APLN Policy Brief 3

The following is a summary. Click on the adjacent link to download the full brief.

The architecture of nuclear-­weapons global governance includes the Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty (NPT); the Nuclear Security Summits (NSS); and blue ribbon international commissions, the most recent of which was the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND). With other similar efforts, these have provided authoritative roadmaps to walk the world back from the nuclear cliff to the relative safety of a less heavily nuclearized world in the short and medium terms, and a denuclearized world in the long term. The Canberra-based Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (CNND) is a concrete example of civil society activity in global governance, including monitoring state performance against international norms. Its inaugural report records modest pockets of progress against a deeper background of disappointments on the agreed action points and recommendations of the NPT Review Conference, the NSS and the ICNND.

About the Author

Ramesh Thakur is Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. He was formerly Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (and UN Assistant Secretary-General) and then Foundation Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario. He was a Responsibility to Protect Commissioner and Principal Writer of the Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s 2002 UN reform report.

Image: Pixabay stock, Louis de Funes.