OUVRAGE : C. Maia, J.-M. Collin (eds.), Nuclear Weapons and International Law: Visions of a Plural World

Catherine MAIA, Jean-Marie COLLIN

In a world aff­ected by the Covid-19 global pandemic, where more financial resources would be needed for medicines instead of weapons, all nuclear States – whether parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or not, whether democratic or authoritarian regimes – keep modernising their nuclear arsenal.

Despite this attitude, which highlights the crisis of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, since the launch of the “Humanitarian Initiative” in 2010, nuclear disarmament has been at the centre of the action of an increasing number of countries, with the strong support of NGOs.

This phenomenon gave unprecedented visibility and significance to the topic, and allowed the entry into force in 2021 of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, in order to achieve their total elimination. 

These recent developments show that there are hopes and challenges in a pluralistic world where nuclear and non-nuclear weapons States continue to confront each other in this highly sensitive area. It is against this background that readers are off­ered a set of di­fferent perspectives on these weapons of mass destruction, authored by a multidisciplinary team of contributors from a wide array of geographical areas.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Contributors

Abbreviations
 

Foreword, Rafaâ Ben Achour
 

Catherine Maia, Jean-Marie Collin, Introduction – Nuclear Weapons: Normative Evolution in a Plural World, 

PART I
PLURAL GEOGRAPHICAL VISIONS

Eric Bilale Monga Mbambe, The African Continent as an Actor in Nuclear Disarmament 

Amel El Mejri, Arab Countries and Nuclear Weapons: An Essay to Clarify an Indeterminate Relationship 

Vidya Shankar Aiyar, A Nuclear Weapons-Free and Non-Violent World Order: India’s Hype or Hope? 

Alonso E. Illueca, Rethinking the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Membership to the Non-Proliferation Treaty 

Carlos Umaña, The Role of Non-Nuclear-Weapon States in Nuclear Disarmament: The Case of Latin America

PART II
PLURAL CONCEPTUAL VISIONS

Erika Hennequet, Divergent Interpretations and Coherence of the Non-Proliferation Regime in International Law: A Case Study of the Impact of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime 

Rob van Riet, Divestment in the Domain of Arms Control 

Arunjana Das, Sequential Law-Making in Nuclear Disarmament: Empowering Non-Nuclear-Weapon States and Non-State Actors 

Frederick Cowell, State Shaming and the Social Theory of Peremptory Norms in International Law: The Possibility of the Prohibition of Nuclear Proliferation as a Jus Cogens Norm 

Christophe Germann, Nuclear Disarmament: An “Idiot”’s Declaration – Universal Deterrence on the Road to a “City of the World”

Afterword, Sérgio Duarte

Abstracts 

Catherine MAIA, Jean-Marie COLLIN (eds.), Nuclear Weapons and International Law: Visions of a Plural World,  Lisbon, EUL, 2021 (295 pp.)

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