On August 2, at a special plenary session, Abolition 2000 Coordinating Committee Member Jackie Cabasso presented to the 2023 NPT Prep Com a working paper entitled Abolition 2000 NWC Reset: Frameworks for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World.
The paper includes reflections on the political environment for comprehensive nuclear disarmament, an outline of three possible approaches for establishing the framework for a nuclear-weapon-free world, plus recommendations to the 2023 NPT Prep Com for the commencement of deliberations to achieve comprehensive nuclear disarmament within timebound commitments.
“The intensifying array of antagonisms among nuclear-armed governments, of which the Ukraine war is just one manifestation, are accelerating a broad-spectrum multipolar arms race,” said Ms Cabasso presenting the working paper. “Fast-developing technologies are creating new non-nuclear capabilities of strategic significance and are being incorporated into new or modernized systems for delivering nuclear weapons and for defending against them.”
“Against this grim background, nuclear disarmament may appear as a prospect too distant to merit much attention in a dangerous and demanding present,” said Ms Cabasso. “But controlling nuclear weapons and charting a path towards their elimination always have been a mix of incremental measures undertaken in difficult times and long-term efforts to build the elements for a nuclear-weapon-free world. Treaties to limit nuclear arms and related technologies were negotiated in the depths of the Cold War, even while nuclear-armed states were engaged in active hostilities.”
“It’s time to refocus responsibility on the nuclear-armed states. A reconsideration of the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention is in order.”
In our updated working paper we suggest a range of modalities and approaches to achieve and maintain a nuclear-weapon-free world. These include: negotiation of a comprehensive nuclear weapons convention or package of agreements; negotiation of a framework agreement which includes the legal commitment to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world, identifies the measures and pathways required in general terms, and provides a process for agreeing on details over time; and negotiation of protocols to the TPNW or related instruments which nuclear armed and allied states would sign as part of a process for them to join the TPNW and build the nuclear destruction, elimination, verification and compliance process through the TPNW, particularly its Article 4.”
“We also call on the nuclear-armed and nuclear sharing states to commit to a time-frame of no later than 2030 for the adoption of a framework, package of agreements or comprehensive nuclear weapons convention, and no later than 2045 for full implementation. This would fulfil the NPT Article VI and other international law obligations to achieve the global elimination of nuclear weapons no later than the 100th anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons, the 75th anniversary of the NPT and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations.”
Click here for the full presentation of Jackie Cabasso.