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"[Arms Control Today] has become indispensable! I think it is the combination of the critical period we are in and the quality of the product. I found myself reading the May issue from cover to cover."

– Frank von Hippel
Co-Director of Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University
June 1, 2018
The World

Nations Recommit to Nuclear Security


March 2020
By Kelsey Davenport

More than 140 states have endorsed a February declaration reaffirming their commitment to effective and comprehensive nuclear security at the third International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ministerial meeting on the subject. During the International Conference on Nuclear Security 2020, states also expressed support for the IAEA’s role in advancing and coordinating nuclear security efforts.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi speaks at the agency's International Conference on Nuclear Security, stressing the agency's continuing role in helping nations to prevent nuclear or radiological materials from falling into the wrong hands. (Photo: Dean Calma/IAEA)In remarks opening the Feb. 10–14 conference in Vienna, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said that nuclear activities are “growing in a very sustained way” worldwide, creating a “magnet for groups with malicious intent” and requiring further action to prevent nuclear terrorism. He said the 2020 meeting included “record participation by ministers, which reflects the great importance” that states attach to nuclear security.

The IAEA held its first ministerial-level meeting on nuclear security in 2013 amidst a growing awareness of the threat posed by nuclear terrorism spurred in large part by the Nuclear Security Summits, a series of four head-of-state level meetings held every two years from 2010 through 2016. (See ACT, May 2016.) The summits aimed to minimize and secure weapon-usable nuclear materials in civil programs around the world. The second IAEA ministerial convened in 2016 after the summits ended and emphasized the importance of maintaining momentum on the nuclear security agenda. (See ACT, January/February 2017.)

In the 2020 declaration, the states emphasized that nuclear security is a state responsibility and encouraged national adoption of “threat mitigation and risk reduction measures.” The declaration also highlighted actions that states should take, including minimizing stockpiles of highly enriched uranium (HEU), where “technically and economically feasible.”

The declaration also highlighted the role the IAEA plays in “establishing and improving effective and sustainable national nuclear security regimes.” In the document, the states pledged support for the IAEA to continue assisting and fostering cooperative efforts in a number of areas, including information security and protecting against cyberattacks.

Grossi also emphasized the “indispensable” IAEA role in nuclear security, including acting as “the inclusive global platform for...cooperation.”

In the three years since the last ministerial conference, the IAEA provided radiation-detection equipment to 33 countries, provided training for more than 1,300 people, and released 12 new publications outlining best practices in nuclear security.

Grossi urged states to request IAEA expert peer-review and advisory missions, describing these services as “among the most important” the agency offers. He said the IAEA conducted 15 expert missions to advise states on how to improve nuclear security at certain facilities since 2016.

He raised concerns, however, about the sustainability of the agency’s resources to address the increasing requests for nuclear security assistance. Under the IAEA’s operating structure, its nuclear security activities are only minimally funded by the agency’s general budget. Instead, the bulk of agency nuclear security resources is provided by individual nations.

Requests by member states for IAEA nuclear security assistance is “constantly increasing,” Grossi said, adding that the nuclear security mission is “much too important to be dependent on extrabudgetary contributions.” A number of states committed to donate money to the IAEA Nuclear Security Fund during the 2020 conference.

In the U.S. statement, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette also called on states to continue providing the IAEA with the necessary resources to achieve its nuclear security mandate. He said the United States has provided $51 million to the agency’s nuclear security work over the past three years.

Brouillette highlighted that, in the three years following the prior conference, the United States worked to improve the physical protection of nuclear materials at 10 facilities around the world and has equipped 672 border crossings with radiation-detection systems. He also noted U.S. efforts to blend down 13 metric tons of surplus HEU in the United States and to support cooperative work to remove or dispose of more than 1,000 kilograms of nuclear material in other countries.

The meeting’s declaration also drew attention to the importance of an upcoming conference in 2021 on the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and its amendment, which entered into force in 2016.

The CPPNM established legally binding requirements for the security of nuclear materials in international transit and its 2005 amendment expanded the requirements to include physical protection of sites housing nuclear materials and domestic transit. Parties to the convention will hold a review conference in 2021 to assess the treaty’s implementation.

