This is a risky strategy. If there is no progress on making the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty legally binding, then the sustainability of the entire CTBT cannot be assured. What’s more, US ratification alone—while a necessary step—is not sufficient to make the treaty go into force; there is still the matter of those seven other holdouts. The current situation will require a renewed push at the multilateral level, and the December humanitarian impact conference would be a good place to begin. The administrators of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization recently launched a promising venture called the Group of Eminent Persons, which aims to promote the treaty’s entry into force by convening high-level strategy groups of experts and politicians, including luminaries such as former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, and Hans Blix, former International Atomic Energy Agency director general. Uniting the humanitarian impact movement and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would be a natural fit, and there is reason for optimism: The December conference will be held just a stone’s throw away from the CTBT’s Vienna headquarters. This closeness in space and time is propitious. If the humanitarian impact movement were to join forces with the Group of Eminent Persons in December, it could go a long way in building the support needed to make the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—long-sought and hard-fought—go into effect. Aqab Malik
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 14:48:29 +0000
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