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TPNW Working Groups Advance Treaty Implementation
June 2023
By Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernández
A newly established scientific advisory group for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) met for the first time in March and elected Zia Mian and Patricia Lewis as co-chairs. Mian is a physicist and director of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Lewis leads the International Security Program at Chatham House.
The group of 15 nuclear weapons experts was nominated by TPNW states-parties and appointed by Juan Ramon de la Fuente Ramirez of Mexico, the president-designate of the second meeting of states-parties, which is scheduled for Nov. 27-Dec. 1. The group was established during the first meeting of state-parties in 2022 with the purpose of reporting on the latest cutting-edge research on nuclear weapons, including the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons use and nuclear disarmament verification. (See ACT, July/August 2022.)
Meanwhile, experts and states-parties from the TPNW informal working group on the elimination of nuclear weapons, led by Mexico and New Zealand, met in February and March to discuss pathways toward verifying the elimination of such weapons.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the verification issue and other questions also will be studied by the scientific advisory group. The second meeting of TPNW states-parties, in New York this fall, will assess the progress made in accordance with the nuclear ban treaty’s implementation. Some 68 countries have ratified the TPNW.