Grossi highlighted the agency’s role in encouraging member states to join the CPPNM and its amendment and noted that 10 states had ratified the amended convention since the 2016 meeting.

 

A Vienna meeting aims to sustain nuclear security efforts.

North Korea, China, Russia Converge Positions


January/February 2020
By Julia Masterson

Russia and China proposed partially lifting UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea on Dec. 16, in an effort to reinstate a diplomatic process, according to the Russian news agency Tass. Ahead of the draft resolution’s release, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on Dec. 11 that “sanctions will not substitute for diplomacy. It is impossible to reach an agreement without offering something in return.”

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya speaks to the UN Security Council meeting in January 2019. He has advocated using fewer sanctions and more diplomacy as part of a threeway effort to ease international tensions about North Korea. (Photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)Starting in 2018, China, North Korea, and Russia have held trilateral talks that have received less international attention than the stalled U.S.-North Korean diplomatic efforts to reach a settlement on denuclearization and peace on the Korean peninsula. The talks appear to have focused so far on converging the three countries’ positions to strengthen Pyongyang’s stance in negotiations with Washington. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Nov. 8 that the independent trilateral initiative should not be considered a substitute for the U.S.-North Korean dialogue, but the co-sponsored draft resolution purportedly calls for the “prompt resumption of the six-party talks or re-launch of multilateral consultations in any other similar format, with the goal of facilitating a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue,” signaling Russia’s and China’s mounting interest in collaborating formally on North Korea’s denuclearization process.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met with Russian officials twice in Moscow in November to discuss “international issues of mutual concern” and shared “views on the situation of the Korean peninsula,” according to statements issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. Choe met for the first time with counterparts in Beijing and in Moscow in October 2018.

Based on reporting by the South China Morning Post, initial conversations appear to have centered on gaining support for Pyongyang’s preference for reciprocal concessions, trading North Korean steps toward denuclearization for a gradual alleviation of U.S. and UN sanctions, as well as actions to address Pyongyang’s security concerns. According to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement released after the October meeting, “it is time to start considering the adjustment of the UN Security Council’s sanctions regime” against North Korea.

The Dec. 16 draft resolution reiterated this call and specifically recommended exempting from sanctions “certain industrial machinery and transportation vehicles which are used for infrastructure construction and cannot be diverted to…nuclear and ballistic missile programmes,” among other things. It also urged “further practical steps to reduce military tension on the Korean Peninsula and probability of any military confrontation by all appropriate means, such as, but not limited to, conclusion of agreements between military officials, and adoption of formal declaration and/or a peace treaty for the end of the Korean war.”

Faced with mounting pressure from Pyongyang, the Trump administration, which has long maintained that North Korea’s full denuclearization must precede sanctions relief, may be moving toward an increasingly more flexible negotiation stance. At a UN Security Council meeting on Dec. 11, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft noted that Washington “remain[s] ready to take actions in parallel, and to simultaneously take concrete steps toward this agreement” and added that the United States is “prepared to be flexible in how we approach this matter.” At the same meeting, a Chinese representative reminded that it is “imperative” that economic sanctions on North Korea be eased, and Nebenzya affirmed that progress is impossible for as long as North Korea is “told to unequivocally agree to all conditions that are imposed for the promise of future benefits.”

Nebenzya’s comments closely echoed those of Lavrov’s at the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference on Nov. 8, where he spoke on Moscow’s and Beijing’s preference for an “action-by-action, step-by-step” approach to North Korean denuclearization.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has held summits with Russian and Chinese leaders throughout 2018 and 2019 in addition to his two with U.S. President Donald Trump. Kim met Russian President Vladimir Putin once, in April 2019, and Chinese President Xi Jinping most recently in June 2019.

The three nations have been engaged in discussions while U.S.-North Korean diplomacy gains larger headlines.

Mine Ban Treaty Members Reaffirm Goals


January/February 2020
By Owen LeGrone

Parties to the 164-nation Mine Ban Treaty recommitted to their plans to eradicate landmines by 2025 during the treaty’s fourth review conference in Oslo on Nov. 25-30. More than 700 delegates gathered to mark the treaty’s 20 years since entry into force.

