24 September 2009
UN SECURITY COUNCIL ADOPTS HISTORIC RESOLUTION ON NUCLEAR ISSUES

At an historic summit meeting presided over by US President Obama, the UN Security Council pledged its backing for broad progress on nuclear non-proliferation, reductions in existing nuclear weapons stockpiles, and control of fissile material.

Resolution 1887, which was adopted unanimously, is the most comprehensive action taken by the Council on nuclear issues since the mid-1990s. It emphasises that the Security Council has a primary responsibility to address nuclear threats, and that all situations of non-compliance with nuclear treaties should be brought to its attention.

The Council reaffirmed its strong support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, calling on non-signatory states to accede to it, and on states parties to comply fully with their obligations under the Treaty. It also called for strengthening of all three of the Treaty’s pillars – disarmament of countries currently possessing nuclear weapons, non-proliferation to countries not yet in possession, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy for all – at the Treaty’s Review Conference in May 2010.

Although the resolution does not target specific countries, the Council did demand that states involved in ‘major challenges to the non-proliferation regime’ comply fully with their obligations. In addition, the Council called upon all countries to refrain from conducting nuclear test explosions, and for universal ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in order to bring it into force as soon as possible.

In his opening remarks, Obama said the resolution represented agreement on a broad framework of action to end the complex dangers posed by nuclear weapons in the post-Cold-War world. He also said the resolution emphasised the Council’s authority to respond to violations of its resolutions, including those on North Korea and Iran, saying: ‘the world must stand together and demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise’.

At its Annual Conference in June 2009 in Edinburgh, UNA-UK adopted a resolution setting out a similar framework of action on nuclear non-proliferation and multilateral disarmament. The resolution, entitled ‘Towards a world without nuclear weapons’, called for:

a reduction in the nuclear arsenals of all nuclear-weapon states;

universal ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (the US, China and India being priority states);

negotiation of a treaty to end verifiably the production of fissile materials;

strengthening of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA; and

the establishment of an international fuel bank that guarantees access to civil nuclear power without increasing the risks of proliferation.

This text formed the basis of a resolution adopted by the World Federation of UNAs (WFUNA) at its plenary meeting in August 2009 in South Korea. WFUNA has member UNAs in nearly 100 countries, including the five official nuclear-weapons states and India, Pakistan, Israel and Iran.