Verification and security of transformation to a nuclear-weapon-free world: the framework of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons presents complex challenges, including issues of verification and security. Verifying the transformation to a nuclear-weapon-free world (NWFW) is an adaptive, multi-stage process, involving various mechanisms and tasks for nuclear and non-nuclear weapon States, and monitoring a wide range of items and activities for increasing or decreasing nuclear weapons capability. Whether States find the Treaty verifiable depends on the available capabilities, but also on political assumptions and requirements. Verification plays an important role in the transformation towards a NWFW to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in a hostile environment where uncertainties are seen as threatening. Verification also helps to establish a viable international security landscape based on cooperation and trust that is able to address the complex implementation issues of nuclear weapons prohibition and elimination.