De-miners work to clear mines in Muhamalai, Sri Lanka in 2019. The Mine Ban Treaty held its fourth review conference in November 2019. (Photo: Allison Joyce/Getty Images)Conference participants adopted the Oslo Action Plan and the Oslo Declaration on a Mine-Free World, documents that reaffirmed their intent to achieve full treaty compliance, including mine destruction and clearance, “to the fullest extent possible” by 2025. Full compliance was a goal originally stated in the Maputo Action Plan, created at the 2014 review conference.

The Oslo Action Plan established a 50-point program of action, which included measures to facilitate treaty universalization, stockpile destruction, mine clearance, risk education, and international cooperation. It also highlighted the need to provide continuing assistance for victims of mines. Margaret Arach Orech, a Ugandan landmine survivor and ambassador for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), told the conference that “mine-free does not mean victim-free” and that “victims will remain a core pillar of the convention” once its goal of eradicating mines around the world is accomplished.

Treaty members have made significant progress over the past two decades. Thirty-two states-parties and one other state with mine contamination have declared themselves mine-free, according to the 2019 report of the monitoring organization Mine Action Review. One state, Nigeria, announced new contamination in 2018 after having declared itself mine-free in 2011.

Treaty parties have destroyed more than 55 million landmines of the estimated 160 million that existed globally in 1999, according to statistics released in November in the annual “Landmine Monitor” report. The report estimates that there may now be fewer than 50 million landmines stockpiled globally, an estimated 45 million of which are held by nonsignatories such as Russia, Pakistan, India, China, and the United States, in descending order of stockpile size.

Conference participants noted recent challenges to the global norm against anti-personnel landmines created by the Mine Ban Treaty. Particularly concerning is an upswing in landmine deaths worldwide, due partly to increased violence in Afghanistan, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Syria, Ukraine, and other conflict regions. Although 2018 was marked by the lowest number of deaths and injuries in three years, 6,897 people were killed or injured by mines and explosive remnants of war, roughly twice the 2013 total.

For the third year in a row, the highest number of landmine casualties, more than 50 percent, were incurred by improvised mines used by nonstate armed groups. Three nonsignatory states—Myanmar, North Korea, and Syria—were also confirmed as having used mines since the previous review conference. None of the treaty’s signatories employed them, but Greece and Ukraine were identified by the 2019 report as continuing to violate their stockpile destruction commitments. The treaty requires states-parties to destroy their landmine stockpiles in four years.

Conference attendees also highlighted the gendered aspects of landmine issues. A group of 32 women and girls from 18 countries arrived with the ICBL delegation to take part in the Nov. 30 closing ceremony. Finland presented a report concerning gender mainstreaming within the membership of the treaty.

Sudan will preside over the next meeting of states-parties, scheduled to convene in Geneva in November 2020.
 

Now 20 years in force, the treaty has made significant progress toward its goal of ridding the world of anti-personnel landmines.

Frustrations Surface at CTBT Conference


November 2019
By Shannon Bugos

The 11th international conference to discuss steps to bring the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into force revealed tensions between Russia and the United States, which failed to attend. The meeting convened Sept. 25 at UN headquarters in New York.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks at the Article XIV conference for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in New York on Sept. 25. (Photo: CTBTO)The treaty text allows for conferences every other year to discuss approaches to encourage the signatures and ratifications that are still necessary to bring the treaty into force. According to Article XIV of the treaty, the agreement cannot enter into force until it has been signed and ratified by the 44 countries listed in Annex 2. Eight of those states—China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United States—have yet to deposit their instruments of ratification.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the United States, which avoided the conference, for failing to ratify the CTBT, calling this “the main destabilizing event.” Moscow ratified the CTBT in 2000.

During his remarks, Lavrov also declared that Russia has “not staged a single nuclear explosion” since observing the global moratorium on nuclear testing in 1991 and intends to continue observing the moratorium, but only so long as “other nuclear states follow the same line.” His remarks likely allude to a May statement made by the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, that “Russia probably is not adhering to its nuclear testing moratorium in a manner consistent with the ‘zero-yield’ standard outlined” by the treaty. The United States has yet to provide any credible information to back up that statement.

