Michael Kirby, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), briefs the press about the Commission's report which documents wide-ranging and ongoing crimes against humanity. Credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2014 (IPS)

Has the world reached a stage where nuclear weapons may be used as bargaining chips in international politics?

So it seems, judging by the North Korean threat last week to conduct another nuclear test – if and when the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution aimed at referring the hermit kingdom to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for human rights abuses.

“If North Korea begins a game of nuclear blackmailing,” one anti-nuclear activist predicted, “will Russia not be far behind in what appears to be a new Cold War era?”

Dr. Rebecca Johnson, author of the U.N.-published book ‘Unfinished Business’ on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations, told IPS the larger danger – exemplified also by some of the rhetoric about nuclear weapons bandied around the crisis in Ukraine – is that nuclear weapons are not useful deterrents but are increasingly seen as bargaining chips, with heightened risks that they may be used to “prove” some weak leader’s “point”, with catastrophic humanitarian consequences.

She pointed out North Korea’s recent threat to conduct another nuclear test – its fourth – is unlikely to deter U.N. states from adopting a resolution to charge the regime of Kim Jong-un with crimes against humanity.

“North Korea’s nuclear sabre-rattling appears to draw from Cold War deterrence theories, but a nuclear test is not a nuclear weapon,” she added.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se told the Security Council last May North Korea is the only country in the world that has conducted nuclear tests in the 21st century.

Since 2006, it has conducted three nuclear tests, the last one in February 2013 – all of them in defiance of the international community and the United Nations.

The resolution on North Korea, which is expected to come up before the U.N.’s highest policy making body in early December, has already been adopted by the U.N. committee dealing with humanitarian issues, known as the Third Committee.

The vote was 111 in favour to 19 against, with 55 abstentions in the 193-member committee. The vote in the General Assembly is only a formality.

Alyn Ware, a member of the World Future Council, told IPS: “Nuclear weapons should not be used as threats or as bargaining chips.”

Their use, after all, would involve massive violations of the right to life and other human rights.

However, he noted, this applies also to the other nuclear-armed states in the region (China, Russia and the United States) and states under extended nuclear deterrence doctrines (South Korea and Japan).

“The nuclear option should be taken off the table by establishing a North East Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone,” he said.

And the states leading the human rights charges against North Korea should make it crystal clear that such charges are not an attempt to overthrow the North Korean government, he added.

The tensions between countries in the region, and the fact that the Korean War of the 1950s has never officially ended (only an armistice is in place), makes this a very sensitive issue, said Ware. If the General Assembly adopts the resolution, as expected, it is up to the 15-member Security Council to initiate ICC action on North Korea.

But both Russia and China are most likely to veto any attempts to drag North Korea to The Hague.

In an editorial Sunday, the New York Times said North Korea’s human rights abuses warrant action by the Security Council.

“Given what is in the public record, it is impossible to see how any country can defend Mr Kim and his lieutenants or block their referral to the International Criminal Court,” the paper said.

“As confidence in the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) continues to erode, has the time come to ban all nuclear weapons?” asked Dr Johnson.

She said “a comprehensive nuclear ban treaty would dramatically reduce nuclear dangers and provide much stronger international tools than we have today for curbing the acquisition, deployment and spread of nuclear weapons.”

The status some nations attach to nuclear weapons would soon be a thing of the past, nuclear sabre-rattling would become pointless, and anyone threatening to use these weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) would automatically face charges under the International Criminal Court, said Dr. Johnson, who is executive director and co-founder of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.

“This might not stop nuclear blackmail overnight, but it would make it much harder for North Korea and any others to imagine they could gain benefits by issuing nuclear threats.”

As North Korea withdrew from the NPT over 10 years ago, and has already conducted three nuclear tests, it is unlikely that a threatened fourth test would be an effective deterrent, said Dr Johnson.

The U.N. resolution has been triggered by a report from a U.N. Commission of Inquiry on North Korea which recommended that leaders of that country be prosecuted by the ICC for grave human rights violations.

The commission was headed by Michael Kirby, a High Court Judge from Australia.

In a statement before the Third Committee last week, the North Korean delegate said the report of the Commission “was based on fabricated testimonies by a handful of defectors who had fled the country after committing crimes.

“The report was a compilation of groundless political allegations and had no credibility as an official U.N. document,” he added.

Ware told IPS, “I have a lot of respect for my colleague Michael Kirby from Australia, who led a year-long U.N. inquiry into human rights abuses which concluded that North Korean security chiefs, and possibly even Kim Jong Un himself, should face international justice for ordering systematic torture, starvation and killings.

