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Report | 10 February 2021

Organisational matters relating to the postponed tenth (2020) NPT Review Conference

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Tariq Rauf |Former Head of Verification and Security Policy Office at the International Atomic Energy Agency

NATO NPT Nuclear Arms Control Nuclear Security Nuclear Weapons Global Security
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The tenth review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was scheduled to take place at United Nations headquarters from 27 April to 22 May 2020. With the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the conference was rescheduled to 4 to 29 January 2021 and then again postponed to 2 to 27 August 2021.

This report by Tariq Rauf, former Head of Verification and Security Policy at the International Atomic Energy Agency, discusses organisational matters relating to the 2020 review conference, its postponement to 2021, and the proposal to convene the conference in 2022 in Vienna, Austria. It argues that NPT States parties must seriously contemplate convening the postponed 2020 review conference in 2022, as well as future NPT conferences, in Vienna, where the intangible “spirit of Vienna”, a “benevolent genie”, and Gemütlichkeit (cosiness) can work in mysterious ways to foster harmony out of discord.

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The opinions articulated above represent the views of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Leadership Network or any of its members. The ELN’s aim is to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time.

Image: Flickr, Norway UN (New York)

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