The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, co-chairs today at the Palacio de Viana, in Madrid, the fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Stockholm Initiative, the instrument of the international community to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 and boost nuclear disarmament.
For this reason, González Laya will have an intense day that will begin with a working breakfast with the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Achim Steiner, and will continue with bilateral meetings with counterparts from Germany, Heiko Maas; Sweden, Ann Linde; and Jordan, Ayman Safadi. This will be followed by the Lunch and Ministerial Meeting of the Stockholm Initiative, which will conclude with a joint press conference by the ministers of Spain, Germany and Sweden, the three countries currently co-chairing the Initiative. All these meetings will be held at the Palacio de Viana.
The meeting takes place in the midst of a growing international strategic tension which “has caused, on the one hand, a slowdown in nuclear disarmament efforts, through which the aim is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, and, on the other hand, new actors threaten to acquire this type of weapons”, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In this context, and with the aim of reinforcing the NPT regime, Spain participates, together with fifteen other countries (Argentina, Canada, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland), in the Stockholm Initiative for Nuclear Disarmament, an instrument adopted by the international community in 2019 to try to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote nuclear disarmament and encourage cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Every five years, all States Parties meet to discuss steps that can be taken to advance these objectives.
Foreign ministers held two previous meetings in 2019 and 2020 in Stockholm and Berlin, respectively, with the aim of preparing for the tenth NPT Review Conference (RevCon), scheduled for 2020 and coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its entry into force. The 2020 meeting agreed on a Political Declaration and 22 concrete and realistic steps, called stepping stones, which became the proposal of the members of the Stockholm Initiative to advance the goals of the NPT.
These measures cover issues such as encouraging further reductions in nuclear arsenals, moving towards the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), promoting the negotiation of an agreement banning the production of fissile material for military purposes, the establishment of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East or greater involvement of youth in the cause of nuclear disarmament, among many other issues.
The documents have been submitted to the RevCon for discussion at the RevCon and to influence the positions of other countries. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the RevCon was postponed, allowing a new Ministerial Meeting to be held in Amman in January 2021 with the aim of renewing political commitment and adopting new measures to support the conference.
