On the 10th of March we hosted our 25th Disarm Kōrero on the Nuclear Ban celebrating its 5th Anniversary. Our two guest speakers were Dell Higgie and Marianne Hanson.
Dell Higgie is a former NZ Disarmament Ambassador, and whom was Vice-President of the UN Conference that negotiated the TPNW in 2017. Dell played a central role in the creation of the TPNW and has been following its progress in the five years since it's Entry into Force (EIF).
Marianne Hanson is Honorary Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland, Australia. She has taught and researched in the field of international security, focusing on arms control, disarmament, international organizations, and international law, for over 30 years. Her most recent book is Challenging nuclearism: a humanitarian framework to reshape the global nuclear order, published in May 2022 by Manchester University Press. Marianne is currently Co-Chair of ICAN, Australia.
Dell Higgie gave an insightful address recollecting the Treaty negotiations at the United Nations in 2017 and what the New Zealand Government was hoping to achieve through the process. She discussed how the one of the key aims was to 'close the legal gap' for nuclear weapons - other weapons of mass destruction were banned, but at that point, nuclear weapons were not. She commented how they needed to negotiate something reasonable and workable, that could be added onto in time. She discussed how they didn't see a need for a verification regime at that point in time, as none of the nuclear weapon states were likely to sign on for some time, and they also thought that adding in items on transist and investment would make it impractical. Dell thought that states parties needed to coninute the hard work on universalisation to bring more countries on board, and also that work on the Trust Fund needed to continue and beomce operational. She thought the Scrientic Advosory Committee work was a big positive to come out of the Treaty process.
Marianne commented that despite the very difficult present time globally (in the midst of the Iran war - where two nuclear armed countries had just attacked a non-nuclear armed country), that actually we were in a better place because of the TPNW, and we needed to anchor our hopes for the future around this Treaty. She reminded us that 99 countries have signed on and this will continue to increase over time. She noted how fragile the NPT was and how dominated this forum was by the nuclear weapon states. However, she reminded us that the TPNW & the process leading up to it had given voice to people who hadn't been heard - people, victims, affected States, and had given agency to these voices - and big positive legal steps had been taken, such as the articles on victim assistance and environmental remediation, and the Scientific Advisory Committee. She said that the TPNW challenges the nuclear weapon order, it sets up a different context, and without this new order it would be harder to make progress. Other positive wins that have come out of the TPNW were that even though divestment is not directly outlawerd, it has opened the door to a lot of progress on this front.
We thank both of our speakers for their time and for sharing their deep expertise on the subject matter with us.
The recording of the session is available on request, please email our team if you'd like access to it.
Learn more about the Nuclear Ban Treaty here: https://www.icanw.org/the_treaty
