The NPT Convenes in Geneva as Disarmament Experts Call for Progress on Nuclear Disarmament July 25, 2024

This July and August the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) meets in Geneva for the second session of the preparatory committee for the eleventh Review Conference. Many activists and nuclear disarmament experts have convened at the United Nations to deliver statements to this session of the NPT.

This year, the conference has featured a stronger civil society component than previous. Multiple organizations and statements, including from IPPNW, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and Abolition 2000, brought attention to the conference the importance of Article 6 obligations under the NPT, meaningful commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons, and the instability of nuclear threats and current conflicts as a threat to global security and peace.

Naomi Zoka, from Pax Christi Vlaanderen (in Belgium), representing ICAN, delivered a statement highlighting the impacts of nuclear testing, outrageous nuclear spending, and the threat of nuclear sharing and proliferation. “A conflict involving nuclear weapons thousands of miles from this conference room will still cause chaos and catastrophe to all of us, our families, and our future.”

PSR and others endorsed a statement delivered to the second preparatory committee by Daryl Kimball on July 23rd calling for diplomacy and disarmament to avert the risks of nuclear weapons. The statement called for six action steps ahead of the next review conference of the NPT.

“1. Demand that the United States and the Russian Federation immediately return to the nuclear arms control and disarmament negotiating table, fully implement their obligations under New START and agree on new arrangements to cap and reduce their nuclear arsenals before New START expires…
2. Call upon all five of the NPT’s nuclear-armed states to engage in a serious high-level dialogue that leads to a joint commitment not to use or threaten the use of nuclear weapons and to agree that none will be the first to use nuclear weapons for any reason…
3. Condemn threats of nuclear use as “inadmissible” and illegal…
4. We also urge all NPT states-parties to constructively engage with the TPNW and if they have not already done so, to join the TPNW…
5. Call upon all members of the Conference on Disarmament to agree to a work plan that allows for…
6. Jointly reaffirm their support for the de facto moratorium on nuclear testing and call upon the remaining nine NPT hold-out states to take concrete action before the 2026 NPT Review Conference to ratify the CTBT. ”