Negotiating the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and the role of ICAN

ABSTRACT

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is historic not only in its substance but in the process of its development. It was led by states free from nuclear weapons; based on humanitarian evidence and imperatives; involved civil society, hibakusha and survivors of nuclear testing to a degree that is unprecedented in the nuclear field; and is the first nuclear disarmament treaty negotiated through the UN General Assembly, with the process proving both effective and efficient, despite fierce opposition from a number of nuclear-armed states, whose lack of commitment to nuclear disarmament was made very plain. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) became the main civil society partner for governments leading and supporting the ‘Humanitarian Initiative’ which resulted in the negotiations. ICAN’s principles, strategy and work are discussed in the context of the ‘stigmatise – prohibit – eliminate’ approach which has proven effective for other inhumane and indiscriminate weapons.

KEYWORDS:

• International law
• security
• strategy
• governance

Disclosure statement

I was one of the founders and the founding Australian and international Chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and serve as a Co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Notes on contributor

Tilman Ruff is Associate Professor in the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne; international medical advisor for Australian Red Cross; Co-President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW, Nobel Peace Prize 1985); and founding international and Australian Chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 ‘for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons’. He headed the IPPNW delegation to and participated throughout the negotiations for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in New York in 2017.

Notes

1 UN General Assembly, Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. A/CONF.229/2017/8 (2017), http://undocs.org/A/CONF.229/2017/8 (accessed February 27, 2018).

2 Europe Integration and Foreign Affairs Federal Ministry, Republic of Austria, ‘Report and Summary of Findings of the Conference, Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons’, 9 Dec 2014, https://www.bmeia.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Aussenpolitik/Abruestung/HINW14/HINW14_Chair_s_Summary.pdf (accessed February 27, 2018).

3 Princeton University, ‘A Path to Universality through Cooperative, Transparent, Verifiable and Irreversible Disarmament’ (working paper, United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards Their Total Elimination, A/CONF.229/2017/NGO/WP.46, 22 June 2017), https://s3.amazonaws.com/unoda-web/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/A-CONF.229-2017-NGO-WP.46.pdf (accessed February 27, 2018).

4 United States Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, United States Non-paper, Defense impacts of potential United Nations General Assembly Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, 17 October 2016, AC/333-N(2016)0029 (INV), http://www.icanw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/NATO_OCT2016.pdf (accessed February 27, 2018).

5 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying’s regular press conference on March 20, 20 March 2017, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1447146.shtml (accessed February 27, 2018).

6 United States Mission to the United Nations, Joint press statement from the Permanent Representatives to the United Nations of the United States, United Kingdom, and France following the adoption of a treaty banning nuclear weapons, 7 July 2017, https://usun.state.gov/remarks/7892 (accessed February 27, 2018).

7 Joint statement on the humanitarian dimension of nuclear disarmament by Austria, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Holy See, Egypt, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland (First Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Vienna, 2 May 2012), http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/npt/prepcom12/statements/2May_IHL.pdf (accessed February 27, 2018).

8 The text and voting record for both these resolutions can be found at http://reachingcriticalwill.org/disarmament-fora/unga/2015/resolutions (accessed February 27, 2018).

9 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation. Merav Datan, Felicity Hill, Jürgen Scheffran, Alyn Ware, Martin Kalinowski, Victor Sidel, Securing our Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, ed. Tilman A. Ruff and John Loretz (Cambridge, MA: IPPNW, 2007).

10 Europe Integration and Foreign Affairs Federal Ministry, Republic of Austria, Support for Pledge, https://www.bmeia.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Aussenpolitik/Abruestung/HINW14/HINW14vienna_update_pledge_support.pdf (accessed February 27, 2018).

11 UN General Assembly, Report of the Open-ended Working Group taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations (Geneva: UN, 2016), http://fissilematerials.org/library/un16a.pdf (accessed February 27, 2018).

12 UN General Assembly, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 23 December 2016: Taking Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations (A/RES/71/258), http://undocs.org/A/RES/71/258 (accessed February 27, 2018).