In addition to Lavrov, foreign ministers and other diplomats representing nearly 50 countries spoke to support the treaty’s entry into force. Signed in 1996, the pact prohibits “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any nuclear explosion” no matter what the yield, anywhere in the world.

Since the last conference in 2017, two countries have ratified the CTBT: Thailand in September 2018 and Zimbabwe in February 2019. Another, Tuvalu, signed it in September 2018. In total, there are now 168 ratifications and 184 signatures.

Izumi Nakamitsu, UN undersecretary-general and high representative for disarmament affairs, opened the conference, saying unequivocally that there is “no substitute” for the CTBT. Nakamitsu declared that the entry into force of the CTBT “must be a priority,” a call that the 50 states-parties in attendance, as well as the European Union and a group of more than 40 leaders from civil society, reinforced in their own statements.

Many states additionally stressed the importance of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which is responsible for developing and operating the treaty’s global monitoring and verification system. In his statement, CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo highlighted the organization’s achievements, specifically with regard to the International Monitoring System (IMS), which constantly monitors the world for any signs of nuclear explosions.

The IMS is nearing completion and, when finished, will consist of 337 facilities worldwide. “The progressive build-up of the [IMS],” Zerbo said, “has resulted in a level of maturity, readiness, and relevance that has been demonstrated on numerous occasions and in a variety of circumstances.”

Most recently, the IMS demonstrated its importance after an accident that set off an explosion and release of radioactivity off the coast of Russia that involved Moscow’s development of a new nuclear-powered, long-range cruise missile. Two days after the Aug. 8 incident, the CTBTO reported that some IMS stations in Russia began to halt transmissions of data. By Aug. 13, five of the seven radionuclide stations in Russia had gone silent, although when two came back online a week later, they backfilled information to the CTBTO.

The United States stayed away from an international meeting focused on bringing the CTBT into force.

Explosive Weapons Declaration Gains Momentum


November 2019
By Jeff Abramson

International efforts to create a political declaration on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas reached a turning point in October. After more than 130 countries attended the Vienna Conference on Protecting Civilians in Urban Warfare on Oct. 1–2, a process is now underway aiming to draft a declaration to be presented next year
in Dublin.

Humanity & Inclusion, an international nongovernmental organization, unveiled this Monument to the Unnamed Civilian on Sept. 26 in Paris to highlight civilian casualties of global conflicts. (Photo: Humanity and Inclusion)In recent years, a growing number of civil society groups and states have raised concerns about the harm caused by the use of weapons with wide-area effects in cities, both in terms of civilians immediately affected and the destruction of infrastructure that can leave populations vulnerable for months and years following conflict. A recent UN report cited data compiled by Action on Armed Violence from English-language media sources that found 20,384 civilians were killed and injured in 2018 by explosive weapons in populated areas.

In a Sept. 18 joint appeal supporting the development of a declaration, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer said, “Parties to conflict should recognize that they cannot fight in populated areas in the way they would in open battlefields. They must recognize that using explosive weapons with wide-area effects in cities, towns, and refugee camps places civilians at high risk of indiscriminate harm.”

The scope and details of a declaration, however, are still to be determined. Among the issues to be worked out in a declaration is how to discourage weapons use in populated areas, with the concept of “avoidance” being just one option. How the declaration might incorporate principles of international humanitarian law also must be resolved.

The United States, which actively participated in the conference, presented a two-page paper outlining its policies and recent reports on civilian casualties. Afterward, Robert Wood, U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, argued against the negotiation of a joint declaration.

On Oct. 23 at the UN General Assembly First Committee, Wood said that “an effort to ban or stigmatize the use of explosive weapons is impractical and counterproductive because it could hamper efforts to protect civilians from bad actors like ISIS or encourage bad actors to use human shields and to hide in urban areas.”

Germany, which co-hosted a number of relevant international conversations on the issue in 2017 and 2018, said at the Vienna conference that “[s]trictly abiding by the rules and principles of [international humanitarian law] would provide effective protection of civilians.” The German statement added, “a declaration should focus on mitigating the various forms of harm through good practices that are designed to improve and enhance compliance” with international humanitarian law.

Wrangling over whether new agreements are needed has also animated the ongoing discussion on lethal autonomous weapons systems and, more broadly, efforts within the humanitarian disarmament framework. That approach, which also undergirds the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Mine Ban Treaty, and Convention on Cluster Munitions, places an emphasis on human security and the humanitarian consequences of weapons use.