“I find the response of the North Korean authorities to try to discredit his report due to his sexual orientation to be reprehensible,” he added. “Nor do I find credible the North Korean counter-claims that their human rights violations are non-existent, while the real human rights violator is the U.S. government.”

Ware said there are indeed human rights violations in the United States, but they pale in comparison to those in North Korea.

There is a body of U.S. civil rights law and legal institutions that provide protections for U.S. citizens even if it is not fully perfect nor implemented entirely fairly, he pointed out.

But there is a lack of such protection of civil rights in North Korea, with the result that the North Korean administration inflicts incredibly egregious violations of human rights with total impunity, according to Kirby’s report.

“I do not believe that the threat of a nuclear test by North Korea should deter the United Nations from addressing these human rights violations, including the possibility of referral to the International Criminal Court,” Ware declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, triggering health and environmental problems which still plague the nation. Credit: Christopher Michel/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 2014 (IPS)

When the Foreign Minister of Marshall Islands Tony de Brum addressed a nuclear review Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting at the United Nations last month, he asked whether anyone in the room had witnessed a nuclear explosion.

The question was met, not surprisingly, with resounding silence.

As a nine-year-old boy, the minister vividly remembered seeing the white flash of the Bravo detonation on Bikini atoll, six decades ago. It was 1,000 times more powerful than Hiroshima, he told PrepCom delegates, mostly proponents of nuclear disarmament.

A two-week-long meeting of the PrepCom for the upcoming 2015 review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ended in predictable disappointment.

John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and the U.N. Office of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), told IPS the PrepCom succeeded in adopting an agenda for the 2015 conference.

But “to no one’s surprise, it did not accomplish anything else,” he added.

Burroughs, a member of the international legal team for Marshall Islands, said the most dramatic development of the PrepCom was the announcement of the Marshall Islands filing on Apr. 24 of lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed states: the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, along with Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The cases, before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, claim those states have failed to meet obligations of nuclear disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race under the NPT and general international law, said Burroughs.

Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands triggering health and environmental problems which still plague the nation with a little over 68,000 people.

The NPT, which came into force in 1970, requires a review conference to be held every five years. The last review conference took place in 2010.

The only nuclear powers which have refused to join the treaty are India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea (which joined and later withdrew from the NPT).

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se, who chaired a meeting of the Security Council on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), pointed out last week that North Korea “is the only country in the world that has conducted nuclear tests in the 21st century.

“Notwithstanding the efforts of the international community, North Korea has continued to develop its nuclear weapons over the last two decades, and is now threatening its fourth nuclear test,” he added.

If North Korea succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons, he said, it will seriously undermine the NPT regime and exacerbate tension and instability in Northeast Asia.

Ambassador Enrique Roman-Morey of Peru, who chaired the PrepCom, admitted the meeting was unable to agree on an action plan for NPT.

“But this was due to lack of time, not lack of political will,” he said, pointing out the PrepCom does not negotiate.

Asked about the difficulties facing negotiators, he said when nuclear issues are discussed there are problems “from the first letter to the last letter” in the negotiated document.

A “working paper” resulting from the PrepCom will be the basis for future negotiations at the Review Conference.

Under the treaty, all parties to the NPT pledge not to transfer nuclear weapons or assist or encourage any non-nuclear weapon state to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.

Similarly, each non-nuclear-weapon state undertakes not to receive the transfer of nuclear weapons or manufacture or otherwise acquire them.

Burroughs told IPS the PrepCom, like previous such meetings in the years prior to review conferences, could not reach consensus on recommendations to the 2015 conference.

Many states rejected the effort of the PrepCom chair to craft a compromise document.

The NPT nuclear-weapon states effectively maintained that commitments made by the 2010 Review Conference relating to nuclear arms control and disarmament should be carried forward into the next five-year period, he added.

He said the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and other groupings of non-nuclear weapon states held that the 2015 conference should adopt a more far-reaching plan of action that leads to verified, timebound elimination of nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

Many non-nuclear weapon states also said the proposed recommendations should have taken much fuller account of the conferences on humanitarian consequences of nuclear explosions, the last two held in Norway and Mexico, as well as the first-ever High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament held in the General Assembly in September 2013.

Burroughs said the debate at the PrepCom set the stage for consideration of a crucial question going into next year’s Review Conference: “Should non-nuclear weapon states insist, even if doing so results in no agreed outcome, that the conference set in motion multilateral negotiations on achieving a world free of nuclear weapons?”

A serious effort to that end was made in the 2010 conference but was rejected by the nuclear weapon states.

“Or, should they once again, as in the 1995, 2000, and 2010 conferences, agree to lesser commitments that have gone largely unfulfilled?” he said.

Still, most of those commitments remain valid and relevant whatever the 2015 conference does.

