Learning from Ottawa?

Perspectives of a humanitarian ban on nuclear weapons in the 21st century

The nuclear arms control and disarmament process has been stagnating for years. Yet, a humanitarian campaign tries to achieve a global change in nuclear weapons discourse. Such a change in discourse, granting human security and state security the same amount of importance, did occur in previous successful campaigns concerning the prohibition of antipersonnel mines and cluster munition, too. Within this context, the authors aim at analyzing to what extent these positive conditions may be transferable on the humanitarian ban on nuclear weapons.

 

In HSFK-Report No. 10/2014 "Lernen von Ottawa? Perspektiven der humanitären Ächtung von Kernwaffen im 21. Jahrhundert", Simone Wisotzki and Giorgio Franceschini examine commonalities and differences between the humanitarian campaigns. Moreover, they aim at investigating in how far the ban on nuclear weapons might be able to successfully influence the attitude of nuclear powers and the non-proliferation regime. 

 

The Report is available at PRIF for 6 € and as a free PDF download (in German).