UK and Netherlands nuclear policies challenged in the Human Rights Council

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The nuclear weapons policies of the UK and the Netherlands have been challenged in the UN Human Rights Council this week as being in violation of the Right to Life, a right enshrined in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The challenges have been made in submissions from groups of civil society organisations as part of the UN periodic review of the obligations of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands under international human rights law including the ICCPR.

Coming at a time when Russia has made nuclear threats to the USA and NATO if they intervene in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the submissions are a reminder that Russia is not the only country that possesses nuclear weapons and maintains options to initiate nuclear war.

The UK deploys about 160 nuclear warheads (40 on each of their 4 strategic nuclear submarines) which are ready to be fired at any time under policy options to potentially use the nuclear weapons in a wide range of circumstances, including in response to threats from chemical and biological capabilities or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact.

The Netherlands hosts approximately 20 United States B61 nuclear weapons at its Volkel airbase, and maintains operational measures to ‘deliver’ those nuclear weapons by Dutch Airforce F-16 planes to potential targets for use in wartime. In 2018 the UN Human Rights Committee affirmed that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is incompatible with the Right to Life, and that States parties to the ICCPR have obligations to refrain from developing, acquiring, stockpiling and using them, and also have obligations to destroy existing stockpiles and pursue negotiations in good faith to achieve global nuclear disarmament. The submissions argue that the UK and Netherlands policies are in violation of these obligations.

The submissions also make recommendations of policy actions the governments could take in order to conform to the Right to Life. These include adopting no-first-use policies, cancelling plans to renew nuclear weapons systems, taking measures to phase out the role of nuclear weapons in their security doctrines and advancing at the 2022 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference a goal for the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2045, the 75th anniversary of the NPT.

If the UN Human Rights Council decides to pick up on the challenges and recommendations in the submissions and direct these to the UK and the Netherlands, the two countries are required to respond.

Similar submissions were made in 2020 and 2021 to the Human Rights Council and other UN human rights bodies with regard to the nuclear policies of Russia, the USA, France, Canada, Denmark, Iceland and North Korea, but the issues were not taken up in earnest by the relevant bodies. The increased threat of nuclear war arising from the Ukraine conflict might stimulate the Human Rights Council to make this a much higher priority for the current review cycle.

Contact: Alyn Ware, World Future Council. alyn@pnnd.org.

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