According to the International Network on Explosive Weapons, the civil society coalition championing the effort, more than 80 countries have indicated support for a multilateral declaration.

In October, Ireland delivered a joint statement on explosive weapons on behalf of 71 countries at the First Committee. A similar declaration on behalf of 50 countries was delivered in 2018.

The next step in the process is set to occur Nov. 18 in Geneva when Ireland convenes the first in a series of meetings aimed at developing declaration text. The notional calendar aims for a conference in Dublin by the summer of 2020 where the text could be finalized or presented.

An international effort aims to draft a declaration before a 2020 meeting in Dublin.

Argentine Selected to Lead IAEA


November 2019
By Greg Webb and Daryl G. Kimball

Veteran Argentine diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi will serve as the next director-general of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) following his Oct. 29 selection by the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors in Vienna.

The IAEA Board of Governors voted Oct. 29 to select Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina to become the agency's next director-general. (Photo: Dean Calma/IAEA)Grossi won 24 votes, a two-thirds majority of voting board members, and will be formally confirmed as director-general by a Dec. 2 special meeting of the agency’s 171 member states. He is expected to take office the next day.

Acting IAEA Director-General Cornel Feruta of Romania, Grossi’s only opponent in the fourth round of the board’s secret voting, received just 10 votes; one nation abstained. Earlier ballots had eliminated Lassina Zerbo of Burkina Faso, the current executive secretary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, and Slovakia’s Marta Ziakova, who heads her nation’s nuclear regulatory agency.

As part of the selection process for the four-year leadership term, the four candidates had previously delivered public remarks describing their vision for the agency, which monitors non-nuclear-armed nations to ensure they conduct only peaceful nuclear activities. The agency also promotes the use of peaceful nuclear and radioactive technologies around the world, such as in medicine and agriculture. The four candidates all promoted this technical cooperation aspect of the agency’s mission, but only Grossi highlighted the need for internal bureaucratic reforms to improve IAEA effectiveness.

Grossi is currently Argentina’s ambassador to international organizations in Vienna and previously served as the IAEA assistant director-general for policy under Director-General Yukiya Amano, whose July death prompted October’s selection process. (See ACT, September 2019.)

Grossi had been expected to serve as president of the 2020 review conference for the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which is expected to be a particularly contentious meeting, taking place 50 years after the treaty entered into force. (See ACT, June 2019.)

In anticipation of Grossi’s selection to lead the IAEA, diplomatic sources told Arms Control Today that the Argentine government has discussed a plan for another of its senior diplomats, Deputy Foreign Minister Gustavo Zlauvinen, to preside over the review conference. Among other diplomatic postings, Zlauvinen has served as IAEA representative to the United Nations in New York, where he represented the agency during NPT meetings from 2001 to 2009.

 

Rafael Mariano Grossi will head the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Cluster Munitions Treaty Nears 10-Year Mark


October 2019
By Jeff Abramson

States-parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions for the first time in September addressed requests to extend treaty-mandated deadlines as they prepare for next year’s review conference.

Components of a cluster munition are displayed at a UN peacekeeper camp in 2007. The cluster munitions treaty will hold its second review conference in 2020, 10 years after its entry into force. (Photo by Mark Renders/Getty Images)At the ninth meeting of states-parties, held Sept. 2–4 at the United Nations in Geneva and chaired by Aliyar Lebbe Abdul Azeez of Sri Lanka, delegates welcomed Gambia and the Philippines as the newest states-parties. There are 107 states-parties and 14 signatories. Twenty nonsignatories also attended as observers, but not the United States, which has consistently chosen not to participate. (See ACT, October 2018.)

The treaty, which entered into force in 2010, bans the use, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions, the weapons that deliver smaller submunitions that often fail to explode as intended, at times detonating years later. The majority of NATO members, as well as countries in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, have joined the treaty. But China, Russia, the United States, and many states in the Middle East and North Africa have yet to do so. The convention calls for states-parties to destroy any stockpiles they have within eight years and clear contaminated land under their jurisdiction or control within 10 years.

