What is the problem?

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive and indiscriminate weapons ever created. They pose a constant threat to human survival. Their use has catastrophic consequences that span decades and cross generations. In most conceivable cases it is not feasible to build a response capacity that would be able to address the suffering that even the detonation of a single nuclear weapon would cause.

Nuclear weapons also breed fear and mistrust among nations, and the high cost of producing, maintaining and modernising them diverts public funds from health care, education, disaster relief and other vital services.

Nuclear weapons have not been used in conflict since 1945, but the world has on several occasions been brought to the brink of nuclear war or nuclear accidents through miscommunication, misunderstandings and technical malfunctions.

The impact of the testing of more than 2,000 nuclear explosive devices continues to cause significant harm today. In continuing to rely on the perceived benefits of nuclear deterrence, the nuclear-armed states and their nuclear-dependent allies are actively choosing enormous, permanent insecurity not only for themselves but for all states.

What is the current situation?

Nuclear disarmament has been a central goal of the international community since the United Nations General Assembly adopted its first-ever resolution in 1946, but a lack of will on the part of the nuclear-armed states and states with arrangements of extended nuclear deterrence still stands between the international community and the fulfilment of this goal. They stifle efforts to fulfil Article VI of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which obligates States Parties to pursue in good faith, at an early date, effective measures to stop the arms race and achieve nuclear disarmament. There are more than 13,000 nuclear warheads in the world today, possessed by a total of nine nuclear-armed states. All are investing heavily in the modernisation of their nuclear forces, with the apparent intention of retaining them for many decades to come.

On 7 July 2017, an overwhelming majority of the world’s countries voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – a landmark global agreement that outlaw nuclear weapons and establishes a long-overdue framework for achieving their elimination. By prohibiting its states parties from developing, testing, possessing, hosting, using, and threatening to use nuclear weapons, as well as assisting, encouraging, or inducing those prohibited acts, the TPNW codifies the norms and actions that are needed to create and maintain a world free of nuclear weapons. A country that possesses nuclear weapons may join the treaty, so long as it agrees to remove its weapons from operational status immediately and to destroy them in a verifiable and irreversible manner, and in accordance with a legally binding, time-bound plan.

What is NPA’s call?

NPA welcomes the TPNW as an important step towards a world free of nuclear weapons, and endorses the call of the Nobel Prize-winning organisation, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), for all countries to sign and ratify the TPNW. NPA also calls for universal adherence to all of the other components in the legal architecture on disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

What does NPA do?

NPA is a member of ICAN and is also represented on ICAN’s International Steering Group. We thus work at the core of the current international NGO efforts to mobilise people in all countries to inspire, persuade, and pressure their governments to initiate negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

With Norway being a NATO member that encourages its nuclear-armed allies to continue to possess and potentially use nuclear weapons on its behalf, NPA places particular emphasis on putting pressure on the government of Norway to reject nuclear deterrence and sign and ratify the TPNW. By seeking protection through extended nuclear deterrence, Norway is one of the countries that legitimises a weapon of mass destruction, thereby making nuclear disarmament more difficult and proliferation of nuclear weapons more likely.

NPA also publishes the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor, which was established in 2018 and tracks progress towards a world without nuclear weapons and highlights activities that stand between the international community and the fulfilment of its goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons. In measuring progress, the Ban Monitor uses the TPNW as the primary yardstick.