Thomas M. Countryman, U.S. assistant secretary at the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, told PrepCom delegates that in 2015, Washington will “look to build upon the success of the 2010 NPT Review Conference, where the conference approved a comprehensive, 64-item Action Plan, the first of its kind in the NPTs 44-year history.”

He said the United States will issue a national report on the steps taken so far to implement key elements of the 2010 Action Plan that uses a common framework agreed by all five nuclear weapon states.

“We will also highlight our contributions to International Atomic Energy Agency programmes harnessing the peaceful uses of nuclear energy for efforts like fighting disease, improving food security, and managing water resources,” he added.

When over 50 world leaders meet in the Netherlands next month for a Nuclear Security Summit (NSS), the primary focus will be on a politically-loaded question: how do we prevent non-state actors and terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear weapons or nuclear materials?

But sceptical anti-nuclear activists and academics pose an equally serious, but long ignored, question: how do you prevent the use of nukes by the eight countries that already possess the devastating weapon of mass destruction (WMD)?"Where are the same resources being dedicated to eliminating the current arsenals of nuclear weapons?" -- Alyn Ware

Alyn Ware, a consultant for the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), told IPS the problem with the Nuclear Security Summit is that it only focuses on one-third of the picture: non-state actors who don’t even have nuclear weapons.

“It does not address the bigger picture: the current and real threats of the stockpiles of weapons and materials of nuclear-armed states, and the risks of proliferation to additional states,” he said.

All of the nuclear-armed countries – the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Israel – will participate in the summit, scheduled to take place in The Hague Mar. 24-25.

North Korea, which is not a publicly-declared nuclear power, is not among the 58 countries which will be present at the international conference, which is also expected to attract some 5,000 delegates and over 3,000 journalists.

The Dutch government is touting the NSS as “the largest gathering of its kind ever in the country.”

In response to fears that such weapons will “fall into the wrong hands,” Ware said, “With regard to nuclear weapons, there are no right hands.”

A Trident missile launched from a Royal Navy Vanguard class ballistic missile submarine. Credit: public domain

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague has long confirmed that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal, regardless of who would possess or use such weapons, and that there is an obligation to achieve complete nuclear disarmament.

“It’s ironic that this summit is happening in The Hague, but appears to ignore the conclusion of, and legal imperative from, the highest court in the world situated in the same city,” said Ware, who is also a member of the World Future Council.

The Hague summit will be the third in a series, the first having been held in Washington DC in 2010, and the second in Seoul, South Korea, in 2012.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has called the amount of nuclear material in the world “enormous.”

“If it falls into the hands of terrorists, the consequences could be disastrous. The international community must do everything in its power to prevent this,” he said.

By hosting the summit, he says, the Netherlands will contribute to a safer world.

Asked if there has been any progress since Seoul, Dr M. V. Ramana, of the Nuclear Futures Laboratory & Programme on Science and Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, told IPS, “Yes, there has been some progress since the last Nuclear Security Summit.”

According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which in turn cited the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, seven countries – Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine and Vietnam – have removed all or most of their stocks of weapons-usable nuclear materials from their territories.

“That is, of course, good,” says Ramana. “But these are not the countries the international community is really worried about, nor did they have large stockpiles of fissile materials to start with.”

The major concern, Dr. Ramana pointed out, should be the countries that have such stockpiles – the nuclear weapon states – and in these countries the larger context continues to be business-as-usual, with plans to hold on to the nuclear weapons, the associated fissile materials, and in some cases, plans to produce more.

“I do not expect any of them to make any dramatic announcements at the upcoming security summit,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama is quoted as saying that in a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. And any use of nuclear weapons in an urban area in the 21st century would create a humanitarian, environmental and financial catastrophe of which we have had no precedent.

Ware said it is important for governments, scientists, lawmakers and civil society to cooperate to ensure that nuclear materials and technology are under safe and secure control to prevent the possibility of them being used to make a nuclear device, no matter how crude, and then using this device.

The Dutch government makes clear the limited focus of the summit when it points out the NSS “is not about non-proliferation.”

“It’s about rogue nuclear material. It’s about ensuring that such material does not fall into the wrong hands.”

And according to the Dutch government, the NSS will not discuss nuclear disarmament, the pros and cons of nuclear power, or protection from natural disasters.

But Ware argues governments are understandably dedicating considerable resources to prevent the spread of nuclear materials to non-state actors.

“But where are the same resources being dedicated to eliminating the current arsenals of nuclear weapons, including those deployed in the Netherlands – and securing the stockpiles of fissile materials possessed by the nuclear-armed states?” he asked.

The U.N. General Assembly Hall. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2013 (IPS)

The upcoming event at the United Nations is being billed as something politically unique.

