation of this treaty, which would prohibit the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat, or use of nuclear weapons.

The NWC would provide for the elimination of nuclear weapons in much the same way comparable treaties have banned landmines and chemical and biological weapons.

What is a Nuclear Weapons Convention?

A Nuclear Weapons Convention will be an international treaty signed by governments. It will be similar to other international treaties banning entire categories of weapons such as the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Mine Ban Treaty.

No such treaty exists yet for nuclear weapons, but demands for one have increased in recent years, as have more general demands for complete nuclear disarmament.

125 out of 181 governments voting in the 2006 UN General Assembly wanted negotiations to commence immediately.

Vast majorities in public opinion polls want a nuclear weapon free future, and for their country to become part of a nuclear weapon free zone.

In a wider sense, a NWC would be the implementation of the universal societal condemnation of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction.

It would delegitimize nuclear weapons and support their prohibition.

Its impact will therefore be deeper and more far-reaching than the treaty language itself.

Such a treaty would reflect a broader social and political movement away from reliance on weapons of mass destruction and military solutions to conflicts, and would incorporate the desires and responsibilities of global civil society for a less militarized world.

A Nuclear Weapons Convention

• Defines terms in precise detail to establish thresholds and limits
• Creates rules so that everybody understands what is prohibited and what is allowed
• Establishes a schedule for sequenced steps to remove the threat of nuclear weapons by separating them from delivery vehicles and dismantling them
• Outlines patterns of behaviour and cooperation that will enhance the communication and transparency in implementing the treaty, and those that will arouse suspicion and possible sanctions
• Establishes verification measures to make sure that no one is cheating.

The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention

In April 1997 an international team of scientists, lawyers and disarmament specialists released a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. This model was submitted by Costa Rica to the United Nations as a discussion draft in November 1997.

The responses and developments that followed led to the collaborative publication of 'Securing our Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention', which includes a revised version of the Model NWC, together with comments and discussion on critical political, legal, and technical questions essential to complete nuclear disarmament.

Reflecting the changed security environment since the events of 11 September 2001, a revision of the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention has been published in 'Securing Our Survival'.

The authors conclude that in a world experiencing diverse security challenges and terrorism, nuclear abolition is both an attractive and logical means of reducing and eliminating the dangers of accidents, sabotage or use of a nuclear device.

General Obligations: The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention prohibits development, testing, production, stockpiling, transfer, use, and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

States possessing nuclear weapons will be required to destroy their arsenals according to a series of phases.

The Convention also prohibits the production of weapons-usable fissile material and requires delivery vehicles to be destroyed or converted to make them non-nuclear capable.

Phases for Elimination: The Convention outlines a series of five phases for the elimination of nuclear weapons:

1) take nuclear weapons off alert,

2) remove weapons from deployment,

3) remove nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles,

4) disable the warheads, removing and disfiguring the "pits" and

5) place the fissile material under international control.

In the initial phases, the U.S. and Russia are required to make the deepest cuts in their nuclear arsenals.

When?

When there is sufficient political will, negotiations can be concluded fairly quickly. The Partial Test Ban Treaty, for example, was concluded in ten days of determined negotiating in July 1963, after years of deadlock.

Agreements on timeframes for negotiations can sometimes help facilitate the process. The parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995 agreed to a timeframe for concluding negotiations on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty no later than 1996. Such a timeframe helped to bring the negotiations to a conclusion.

The Mine Ban Treaty was also concluded very quickly – within a year of the start of negotiations.

On the other hand the Chemical Weapons Convention took ten years to negotiate as a high level of verification and confidence building was required in the treaty.

It is likely that, unless there are major improvements in relevant global and regional security systems, nuclear weapon states will require a high level of confidence that there will be universal compliance with a NWC for them to agree to eliminate their nuclear weapons.

Moreover, the nuclear systems of the different states are asymmetrical, requiring fairly complicated disarmament formulas. Thus, negotiations are likely to be complex and may take some time.

The approach adopted in the Model NWC does not suggest a time bound framework for conclusion of the negotiations or fixed dates for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Rather, it calls for the immediate commencement of negotiations that ought to be concluded in a quick but comprehensive manner.