During the meeting, states congratulated Botswana and Switzerland for completing destruction of their stockpiles ahead of their deadline for doing so and granted Bulgaria its first extension to this requirement. Research published by the independent Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor program before the meeting found that 99 percent of stocks declared by states-parties had already been destroyed, a collective total of nearly 1.5 million cluster munitions and more than 178 million submunitions. The report noted, however, that Guinea-Bissau, which had never filed a report indicating the size of its stockpile, failed to complete destruction by May 2019 and was in violation of the convention.

The report also noted that there were no reports or allegations of use of cluster munitions by any state-party since the treaty was adopted, but continued to find that the weapons were being used in Syria, although not as frequently as in recent years. While noting challenges in access and data disaggregation, the report also found a decline in casualties in the country, identifying 80 people killed or injured during cluster munitions strikes or by explosive remnants in 2018, down from 187 in 2017. The conflict in Syria has resulted in 3,343 of the 4,128 cluster munitions casualties recorded by the group from 2009 to 2018.

As in prior years, states-parties adopted a final report that “condemned any use by any actor” of cluster munitions. A proposal by New Zealand to specifically mention the use of cluster munitions in Syria was withdrawn after a small number of states indicated that they could not accept naming individual countries. That topic may be revisited next year at the treaty’s second review conference, to be held in November in Switzerland. At the first review conference held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in 2015, a declaration was adopted in which seven countries were specifically named.

None of the roughly two dozen countries still contaminated with cluster munitions completed clearance in 2018, but a separate report published by the Mine Action Review found that at least 128 square kilometers of cluster munitions-contaminated land was cleared in 2018, the highest annual total recorded. At the meeting, Laos, one of the world's most contaminated countries, was granted a five-year extension to its 10-year clearance obligation, with the recognition that it still faces significant challenges. Germany was also granted a five-year extension to clear a former military training area.

States-parties to the cluster munitions treaty marked milestones in destroying the lethal weapons that have taken thousands of lives.

ATT Confronts Gender-Based Violence


October 2019
By Owen LeGrone

States-parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) raised the profile of gender equity and gender-based violence issues as they met in Geneva to discuss the treaty’s implementation during their annual conference in August.

Latvian diplomat Janis Karklins, shown here in 2014, selected gender-based issues to be featured at the Arms Trade Treaty's annual conference in August. (Photo: Jerry Lampen/AFP/Getty Images)The final conference document addressed numerous facets of gender in the context of the treaty. States-parties agreed to “strive for gender balance” in their delegations, be open to guidance from third parties toward achieving gender equity, and take gender into account when determining the disbursement of funds for implementation projects from the Voluntary Trust Fund. They endorsed further investigation of the meaning of Article 7(4), which requires states before granting licenses to take into account the risk that exported arms might be used to commit gender-based violence. The language of the document also encouraged states to collect and share relevant data and to create a “learning guide.” None of these measures was mandatory or binding, raising concerns that intransigence on the part of some states might prevent meaningful progress.

The theme of gender-based violence was selected by the conference president, Janis Karklins of Latvia. It had been discussed in two preparatory conferences in February and April before the conference of states-parties was held.

Participants welcomed the accession or ratification of four more states-parties (Palau, Lebanon, Botswana, and Canada) since the fourth conference, in 2018, marking 104 total states-parties and 32 signatories to the treaty.

As in previous conferences, there was little formal discussion between states-parties of possible violations of Articles 6 and 7 of the treaty, which require export license denials in certain circumstances and risk assessments on the possibility that arms recipients will utilize them to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, acts of terrorism, or transnational organized crime.

States-parties also discussed financial concerns. Only 71 states had provided their assessed contributions as of March 2019, continuing a downward trend. According to the ATT’s current financial rules, any state that has not paid its annual dues for two years loses certain rights, such as equal standing when applying for support for implementation projects funded by the ATT Voluntary Trust Fund.

Some states and civil society representatives urged participants to stay focused on more substantive treaty issues. Pressuring small, developing countries to pay their dues is like “obsessing over the quality of the fiddle-playing while ignoring the burning of Rome,” said Cesar Jaramillo of Project Ploughshares.

In the end, the ATT Management Committee delayed the imposition of penalties for nonpayment to next year’s conference while establishing a reserve fund from voluntary contributions.