For the first time in its 68-year history, the 193-member General Assembly is holding a high-level meeting of world leaders on one of the most controversial issues of our time: nuclear disarmament."While the mirage of a nuclear weapon-free world is held aloft, the CTBT has not entered into force." -- Jayantha Dhanapala, former U.N. under-secretary-general for disarmament affairs

But expectations for the meeting are low, says Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. under-secretary-general for disarmament affairs.

Unless disarmament becomes a priority for possessor states, he told IPS, speeches and meetings alone are not going to change the stark dangers posed by this most destructive weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

“A decision to outlaw nuclear weapons in the same way as biological and chemical weapons is essential,” said Dhanapala, who is president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which jointly won the 1995 Nobel Peace prize for their efforts at nuclear disarmament.

“The time to start negotiations on a Nuclear Weapon Convention (NWC) is not tomorrow but now,” he said.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has consistently maintained that nuclear disarmament is one of his top priorities, is expected to call for “a world free of nuclear weapons” at the meeting scheduled to take place at the United Nations on Sep. 26.

Asked if the high-level meeting will be another exercise in futility, Alyn Ware, a member of the World Future Council and consultant to the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, told IPS, “It could be an exercise in futility if governments, including the non-nuclear governments, do not treat it seriously.”

He said non-nuclear governments should participate at the highest level, and make strong statements that they are more secure without nuclear weapons and that the security of all in the 21st Century requires the abolition of nuclear weapons, meaning that it is a “global good of the highest order”.

Ware said they should also pledge to dedicate greater resources and political traction to developing the building blocks for a nuclear weapons-free world through the Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) to which the nuclear weapons states (NWS) have an obligation to join.

Currently, there are five declared nuclear weapon states, namely the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, all five permanent members of the Security Council (P5), along with three undeclared nuclear weapon states, India, Pakistan, Israel.

Despite its three nuclear tests, North Korea still remains in limbo.

The three undeclared nuclear powers have all refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as against the five declared nuclear powers who are states parties to the treaty.

Dhanapala said nine countries – five within the NPT and four outside – possess a total inventory of 17,270 nuclear warheads today, 4,400 of them placed on missiles or located on bases ready to be launched in minutes.

The U.S. and Russia alone own 16,200 of these warheads, he pointed out.

And despite the lingering horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the risks of nuclear weapons being used again – by design or accident, by states or non-state actors – are huge, he added.

“The results would be catastrophic for all humankind,” Dhanapala warned.

Ware told IPS the role of nuclear weapons could be reduced in Northeast Asia through negotiations for a North East Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.

The U.S., he said, could exercise more effective diplomacy in the Middle East to move the Arab states and Israel to participate in good faith in the proposed U.N. Conference on a Middle East Zone Free from Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction. Arab States are demanding preconditions that are unacceptable to Israel, so both need to exercise some flexibility, he noted.

Non-nuclear countries could use the OEWG, as long as the mandate is renewed, to commence preparatory work on the building blocks for a nuclear weapons-free world (based on the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention circulated by the secretary-general) regardless of whether or not the nuclear weapons states join the OEWG in the near future.

Dhanapala told IPS the first Special Session of the General Assembly Devoted to Disarmament (SSODI) was held in 1978 as a direct outcome of the summit of world leaders of the 1976 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) held in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

It was a period of detente in the Cold War and a far-reaching Final Declaration was adopted.

No multilateral gathering has matched that remarkable consensus on fundamental concepts achieved 35 years ago, especially on the priority of nuclear disarmament, he added.

“Yet today, the multilateral disarmament machinery established by SSOD I is in grave disarray,” he said.

The sole multilateral negotiating body, the Conference on Disarmament, has neither negotiated treaties nor even adopted a programme of work since 1996, according to Dhanapala.

The Disarmament Commission has met ritualistically every year without any agreed texts in the last 14 years.

And the U.N.’s First Committee, dealing with disarmament, is still churning out resolutions with little impact, he added.

“While the mirage of a nuclear weapon-free world is held aloft, the CTBT has not entered into force, the promised conference on the Middle East as a WMD-free zone has not been held and bilateral U.S.-Russian nuclear disarmament talks have not even started,” Dhanapala said.
The need for a radical change has been recognised by the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and their supporters have resisted NAM demands for a SSOD IV.

A one-day high-level meeting of the General Assembly is a compromise, he said.

The 2010 NPT Review Conference with its 64-point action programme and the increasing recognition of humanitarian disarmament are an inadequate basis for the non-nuclear weapon states, most of which are in legally recognised nuclear weapon-free zones, to trust the nuclear armed states to disarm.

The Sep. 26 meeting must be the beginning of a nuclear disarmament process, Dhanapala said.