United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

Biological weapons can take many forms and have been designed for a variety of purposes, including-but not limited to-attacks on human populations. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention has played a key role in the comprehensive prohibition and prevention of such weapons over the past 50 years. To sustain this prohibition into the future, states parties to the treaty must carefully monitor advances in science and technology, while also remaining vigilant against the risks posed by older, outdated forms of biological weapons.

In the face of space's ever-increasing importance to humankind, the ongoing development of counterspace capabilities by several States creates new forms of threats to space assets and infrastructure. As such, policy options to reduce or prevent the weaponization of space through arms control, disarmament and wider governance are increasingly important to ensure the security and sustainability of space operations. To inform policymaking in this area, it is useful to understand the options available for monitoring and verification in space. To explore the potential for verification for space security further, this report examines some of the tools and technologies of relevance to verification in space and how these tools could be applied to verify and monitor present and future frameworks related to space security.

ABSTRACT The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a nuclear-armed state that joins the treaty with two options. One is to join after eliminating its weapons and nuclear-weapon program. Alternatively, the state can join the treaty while still possessing nuclear weapons. In this case it must eliminate its weapons in accordance with a time-bound plan approved by the state parties. This option, known as “join and disarm,” provides the disarming state with an opportunity to join the treaty immediately after making the decision to do so and to complete disarmament within a defined time frame. However, it also creates a challenge for the verification program, which has to find a way to protect proliferation-sensitive information about nuclear weapons. This article suggests a verification arrangement that does not require access to sensitive information during the weapons elimination process. This is achieved by containing nuclear weapons and all dismantlement activities in a dedicated segment of the nuclear complex of the disarming state. The only information the disarming state releases at the start of the process is the total amount of fissile materials placed in the segment. The dismantlement of weapons is verified by accounting for the fissile materials that are removed from the segment in unclassified forms.

Gender approaches to cybersecurity explores how gender norms shape specific activities pertaining to cybersecurity design, defence and response. In each of these three pillars, the research identifies distinct dimensions of cyber-related activities that have gendered implications and, thus, need to be considered from a gender perspective. The report proposes recommendations for the incorporation of gender considerations throughout international cybersecurity policy and practice, so as to ensure that cybersecurity improves the security of people of all gender identities and expressions, as well as international peace and security. The ultimate conclusion is that these two levels of security cannot be separated.

Abstract Since the adoption of the UN Charter, states have concluded numerous international disarmament treaties. What are their core features, and are there any trends in their design? This article discusses the five global disarmament treaties, namely the 1971 Biological Weapons Convention, the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions and the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It first considers how a broad set of prohibitions of activities with respect to specific weapons has evolved over time. Then, it analyses the treaties’ implementation and compliance support mechanisms as well as their procedural aspects regarding entry into force and withdrawal. This article finds that a pattern has developed over the last two decades to outlaw all and any use of weapons by disarmament treaty, without first instituting a prohibition on their use under international humanitarian law (IHL). It also finds that reporting obligations, meetings of States Parties and treaty-related institutions are generally created, either directly by treaty or by subsequent state party decisions. Finally, there is a tendency to make the treaty’s entry into force easier, and the withdrawal more difficult. It is argued that these trends arise from states’ attempt to establish more easily disarmament treaties, design more robust disarmament treaties and more effectively protect civilians. The article concludes by reflecting whether these trends form the basis of a new branch of international law—international disarmament law—and discusses them in the context of emerging weapons and technologies.

The achievement of past international treaties prohibiting anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions showed that unpropitious political situations for dealing with the effects of problematic weapons could be transformed into concrete, legally binding actions through humanitarian-inspired initiatives. Although there is now renewed concern about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, some policy makers dispute the relevance of these past processes. This article examines how and why cluster munitions became widely reframed as unacceptable weapons, and the nature and significance of functional similarities with contemporary efforts of civil society activists to instigate humanitarian reframing of nuclear weapons and promote the logic of a ban treaty in view of its norm-setting value among states. In the case of cluster munitions, the weapon in question was signified as unacceptable in moral and humanitarian law terms because of its pattern of harm to civilians with reference to demonstrable evidence of the consequences of use. Ideational reframing was instigated by civil society actors, and introduced doubts into the minds of some policy-makers about weapons they had previously considered as unproblematic. This is relevant to the current discourse on managing and eliminating nuclear weapons in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which there is dissonance between the rhetoric of those states claiming to be responsible humanitarian powers and their continued dependence on nuclear weapons despite questions about the utility or acceptability of these arms.