Latest developments
At the Tenth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in August 2022, Palestine said that the TPNW was ‘long overdue, as there can be no rational justification for the privileged status granted, de facto, to nuclear weapons over other weapons of mass destruction’. It said that their use and threat of use ‘have always been illegal’.2 In a closing statement to the NPT Review Conference, Palestine and 64 other TPNW supporters urged ‘all states committed to attain and maintain a world without nuclear weapons to join the TPNW without delay’.3
Marking the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on 26 September 2022, Palestine noted that ‘it has taken seven decades’ – since the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the formation of the United Nations – ‘to finally formalise a just treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons to complement the NPT and help advance its goals’. It added: ‘There is no need for more stark reminders of the urgent and long-overdue imperative to rid the world of one of the most inhumane, illegal, dangerous, and indiscriminate weapons ever created,’ it added. ‘We reject the fatalism that the existence of nuclear weapons is a reality and a necessity and we also reject that their spread is inevitable and unpreventable’.4
Recommendations
- Palestine should continue to encourage other states to adhere to the TPNW.
- Palestine should ensure that all the TPNW obligations are implemented domestically, through legal, administrative, and other necessary measures.
- Palestine should conclude and bring into force an Additional Protocol with the IAEA. @Palestine should also sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).