The Nuclear Ban Treaty and the cloud over Trudeau’s ‘feminist’ foreign policy

Abstract

The Canadian Liberal government of Justin Trudeau claims to be ushering in a new era of a “feminist” foreign policy. While serious steps have been taken in this direction, this paper focuses on the government’s opposition to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a treaty that has been negotiated with a logic and language explicitly linking issues of disarmament and gender, reframing “security” as fundamentally a question not of state but of human (and environmental) security. Ignoring its own public statements that repeatedly link women with peace and security, the Trudeau government’s opposition to the Treaty exposes the hollowness of its claims.