This roundtable will discuss current nuclear risks, prospects for nuclear risk reduction measures, and the growing momentum for multilateral negotiations in 2017 on a global treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.
Threats of nuclear weapons proliferation, deployment - and possibly even use - have increased due to global and regional conflicts, including in Europe and the Middle East. At the same time there is an increasing awareness that any use of nuclear weapons - whether by accident, miscalculation or terrorist intent - would create unprecedented humanitarian, environmental, economic and political consequences.
Diplomacy, through cooperative security organisations such as the OSCE and the United Nations, can help address or resolve these conflicts and facilitate nuclear risk reduction and disarmament. The recent nuclear control and verification agreement with Iran is one positive example.
The UN has established an Open Ended Working Group on Nuclear Disarmament, open to all governments, parliamentarians and civil society, to discuss measures to reduce nuclear risks and commence negotiations on nuclear disarmament. At the May session, a group of non-nuclear States proposed the start of multilateral negotiations on a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons. There appears to be sufficient momentum to start these negotiations in 2017.
Program
Chair: Dr Hedy Fry MP (Canada)
Head of the Canadian delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
Opening remarks: Christine Muttonen MP (Austria)
Vice-President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
Speakers:
Paul Dewar (Canada)
Co-President of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament
Margaret Kiener Nellen MP (Switzerland)
Deputy Head of the Switzerland delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
Jean-Marie Collin (France)
Co-founder of Initiatives pour le Désarmenent Nucléaire
Contact: alyn@pnnd.org
www.pnnd.org