It has finally been announced that the five-year conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, originally scheduled for April 27 to May 22, is postponed to dates yet to be determined, no later than April 2021. Some states, no doubt including the United States, are pressing for the Review Conference to be held later this year. But what really makes sense is for it to be held in spring 2021. No NPT meeting to prepare for the next review conference is held in the first year after a review conference, so there is an opening in the NPT schedule.

A Security Council meeting held February 26 shed considerable light on states' positions going into the Review Conference. While things could shift, hopefully in a better direction, by the time of the postponed conference, the basic dynamics then are likely to be much the same. Danielle Samler produced a report on the meeting, published by our friends and colleagues at Reaching Critical Will; see also the UN report. Some notable points:

• South Africa observed that there has been a lack of urgency and seriousness in the area of nuclear disarmament. It urged states not to roll back or reinterpret commitments made since 1995, underlining that the success of the 2020 Review Conference depends on those commitments being upheld. South Africa is influential among non-nuclear weapon states and has ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

• China called for safeguarding arms control mechanisms, working together on rules for cyberspace and artificial intelligence, and exercising restraint in strategic capacity building. China also favored reiteration of the Reagan-Gorbachev statement that nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought. So far the United States has resisted that step.

• Russia and the United States advanced familiar positions. Russia said the breakdowns in arms control and non-proliferation agreements are a result of one state (the United States) trying to dominate the world and impose its rules on others at the expense of international law. The United States emphasized the value of the NPT in curbing the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons. That in turn, the US said, helped to facilitate reduction in US and Russian nuclear arsenals to levels not seen since the 1950s.

As John Burroughs commented in a March 4 Inter Press Service article, right now the United States, Russia, and China have nothing to offer in the way of nuclear arms reductions, actual or prospective, despite the commitment they made at the 2010 NPT Review Conference "to undertake further efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate all types of nuclear weapons". The failure to fulfill this and other commitments made at the 1995, 2000, and 2010 conferences is the single most important factor casting a pall over the upcoming 2020 Review Conference. A possible meeting later this year of the five NPT nuclear weapon states (US, Russia, UK, France, China) to discuss arms control and related issues is an opportunity to move forward with disarmament negotiations going beyond the US-Russian relationship. Nothing less is required by the NPT Article VI disarmament obligation.

Seth Shelden at press conference, City Hall, preceding the hearing.

nuclear weapons measures. One would require divestment of City pension funds from nuclear weapons producers; the other would establish an advisory committee to examine reaffirming and strengthening the City's status, dating back to 1983, as a nuclear weapons-free zone. While it remains to be worked out how the Mayor's Office would host the advisory committee, prospects for adoption of the two measures appear to be quite good.

     

Human rights: In October 2018, the UN Human Rights Committee found that threat and use of nuclear weapons is incompatible with respect for the right to life set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a major treaty. Since then, LCNP has publicized this finding in multiple settings, for example a February 19 Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament side-event to a meeting of the International Parliamentary Union at the United Nations. We also will build on the finding by contributing to reviews of states' records in international human rights bodies. Our first such contribution was an October 2019 comment entitled "US Nuclear Weapons Policy Violates the Right to Life" submitted to the UN Human Rights Council review of the United States.

 "I was 20 in 1945," Peter Weiss, United Nations Academic Impact: J. Michael Adams Lecture and Conversation, November 20, 2019 video , text. Peter is LCNP President Emeritus.