But what is the purpose of this multilateral treaty? The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as its full title suggests, aims at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres, said on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the NPT’s opening for signature, 24 May 2018 in Geneva:

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is an essential pillar of international peace and security, and the heart of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. Its unique status is based on its near universal membership, legally-binding obligations on disarmament, verifiable non-proliferation safeguards regime, and commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Thus the NPT is the essential pillar of the frail international disarmament regime. The Treaty not only demands from the signatories not to proliferate Nuclear Weapons but it also urges the Nuclear-Weapon States (NWS) to take effective measures to disarm themselves from their lethal arsenal. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is a landmark international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote co-operation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.

The NPT is a unique treaty in the universal body of international law: it represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the Nuclear-Weapon States.

While the list of the parties to the NPT opened for signatures July 1^st, 1968, the Treaty actually entered into force two years later in 1970. The provision for review conferences every five years (article VIII, paragraph 3) meant that on the fiftieth anniversary of the NPT’s entry into force, in 2020, we should have had the Tenth Review Conference. The Review Conference is going to take place before the end of summer in 2021 as explained above.

Why is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons so important? Simply because its membership coincides almost entirely with the UNO membership, that is to say 191 participating states including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which are all NWS. Consequently, the NPT is the most widely adhered to multilateral disarmament agreement. However, the second most populous country in the world, India, has not been admitted to the NPT as it has acquired nuclear weapons after the Treaty’s entry into force. India became a NWS in 1974.

Neighbouring Iran is a party to the NPT since 1970 but was found in non-compliance with its NPT safeguards agreement, and the status of its nuclear programme remains to this day in dispute, especially after the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a hard negotiated compromise between Iran on the one hand and the rest of the world. In the US Department of State view, however, ‘the JCPOA is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document. The JCPOA reflects political commitments between Iran, the P5+1, and the EU’. [The P5+1 include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: US, Russia, China UK and France plus Germany]. This is what Julia Frifield, the US Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, opined in 2015. Subsequently, Donald Trump pulled out from the Iran nuclear deal. Nevertheless, president-elect Joe Biden undertook to restore it.

In all frankness, the NPT in its fifty years of life, failed to deliver the goals for which it was established i.e. to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and further to disarm the Nuclear Weapon States. Be that as it may, and in the absence of any other legally binding multilateral agreement, the NPT continues to be ‘the heart of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime’.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) formed in 1996, with the aim of limiting nuclear weapons tests, chronicles the first Chinese nuclear test as follows:

On 16 October 1964, the People’s Republic of China conducted its first nuclear test, making it the fifth nuclear-armed state after the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. China had initiated its nuclear weapons programme in the mid-1950s, after the Korean war. At the outset, its efforts were backed by substantial Soviet assistance, including advisors and technical equipment. Research on nuclear weapon design began at the Institute of Physics and Atomic Energy in Beijing, and a uranium enrichment plant was constructed in Lanzhou to produce weapon-grade uranium.

With the cooling of Sino-Soviet relations in the late 1950s, the Soviet Union withdrew all assistance. In June 1959, Nikita Khrushchev decided to refuse the provision of a prototype bomb to the Chinese. This rupture prompted China to embark on its own nuclear testing project, code-named 59-6 after the month in which it was initiated.

Operation 59-6 was carried out at the Lop Nur test site in the Gobi desert of Xinjiang province, Western China, close to the ancient Silk Route. An implosion-type device was mounted from the top of a steel tower, producing a yield of 22 kilotons. It was the first of a total of 45 Chinese nuclear tests, all of which were conducted at Lop Nur. Twenty three of these tests were atmospheric and 22 underground, the yields ranging from 1 kiloton to 4 megatons. On 17 June 1967, just three years after operation 59-6 – faster than other nuclear weapon possessors – China detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

The effects of China’s nuclear testing on human health, animals and the environment are largely unexplored due to the lack of publically available official data. The Xinjiang region is the largest Chinese administrative division and home to 20 million people of different ethnic backgrounds.  A study carried out by the Japanese physicist Professor Jun Takada suggests that peak levels of radioactivity from China’s large-yield tests exceeded that of the 1986 Chernobyl reactor accident and seriously affected local populations.

In 2008, China started to pay undisclosed subsidies to personnel involved in nuclear testing. Compensation, however, has not been extended to civilian residents of the Xinjiang area, downwind of the Lop Nur test site.

China conducted its last test on 29 July 1996, only two months prior to signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) on 24 September 1996. However, it has yet to ratify the CTBT, a step that is mandatory for the Treaty’s entry into force. Ratifications of seven other nuclear-capable states are also missing: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Egypt, India, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and the United States.

[Source : https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-times/16-october-1964-first-chinese-nuclear-test/]

In the context of the nuclear disarmament it is interesting to note that in a few months, not later than April 2021, the NPT Review Conference is due to take place. The 2020 NPT Review Conference has been postponed due to the covid-19 pandemic.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons opened for signature in 1968. the The NPT Treaty entered into force in 1970. Since then, the NPT has been the cornerstone of global nuclear non-proliferation regime. 191 States parties have joined the Treaty, including the five NWS, making the NPT the most widely adhered to, multilateral disarmament agreement.

In a nutshell, there are two legs to the NPT: the first leg pertains to the commitment of the states parties not to proliferate NWs, the second leg asks NWS to take measures in order to decommission their nuclear weapons arsenal. In the past fifty years of the Treaty’s existence emphasis has been solely placed on the non-proliferation provision as NWS have generally failed to report on nuclear disarmament steps.

As an independent think tank, the International Security Forum has been participating in the annual conferences, deliberations and consultative meetings organized by the EU Non-Proliferation Consortium, The European Network of Independent Think Tanks since its launch in 2011.

In July 2010 with Council Decision 2010/430/CFSP on establishing a European network of independent non- proliferation think tanks in support of the implementation of the EU strategy against Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Council of the European Union decided to create a network bringing together foreign policy institutions and research centres from across the EU to encourage political and security-related dialogue and the long-term discussion of measures to combat the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems. EU Council Decision 2014/129/CFSP of the 10th March 2014 “promoting the European network of independent non-proliferation think tanks in support of the implementation of the EU Strategy against Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction” provided support for three further years of EU Non-Proliferation Consortium activity.

The 2016 EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Conference discussed in plenary sessions the following themes:

1. Disarmament & Deterrence – Bridging the Divide
2. The Impact of Technological Change on Security and Non-Proliferation and
3. The Iran Accord One Year On

Special sessions deliberated, inter alia, on the following subjects:

Prospects for Arms Control and Disarmament in the Middle East, The Threat of Non-State Actors, The Role of Conventional Arms Control in Light of Pressing Security Challenges, Combatting the Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons, Security on the Korean Peninsula, The Future of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Defence – Asia, Middle East and Europe, The Utility of Sanctions in Non-Proliferation Policy.

Dr. Yiorghos Leventis held, at the margins of the conference, a number of private meetings discussing pressing security issues troubling the Eastern Mediterranean – MENA region.