The United States, which for the first time did not attend the conference, was not assessed for future meetings after President Donald Trump promised to withdraw from the treaty in April. The United States submitted a statement to the United Nations in July declaring that it had “no legal obligations” under the treaty.

The U.S. absence drew criticism from the former U.S. lead negotiator for the treaty, Thomas Countryman, now the Arms Control Association’s board chairman.

“Trump’s decision to ‘un-sign’ the treaty was not a harmless decision, and its negative effects were immediately visible at the conference of states-parties. The U.S. government chose to be absent from a discussion that potentially affects the dominant U.S. role in the international weapons trade,” he said on Sept. 16.

The sixth conference of states-parties is scheduled for Geneva during Aug. 17–21, 2020.

The Arms Trade Treaty’s annual conference reviewed the pact’s implementation and effectiveness.

IAEA Leadership Opens After Amano Death


September 2019
By Greg Webb

Yukiya Amano, a Japanese diplomat with lengthy experience in the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament fields, died on July 18 midway through his third term as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Vienna-based agency quickly announced a rapid process to select its next leader as the agency continues to face many of the same challenges it did when Amano began his first four-year term in 2009, particularly Iran and North Korea.

Cornel Feruta, the IAEA's acting director general, speaks at a tribute to former Director-General Yukiya Amano on Aug. 21. (Photo: IAEA)The agency offered no cause of death for the 72-year-old Amano, who had been forced to miss a number of major agency meetings due to a long illness. He died just one day after news broke that he planned to retire in March 2020.

During Amano’s tenure, the IAEA completed a multiyear, contentious investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities. For years, Iranian officials had denied any nuclear weapons ambitions or research, but the agency’s 2015 final assessment concluded that Iran had indeed conducted nuclear weapons developmental work. Nevertheless, the investigation found no evidence that Iran had continued such efforts after 2009. (See ACT, January/February 2016.)

The agency also has monitored North Korea’s nuclear activities from a distance after its inspectors were expelled from the country after Pyongyang withdrew from six-party talks in 2009.

Amano’s 2009 selection reflected Western fatigue with his three-term predecessor Mohamed ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 after contradicting U.S. claims about Iraq’s nuclear capability before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. ElBaradei used his position to express views on issues that critics said were beyond his official purview, and Amano promised to focus his efforts on the technical work of the agency’s mandate. Recognizing that the IAEA’s nuclear nonproliferation work would dominate the news coverage of the agency, Amano pushed his organization to excel at other areas of its mission, particularly assisting the developing world to reap the benefits of peaceful nuclear technologies.

He also oversaw the IAEA’s response to the 2011 nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Days after the disaster, he flew to Tokyo to encourage greater transparency from Japanese nuclear officials, and he led international efforts to upgrade global nuclear safety practices for several years after the accident.

“During the past decade, the agency delivered concrete results to achieve the objective of ‘Atoms for Peace and Development,’ thanks to the support of member states and the dedication of agency staff. I am very proud of our achievements, and grateful to member states and agency staff,” Amano wrote in a note announcing his retirement that he intended to deliver to the agency’s Board of Governors before he died. The agency provided the statement in a July 22 release announcing Amano’s death.

After joining the Japanese Foreign Ministry in 1972 and fulfilling a number of standard diplomatic posts, Amano embarked on an extensive career working on arms control and nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. He became ministry director-general of arms control and scientific affairs in 2002 and director-general of the Disarmament, Nonproliferation and Science Department in 2004.

Amano spent considerable time working with nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) processes, serving on the Japanese delegations to three treaty review conferences before chairing the 2007 preparatory committee meeting for the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

The agency and its 35-nation Board of Governors reacted quickly to Amano’s death, establishing a process for appointing the next director-general. IAEA member states have until Sept. 5 to nominate successor candidates, one of whom will be elected by the board in October and take office by the beginning of 2020. The board must appoint a director-general with a two-thirds majority vote, and then a simple majority of the agency’s entire 171-nation membership must approve the selection.

Both the board and the membership can convene as needed, and such special meetings are expected as the annual membership-wide General Conference is scheduled to begin Sept. 16.

