On 21 January 2014, the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP) and the Embassy of Mexico in Vienna hosted a briefing and discussion of the second international Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons to be held in Nayarit, Mexico, 13-14 February 2014. Keynote speakers were Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba Góngora, permanent representative of Mexico to the international organizations in Vienna, and Ambassador Alexander Kmentt, director for disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs. The event was moderated by Elena Sokova, executive director of the VCDNP.
Ambassador de Alba began the event by briefing the audience on the upcoming conference, which is a follow-up to the 2013 Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Oslo, Norway. Although the discussion on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons within the framework of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was broached by only a small number of states during the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the number of states endorsing this framework continues to grow and now includes more than two thirds of the NPT state parties. The discussion also continues outside of formal NPT and UN meetings.
The 2013 Oslo meeting—the first ever international conference with a specific focus on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons—gathered participants from nearly 130 states, in addition to international organizations and civil society. The Nayarit conference will continue working toward the same general goals as Oslo—examination of the health, environmental, and human security aspects of nuclear weapons, education of the public, and progress toward nuclear disarmament—but intends to further expand the discussion, particularly with regard to the long-term effects of the use of nuclear weapons. Ambassador de Alba indicated that conference organizers hope for the widest possible participation, including civil society as well as the NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), which did not participate in the 2013 Oslo conference. He declined, however, to speculate whether any of these states would indeed participate.
Ambassador Kmentt followed by providing an overview of the development of the campaign to address the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. In his view, the conferences grew out of a re-energizing of the issues that started with the 2009 Prague speech by US President Barack Obama, which was in part framed by humanitarian considerations, as well as an April 2010 statement by Jakob Kellenberger, then-president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in which he argued that the "debate [about nuclear weapons] must ultimately be about human beings, about the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law." Following these two powerful declarations, states began to jointly issue statements on these humanitarian consequences and implications: sixteen states signed on to such joint statements at the 2012 NPT Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting, followed by thirty-four states at the 2012 UN General Assembly First Committee meeting, eighty states did so at the 2013 NPT Prep Com, and, most recently, 125 states at the 2013 UN General Assembly First Committee meeting, with sixteen additional states signing an alternative statement. Together, these statements and the conferences demonstrate that non-nuclear weapon states and civil society have seized the issue of humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons as a narrative, strengthening nuclear weapon discussions in the context of global health, the environment, global economics, and development, and re-energizing the nuclear disarmament debate.
Ambassador Kmentt remarked that the absence of the nuclear weapon states at the Oslo conference had sent a negative message, reinforcing the view that they do not take their NPT Article VI disarmament obligations seriously. The ambassador mentioned that, at the 2014 PrepCom, the nuclear weapon states are expected to present their first reports as required by Action 5 of the 2010 Action Plan adopted at the Review Conference, and that these reports will be an opportunity for the nuclear weapon states to demonstrate their commitment to disarmament. Non-nuclear weapon states will expect these reports to include substantive information on progress toward disarmament, to include changes in nuclear doctrine, reducing operational readiness of nuclear weapons, long-term reduction in investment in nuclear weapons, increases in transparency, and progress toward the entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Ambassador Kmentt concluded by stating that attention to the negative aspects of nuclear weapons strengthens the cause of disarmament while attempts to downplay the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons detract from efforts to eliminate them.
