Status: 08/27/2022 04:14 a.m
The tenth UN conference to review the Non-Proliferation Treaty was actually supposed to set binding deadlines for dismantling nuclear weapons. Now, due to a blockade by Russia, it ended without a joint final declaration.
The final session of this control conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty has been postponed three times after four weeks of concentrated negotiations. Behind the scenes, the actors are apparently working flat out to reach an agreement on a final document.
Then a contrite conference president, the Argentine ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen, finally stepped up to the microphone of the UN General Assembly: “To my deepest regret, we were able to see that this conference was unable to reach a consensus.”
Russia does not want “political scolding”
The nuclear power Russia had rejected the paper. Reason: The world community criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the occupation of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant Zaporizhia. The deputy head of the arms control department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Igor Vishnevetsky, explains: Russia would have liked to have had a consensus, stood by the NPT, but could not support the political scolding.
After 2015, this is the second time that the conference has failed to come up with a joint declaration. Participants and experts expressed disappointment. But that explanation shouldn’t be given too much weight, according to researcher Matt Korda of the Union of American Scientists Nuclear Project.
He quotes what a representative of the Austrian delegation had previously said: “If there is a final document, what changes the day after its adoption?” As long as the parties do not fundamentally question the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and talk to each other, there is hope for an agreement.
Consensus not really expected
In the current tense world situation, many diplomats had expected that a unanimous declaration would not come out of the conference. It takes place every two years to review progress and compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It stipulates the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and their disarmament as well as the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
In fact, the success of this conference can’t be measured by the fact that a final declaration was reached – if no one sticks to it afterwards anyway, Korda says: “On the international stage we see that all nuclear powers are modernizing their weapons, expanding the role of nuclear weapons in their military doctrine, more Spend money on it. And nuclear weapons dismantling is going down.”
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty states that only the US, Russia, China, France and the UK can possess nuclear weapons. The other four suspected nuclear powers India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have either not joined the treaty or have withdrawn from it. “I understand why so much frustration is building in countries that don’t have nuclear weapons, many of them from the Global South,” Korda said.
More and more often they bring up another tool for disarmament in their speeches: the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, which was negotiated five years ago at the UN in New York – with the aim of creating a world without nuclear weapons. Almost 90 states have now signed it and it is in force. However, NATO and thus Germany are boycotting the agreement. In their opinion, it is counterproductive to the existing nuclear non-proliferation treaty.