There is a pdf out now published by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) entitled Rethinking General and Complete Disarmament in the Twenty-first Century.
The article by John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and Director, International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, United Nations Office, entitled "Legal aspects of general and complete disarmament", is worth reading for anyone who is looking to foster a great transition to a sustainable world.
There is no way the nations can agree on the huge changes that need to be made so long as we live so demonstrably in a dog-eat-dog world, a world where the major nations threaten to destroy entire cities with their nuclear arms. Where is the trust in such a world? Just now, look at Aleppo and the distrust between the U.S. and Russia that has led to such a horror.
But to achieve nuclear disarmament, we need to achieve general and complete disarmament. This is the point of Burrough's concluding paragraph:
"As a matter of law, the obligation to negotiate the elimination of nuclear weapons is independent of the obligation to negotiate general and complete disarmament. However, the following point strongly to a practical, mutually reinforcing relationship between nuclear disarmament and other weapons control efforts: early General Assembly resolutions; article VI itself; the flurry of related negotiations at the end of the cold war on nuclear reductions, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe; and the current impasse in nuclear arms reductions arising in part from the United States push for missile defences and its growing strategic conventional capabilities. To succeed in abolishing nuclear arms, and for other compelling reasons as well, a renewed focus on general and complete disarmament is imperative."
Also of great interest in the article is the role of "customary international law". Who knew there even was such a concept? But it is of huge importance, since one of the great hurdles humanity faces is how to get around a legal system that divides the world into three parts (;-), rapacious nations, rapacious individuals and rapacious corporations, leaving very little room for the commons that are rapidly being eaten away, a direction that leads to a dismal future for humanity and the world. Maybe "customary international law" gives us an avenue to protect the commons. Just thinking out loud.
#nuclear_disarm #gr8transition #un_goals
