The 2017 Nuclear Ban Treaty. A New Path to Nuclear Disarmament

Summary:

Rising concern over the increasing threat of nuclear war impelled the 2017 United Nations (UN) negotiations and adoption by 122 UN member states of a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Treaty seeks to ban nuclear weapons globally in the same way chemical and biological weapons have already been prohibited.

This book provides the first in-depth comprehensive analysis of the implications and possibilities of the new treaty, drawing on the insights of international relations, international laws, and disarmament experts and specialists from Europe, America, the Asia-Pacific, and the UN. In a context where existing nuclear weapon states have so far declined to be party to the new treaty, the book examines not only its emergence and significance but also the prospects and possibilities for its implementation, the challenges associated with verifying the new agreement, the role of both civil society and governments, and the treaty’s wider implications in addressing regional and global nuclear threats.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction | Rethinking the path to nuclear disarmament
• Part 1 | Nuclear Ban Treaty: Rationale and Significance
  • Obstacles to understanding the emergence and significance of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons
  • A ‘light for all humanity’: the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and the progress of humanitarian disarmament
  • The diplomacy of resistance: power, hegemony and nuclear disarmament
  • Stigmatizing and Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons
  • A Strategic Plan for Nuclear Disarmament: Engineering a Perfect Political Storm
• Part 2 | The Role of Civil Society
  • Negotiating the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and the role of ICAN
  • The ICRC and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: Working Towards a Nuclear-Free World since 1945
  • Why youth and feminist activism matters: insights from anti-nuclear campaigns in practice
  • Impacts of the nuclear ban: how outlawing nuclear weapons is changing the world
• Part 3 | Verification
  • Verification and security of transformation to a nuclear-weapon-free world: the framework of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
  • An international monitoring system for verification to support both the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and the nonproliferation treaty
• Part 4 | National and Regional Perspectives
  • Japan and the Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty: The Wrong Side of History, Geography, Legality, Morality, and Humanity
  • Ban Treaty: will it abolish nuclear weapons? A Japanese perspective
  • Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament at the crossroads – a Mongolian perspective
  • The implications of the 2017 UN Nuclear Prohibition Treaty for existing and proposed nuclear-weapon-free zones
• Concluding Analysis | Nuclear Prohibition: The Long Journey Ahead

Further information:

This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Change, Peace & Security but additionally includes the special section articles on the treaty in the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament.