Daily Times

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog said a week ago that more than 100 countries will have to meet higher standards on the protection of nuclear facilities and materials from now onwards. For doing so, of course, the countries would have to coerce themselves with certain sets of obligations that could be in form of treaties, international bindings, either legal or self imposed. For that matter along with many others, the most recent and blazing one is the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM), which in its absolute form has yet to enter into force.

At the outset, the CPPNM initially entered into force on February 8, 1987, and it is actually a legally binding international instrument in the area of physical protection of nuclear material. It establishes measures related to the prevention, detection and punishment of offences related to nuclear material. But on July 8, 2005, States Parties to the CPPNM adopted an Amendment to the CPPNM (a concern that refrained few countries from ratification), which expands the scope of the convention to cover nuclear facilities and nuclear material in peaceful use, storage and international as well as domestic transportation. The IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said that the amendment would help reduce the risk of a terrorist attack involving nuclear material, which could have catastrophic consequences.

Besides, recently, Nicaragua formally completed ratification of an amendment to the CPPNM. Pakistan too ratified the 2005 Amendment to the CPPNM just a few days ago; this means that enough states have ratified it for it to go into force. At large, 10 countries ratified the 2005 Amendment to the CPPNM in 2016 specifically, allowing it to reach the required two thirds necessary to enter into force. Those states are: Côte d’Ivoire ratified on February 10, Paraguay on March 11, New Zealand on March 18, Pakistan on March 24, Marshal Islands and Serbia on March 30, Azerbaijan on March 31 and, last but not the least, Cameroon, Montenegro and Kuwait ratified the amendment on April 1, 2016.

The convention was adopted by 152 countries a decade ago, and it had to be ratified by two thirds of them to go into effect. The amendment, intended to guard against threats such as smuggling and sabotage, makes it legally binding for countries to protect nuclear facilities as well as the domestic use, storage and transportation of nuclear material. The United States, Russia, India, Pakistan, and former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan are among the countries that have ratified the amendment, also acknowledged by the IAEA. Iran and North Korea are out of it so far.

The provisions to which the CPPNM obligates the parties to are given as: 1)… make specific arrangements and meet defined standards of physical protection for international shipments of nuclear material for peaceful purposes (plutonium, uranium 235, uranium 233 and irradiated fuel), according to Annexes I and II and IAEA INFCIRC/225; 2)… undertake not to export or import nuclear materials or to allow their transit through their territory unless they have received assurances that these materials will be protected during international transport in accordance with the levels of protection determined by the Convention; 3)… co-operate in the recovery and protection of stolen nuclear material, by sharing information on missing nuclear materials; 4)… criminalise specified acts, including misusing or threatening to misuse nuclear materials to harm the public; and 5)… prosecute or extradite those accused of committing such acts. States Parties undertake to include those offences as extraditable offences in every future extradition treaty to be concluded between them.

The CPPNM also presents itself for broader cooperation among countries on finding and recovering stolen or smuggled nuclear material. Likewise, it promotes international cooperation in the exchange of physical protection information. Nevertheless, a legal aspect of the convention and amendment is that only the states that have ratified it would be subject to relevant binding upon them, which actually is a matter of consternation since it has yet to be entered into force in large.

The writer is associated with the Strategic Vision Institute and can be contacted at beenishaltaf7@gmail.com