marywareham

Draft arms trade treaty moves on, but where?

On Friday evening (27 July 2012) at precisely the same time as the spectacle of the Olympics opening ceremony was kicking off in London, across the Atlantic in the basement of the United Nations another spectacle was unfolding as talks aimed at regulating arms transfers collapsed. The president of diplomatic negotiations tasked with concluding […]

New Zealand depleted uranium ban fails by one vote

A private member’s bill to ban depleted uranium (DU) was defeated in the New Zealand Parliament during its first debate on 27 June 2012 by a vote of 60-60, failing to achieve the positive majority necessary to forward it for Select Committee review. The draft legislation was opposed by the governing National and Act […]

The Conference on Disarmament’s problem

Established in 1979 as the main multilateral disarmament negotiating forum for the international community, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) this week held a debate on its future status. Since the CD concluded the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, it has not been able to resume serious substantial work on any issue. […]

From napalm to white phosphorus

The photo of the naked, crying little girl is unforgettable. On 8 June 1972, Nick Ut of Associated Press photographed nine-year-old Kim Phuc running down a road in Vietnam after an air strike on her village using incendiary weapons. According to AP, the naked sticky napalm had “melted through her clothes and layers of […]

Legislating the ban on nuclear weapons

On 31 May 2012, the New Zealand House of Representatives approved a cross-party parliamentary motion celebrating the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act.

New Zealand became one of the first countries in the world to legislate a ban on nuclear weapons when the […]