September 5th, 2009
“We call on all member States of the UN – including Canada – to endorse, and begin negotiations for, a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the UN Secretary-General in his five-point plan for nuclear disarmament.” This statement has at last count been signed by more than 300 Canadians named to the Order of Canada.[i]The […]
Read MoreAugust 31st, 2009
The entry into force on July 15 of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Pelindaba, was largely ignored by the world’s mainstream news media.[i]That’s too bad. It is a significant development and a further nudge toward a world without nuclear weapons. It was South Africa’s historic decision to destroy its […]
Read MoreAugust 16th, 2009
An American energy industry journalist anticipates a Canada-India nuclear cooperation deal — an umbrella agreement to govern a variety of trade, research, and development arrangements — will be signed in time for the 2010 G8 meeting in Canada. It is a deal, says the report, which is unlikely to address the kinds of nonproliferation concerns put forward by DisarmingConflict and other nonproliferation experts.. […]
Read MoreAugust 13th, 2009
For the first time in fully a dozen years, the UN’s disarmament forum agreed last May to a program of substantive work, but in early August it has run into another obstruction. The 65-member UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) has become best known for being stalemated for more than a decade, unable to go beyond […]
Read MoreAugust 5th, 2009
Canada had more than a front row seat at the dawn of the nuclear age. As part of the Manhattan Project this country was a player in the bombings that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago, providing both uranium and extensive scientific support for the first nuclear weapons.[i] Yet, right after World War II, […]
Read MoreJuly 27th, 2009
Traditionally, when Canadian Governments have had no convincing idea of what to do on a particular issue, or when they’ve known what should be done but just didn’t want to do it, their preferred option has been to appoint a Royal Commission to study the matter – often with constructive and useful results. The international […]
Read MoreJuly 17th, 2009
The UN General Assembly will take up the doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” next week, reviewing the Secretary-General’s 2009 report[i] on implementation and launching a general debate. It may only be more words, but this is an issue on which words can really be a matter of life and death. Since it was formally […]
Read MoreJuly 8th, 2009
Does the Sri Lankan Government’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers call for a reassessment of the prevailing wisdom that military counter-insurgency campaigns rarely work? In some wars, victory is as devastating as the alternative. In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, according to the UN, 2.6 million people have fled their homes[i] in the face of the recent […]
Read MoreJuly 7th, 2009
The 2009 NPT PrepCom managed to get beyond the rancor and discord that has characterized other recent NPT meetings and to focus instead on concrete discussions and proposals – not enough to guarantee success for the 2010 Review Conference, but certainly enough to set a base for a serious and cooperative effort toward consensus. Even […]
Read MoreJune 26th, 2009
The United Nations and Nuclear Orders is a new volume of essays edited by Jane Boulden, Ramesh Thakur, and Thomas G. Weiss. In his Foreword to this volume, Jayantha Dhanapala, whose extraordinary diplomatic career included his widely acclaimed service as UN Under Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs, attributes the current return of nuclear weapons to […]
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