Tag Archive for: United Nations

Feeding the nuclear watch dog

Watch dog watching, photo credit: Rhiannon Davies

Earlier this month, Myanmar announced that it will sign the Additional Protocol to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements—a bold step for a country that has long been suspected of having nuclear weapons aspirations. If the government follows through on this pledge, it will make it much easier for the IAEA, often referred to in the media as the UN’s ‘nuclear watch dog’, to investigate these suspicions and either confirm them or lay them to rest. This is because the Additional Protocol allows the IAEA to conduct more thorough safeguards inspections of a country’s nuclear facilities—it gives the watch dog more scope to sniff out dodgy activities (PDF).

Since the Additional Protocol was introduced in September 1997, 139 states have signed it, and 119 have brought it into force (PDF). This is an important albeit partial victory for international nuclear governance, demonstrating a commitment among more and more states to higher standards of nuclear transparency. The ultimate goal of the Additional Protocol is to build confidence that states are complying with their nonproliferation obligations, which in turn helps to prevent further nuclear proliferation and to promote conditions that are more conducive to nuclear disarmament. Viewed in these terms, it’s easy to see why the IAEA is regarded as an international agency of major strategic significance. Read more

Piracy: a solution is possible

In mid-June I chaired an international conference in Perth aimed at developing responses to piracy and related crimes at sea. The meeting was sponsored by the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Defence, and a summary of the deliberations as well as some very useful background papers by Sam Bateman has been released by ASPI today.

Three separate regions accounted for the vast bulk of the 439 actual and attempted piracy attacks in 2011: Southeast Asia, in particular the eastern approaches to the Straits of Malacca; the Horn of Africa; and the Gulf of Guinea. In each region the causes of piracy differ. In Southeast Asia stealing and reselling tug boats is a major problem. Ships left idle and at anchor in the wake of the global financial crisis are easy targets for attacks. Off the Horn of Africa and deeper into the Indian Ocean, piracy is the by-product of political authority breaking down in Somalia. Fishing communities can turn to piracy for a livelihood and become vulnerable to more organised criminal elements looking to make money from ransoming ships and their crew. In the Gulf of Guinea, piracy frequently involves stealing oil from tankers in sophisticated operations built around avoiding tax payments and illegal bunkering.

The causes are varied but the solutions share some common features; tightening up the policing of harbours and ports, and boosting cooperation between national agencies and between regional navies and maritime enforcement bodies. The good news here is that collective action will work to reduce the problem. Close cooperation in Southeast Asia, for example, is reducing the number of serious acts of piracy (although ironically increased reporting of lower-scale incidents seems to obscure the scale of overall reduction). Read more