The International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification (IPNDV) defined a Phase II program of work to increase the scope of its activities at its fifth plenary meeting recently held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Phase II aims to emphasize the importance of verification ahead of the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference approaches. The two-year phase will address verification related to declarations and inventories, verification technologies and nuclear arms reductions.
“Engaging countries with nuclear weapons and those without has made IPNDV a unique and innovative resource,” Joan Rohlfing, Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) president, said. “Verification is in every country’s national security interest. All countries need to understand each other’s concerns and determine what level of visibility into a verification process is needed for everyone to have confidence in disarmament.”
Countries that participate in the IPNDV, which was established in 2014, work to address technical challenges in nuclear disarmament verification. Phase I, which focused on nuclear weapon dismantlement, resulted in a toolkit that outlines technologies and procedures to provide confidence in a future monitored dismantlement process. IPNDV recently announced the launch of a new website that will contain analyses from Phase I.
The first meeting of Phase II will be held in Sweden in March 2018.