Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2019-2020
By the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor
Tracking the progress of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor,* published by Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), has identified 31 mostly European states—including Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, and Spain—as “nuclear-weapon-complicit states.” These are states that do not themselves possess nuclear weapons but have outsourced their nuclear postures to one or more nuclear-armed allies through arrangements of extended nuclear [collaboration], or “nuclear umbrellas.” They endorse or acquiesce in the continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons on their behalf.
It is not only the nine nuclear-armed states that stand between the international community and its longstanding goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. So do the 31 nuclear-weapon-complicit states. Their role in assisting, encouraging, and inducing continued retention of nuclear weapons had not been given much attention prior to the adoption of the Ban Treaty by the UN in 2017, says the editor of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor, Grethe Lauglo Østern of NPA.
The nine nuclear-armed states and the 31 nuclear-weapon-complicit states do not support the TPNW, and some of them actively oppose it. However, the great majority of the world’s states stand behind the Treaty. Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor counts a total of 135 countries as TPNW supporters.
As of November 2019, 34 countries are full “States Parties” to the TPNW, while another 48 have signed it, but not yet ratified. In addition, 55 countries have voted in favor of the Treaty in the UN, but not yet taken steps to adhere to it, says Østern. *See: https://banmonitor.org/
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