In 2009, Amano was appointed by the board after six votes and approved by the membership by acclamation.

Two candidates have emerged so far as potential successors to Amano. Veteran Argentine diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi, currently his nation’s ambassador to Austria and permanent representative to the IAEA, has publicly announced his candidacy. Grossi previously served as IAEA assistant director-general for policy under Amano.

Earlier this year, he was designated to serve as president of the 2020 NPT Review Conference. (See ACT, June 2019.) During his IAEA candidacy, Grossi intends to continue his review conference efforts. “I have continued to work with the same enthusiasm and dedication on preparations for the NPT review conference including through regional meetings, which have proceeded as planned,” he told Arms Control Today on Aug. 5.

The other candidate appears to be Romanian diplomat Cornel Feruta, who currently serves as chief coordinator for the IAEA. Feruta has not publicly announced his candidacy, but a wide variety of news reports have named him as a candidate, and his position is likely strengthened by the agency board’s decision to tap him as acting director-general while the selection process is underway. For many months, Feruta has filled in to cover for Amano’s illness-caused absences.

The IAEA establishes a rapid process to replace its director-general.

U.S. Hosts Nuclear Disarmament Working Group


September 2019
By Shannon Bugos

Aiming to break loose stagnant progress toward nuclear disarmament, officials from more than 40 nations agreed to an initial framework of a U.S. initiative during a two-day meeting in Washington ending July 3. The U.S. State Department hosted the plenary meeting for participants of its Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament (CEND) initiative.

The officials discussed “ways to improve the international security environment in order to overcome obstacles to further progress on nuclear disarmament,” according to the State Department’s media note released on the first day. As stated in a summary report of the working group obtained by Arms Control Today, three particular topic areas were identified: the reduction of the perceived incentives for states to acquire or increase their nuclear stockpiles, the involvement of multilateral institutions in nuclear disarmament, and potential interim measures to reduce risks related to nuclear weapons.

Christopher Ford, U.S. assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, opened the session saying he wanted the process “to be as free and open an engagement as possible…. While no one should be asked to abandon strongly held policy views, I would encourage you to focus more upon how we can build a better world together than upon trading recriminations about the present.”

The United States first proposed the CEND initiative at the May 2018 meeting of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee, held in advance of the NPT’s 2020 review conference. (See ACT, July/August 2019.) U.S. officials characterized the initiative as an effort to hold a dialogue on the “discrete tasks” necessary in order “to create the conditions conducive to further nuclear disarmament.”

The recent meeting, consisting of about 100 representatives from nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states, as well as non-NPT nations, was randomly divided into three groups and rotated through each of the three topic areas. Afterward, a subject matter expert in each group summarized the areas of convergence that emerged from each session.

On the issue of reducing incentives to acquire or retain nuclear weapons, the participants agreed to future discussion of the need for states to clearly articulate the full scope of threats they perceive from others, according to the summary report. Additionally, the officials agreed on their desire to buttress existing arms control, nonproliferation, and security mechanisms, as well as compliance with them. Some participants, for example, expressed support for two existing agreements: the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which curbed Iran’s nuclear program, and the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which they encouraged the United States and Russia to extend.

The summary reported that the discussion of the role of multilateral and other types of institutions found general agreement that the CEND initiative could provide “an innovative format for strengthening existing forums.” Other areas of convergence included the need to reaffirm the importance of the NPT as the “cornerstone” of the global nonproliferation and disarmament architecture and to develop a list of practical measures, such as negotiating and implementing confidence-building measures, to improve the security environment.

Lastly, the risk reduction discussion identified the need to manage and prevent conflict from escalating to nuclear war, according to the summary report. Increased dialogue and communication were noted as potential areas for future work, particularly in respect to having nuclear-armed states provide greater detail on what is feasible for nuclear risk reduction. The most discussed options among participants for specific risk-reduction measures included improving crisis communication channels, standardizing pre-launch notifications to prevent misunderstandings, and eliminating certain categories of nuclear weapons or launch systems.

The next meeting of the CEND initiative has not been announced, but some reports have indicated it will take place later this year in Europe. Finland, the Netherlands, and South Korea will serve as co-chairs of the three discussion subgroups, and three additional co-chairs are expected to be named.

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