Can the Necessary International Legal Framework to Achieve a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World Be Reached?
Can the Necessary International Legal Framework to Achieve a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World Be Reached?

Author(s): Miroslav Tůma
Subject(s): International Law, International relations/trade, Security and defense
Published by: Ústav mezinárodních vztahů
Keywords: nuclear disarmament;
Summary/Abstract: If we look at the issue of nuclear disarmament from the point of view of the development of multilateral disarmament negotiations at the main forums of the disarmament apparatus (the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, the UN Disarmament Commission, the First Committee of the UN General Assembly and the review process of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) the situation is rather dismal. Given the principle of consensus decision-making, including consensus decision-making on proposed agreements, which applies to all negotiation forums, with the exception of the First Committee and also given the lack of political will and unwillingness to reach a compromise in the results on the side of nuclear-weapon powers, the multilateral disarmament negotiations process of these bodies has stagnated for the past several years. At the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, which is the most important body with a mandate for negotiating disarmament agreements, all action has been blocked for the last twenty years. In contrast to other types of weapons of mass destruction, that is chemical and biological weapons, which are banned by relevant conventions in the long-term, there is no similar international legal instrument for the much more destructive nuclear weapons. Yet, when they discuss the issue of nuclear weapons and disarmament, all of the representatives of both nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states simultaneously support the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world and, in this context, they sometimes recall the “Prague speech” of US President Barack Obama in April 2009, in which he unequivocally supported this goal.

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