COMMENTARY / Japan

Hiroshima as permanent host of NPT review conference?

Japan’s status as the only country to be attacked with nuclear weapons makes it an easy decision

There is general agreement that with the ineffectiveness and crumbling of nuclear arms control measures, continued weapons modernization efforts and rising geopolitical tensions, risks of a nuclear conflict have intensified. | REUTERS

By Ramesh Thakur
Contributing writer

Jan 16, 2022

The year 2020 was the 50th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty entering into force and therefore a critical moment in time for the review conference, conducted every five years, to have been held. The last successful review conference was way back in 2010.

The world order has changed fundamentally since then, mostly for the worse. However, not all developments were negative. In 2017 the international community adopted the The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) to give the five NPT nuclear weapon states (NWS) an incentive to hurry on their obligation to negotiate nuclear disarmament.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 caused postponements of the 2020 NPT review conference to 2021 and then to this month. Meanwhile, the TPNW entered into legal force in January 2021. The annual Hiroshima Round Table, too, was abandoned in 2020 and convened just before Christmas last year in order to assess the state of the nuclear world ahead of the NPT review conference and the first meeting of the states parties of the TPNW in March. Participants from Japan, Asia, Australia, Europe and the U.S. met virtually and a chair’s statement was issued after the meeting.