APLN Policy Brief 46

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

Next year, the United Nations will be convening a high-level conference to review the progress made in nuclear disarmament. The decision has its origin in a 2013 UN General Assembly resolution that was sponsored by the Non-Aligned Movement but opposed by most nuclear weapons states and their allies. The latter also opposed another initiative which mandated the negotiation and adoption, this year, of the Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty. This treaty, too, came into being as a result of a decision at the UN. To counter these initiatives the nuclear-armed states and their allies advocate a “step-by-step” approach that envisages incremental measures within the existing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty framework. These approaches, however, lack credibility in the eyes of the non-nuclear states who point to their slow pace or outright absence of any progress in nuclear disarmament. The divide between the two groups of states has kept growing and, if left unattended, may well come to a point of threatening the non-proliferation regime. Under these circumstances, the UN high-level conference should look for ways to bridge the divide and devise ways to end the impasse by focusing on points of convergence rather than divergence. All UN member states should attend the conference at the highest level and demonstrate their commitment to the goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Nyamosor Tuya is a former foreign minister of Mongolia. She has worked on regional security issues in the Asia–Pacific since the mid-1990s, both in and out of government. Her previous positions included those of Director of Policy Planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Counselor at Mongolia’s Mission to the United Nations. Ms. Tuya has held visiting fellowships at the Brookings Institution and the University of Urbana-Champaign. She has studied international relations and political theory at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, the SAIS-Johns Hopkins University and the University of Leeds, and French culture at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She is currently affiliated with the School of International Relations and Public Administration at the Mongolian National University.

Image: United Nations General Assembly.