The Outlook for Nuclear Disarmament

Tim Wright, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Organised by AIIA Victoria

August 6 marks the 75th anniversary of the first atomic bombing, at Hiroshima.

75 years on, the world still faces the grave threat of the existence of nuclear weapons.

The US has pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty collapsed last year. The last remaining arms-control treaty between the US and Russia, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), will expire in February 2021.

Now the US has indicated that it might resume testing of nuclear weapons. That would be highly provocative to Russia and China, not to mention North Korea.

On 7 July 2017 – following a decade of advocacy by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and its partners – an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations adopted a landmark global agreement to ban nuclear weapons, known officially as the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It will enter into legal force once 50 nations have signed and ratified it.

What are the prospects for extending the New START treaty? How is the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons progressing? What is Australia’s position?

AIIA Victoria invites you to join Tim Wright, Treaty Coordinator of ICAN to discuss the outlook for nuclear disarmament.

Tim Wright is Treaty Coordinator of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons". He helped establish ICAN in 2006 and has served the campaign in various capacities since then. His current role involves coordinating efforts to secure signatures and ratifications for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which 122 countries voted to adopt at the United Nations in 2017.

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