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Thank you very much, Dr. Watson, and to Lloyd Elder dies and the organising committee.

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Thanks very much for this kind invitation.

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I'll be speaking on nuclear weapon free zones in the context of our conversation today and really trying to make the case that

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we should take these zones much more seriously than they have been taken either in the policy or the scholarly communities.

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And I'll be suggesting that in some way, nuclear weapon free zones, at least in one sense,

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represent perhaps the most far reaching and the most successful example of nuclear containment.

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In our recent nuclear history. At least since the.

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And so I'd like to advance this case for nuclear weapon free zones by looking at a few examples

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and also just reflecting on where they fit in the broader architecture of nuclear order.

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So at a summit in Cairo in 1996, President then Hosni Mubarak stood grinning before a phalanx of dignitaries heralding

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and celebrating the opening for signature of the African nuclear weapon free zone.

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The zone is affectionately called the Treaty of Pelin Dhaba Pelin Dabb is a portmanteau of Pela in the language which means end and in the story,

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the treaty of ending the story. But far from ending the story,

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the Treaty of Darbar formed part of a multi continental trans historical story of the establishment

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and the persistence of nuclear weapon free zones which have lasted from 1967 to the present.

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So to try and get our heads around the story, I'll offer a little bit of background on these nuclear weapon free zones.

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How many are there? Who signed them? Where do they obtain?

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What are they?

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And just so that we can get a deeper understanding of what these zones actually are and their extent, their remit and their jurisdiction.

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Then I'll look at this question of obedient rebellion before moving on to.

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The. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and how that interfaces with nuclear weapon free zones,

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because I think we've got an interesting story there of both harmony and disharmony,

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which I think is particularly pertinent in the current era of nuclear order in which we find ourselves.

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So that's how the the brief remarks will will flow.

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So let me come on to this question of background and just provide a brief overview of the significance and the reach of nuclear weapon free zones.

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So. What are nuclear weapon free zones?

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It's actually a non-trivial question, and in fact, the legal architecture of nuclear weapon free zones represents.

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In my view, quite an elaborate legal achievement, not only in finding the language to contain and prohibited nuclear weapons,

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but in order to get that language to be language, which is agreed often by tens, sometimes hundreds of states.

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So nuclear weapon free zones in a nutshell, are legally binding treaties which prevent the use of nuclear weapons in a given territory.

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And of course, there are various complexities which flow from that which we might get into in the questions.

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And these treaties require both the agreement of the states within that territory.

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So let's take the African nuclear weapon free zone, for example.

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You need the agreement of African states that the territory will be nuclear weapon free.

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But then you also need the agreement in additional protocols of the nuclear weapon states.

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And so far, these are between the officially recognised nuclear weapon states and the states within these zones.

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So there's quite a complex legal interplay between, on the one hand,

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non-nuclear states and given regions and the nuclear weapon states as they relate to these other regions.

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I mean, why do these zones matter and why do they deserve greater attention?

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Well, for one thing, if we're going to be looking at how nuclear non-proliferation, even disarmament, for that matter, might work,

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then we ought to look at the places where it actually has worked and where successes, even if limited and contingent, have been scored.

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And it seems strange to me that while nuclear weapon free zones have spread and proliferated rather successfully since nineteen sixty seven,

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we give them so little importance in our discussions of non-proliferation.

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And I think part of the reason for that is their location in the global south,

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a sense in which we might not have anything to learn from the way that the global south has tackled nuclear non-proliferation.

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But it's exactly in those places where we have been shy to look that in fact some of the most important work has been done,

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complex work has been done to show the way towards nuclear containment.

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And so I think we need to take off the blinkers, as it were,

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and tried to treat this process of denuclearisation or at least nuclear prohibition in the global south with the seriousness it deserves.

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How many zones are there and how many have been tried?

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We have 10 zones that have at least open for signature in the Antarctic, as you can see here, that was the first one in fifty nine.

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They cover a wide and interesting range of of states, regions, the entirety of outer space to the seabed.

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But the zones that I think are of particular interest are regionally defined, territorial state implicated zones.

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And these particularly include the African nuclear weapon free zone, as I mentioned,

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the Latin American nuclear weapon free zone and the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone.

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And it's on those zones that I want to focus, because those are, I would suggest,

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three of the more successful zones from which we might draw some insights.

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Again, we can get on to some of the failures and the Middle Eastern question, perhaps in later sections, but in the interests of preserving time.

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Let me just also show you the coverage of nuclear weapon free zones.

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So what do we have in this image? We have various kinds of nuclear security, governance arrangements and how they cover the world.

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And in blue, yeah, you have nuclear weapon free zones juxtaposed against states possessing nuclear weapons

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and red nuclear sharing agreements where state might not possess nuclear weapons itself,

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but has some kind of agreement with the state that does and the NPT only.

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So where a state is only a signatory or has ratified the NPT but is not involved in a sharing agreement or or a nuclear weapon free zone.

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And you can see that the coverage of nuclear weapon free zones is distinctive in its location in the global south, but is also extremely wide ranging.

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And you now have over one hundred and twenty states that have in one way or another signed up to these nuclear weapon free zones.

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So barring the NPT, there's an argument to be made that these regional regional initiatives from the bottom up,

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as it were, constitute the next most successful example of collaborative, multilateral nuclear renunciation.

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Let me move on to this question of obedient rebellion and try and encapsulated in a nutshell,

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because I think the way that these zones have emerged in global nuclear order teaches us something

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about how zones might spread in the future and why these zones have been particularly resilient.

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Dr. Ritchie referred earlier to a kind of a.

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Nuclear D colonial sentiment on the part of states in the global south and.

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That is certainly part of the story with nuclear weapon free zones.

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There's a sense in which decolonisation and denuclearisation became entangled at the same historical moment.

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And the questions have always been linked to these states so that a kind of rebellious attitude to nuclear order underpins much of the rhetoric.

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And much of the politics which surrounds these states are trying to send a message to global nuclear order

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that at least they themselves renounce nuclear weapons and the colonial connotations that flow from them.

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But alongside this rebellious attitude, as it were,

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is an obedient one to the extent that all of this rebellion happens within the context of the existing

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global institutions as they currently stand so that these zones are underpinned by ultimately the NPT.

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A lot of the conversation of these zones happens within the United Nations itself, within formally recognised international fora.

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These states also have a contending impulse to form part of the global nuclear order to be good nuclear citizens to,

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as Sebastian mentioned, be responsible nuclear players.

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So what we really have here is a paradoxical situation which binds these zones because

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they become faura in which states are able to resolve these competing tensions.

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On the one hand, by joining a zone, you get to send the middle finger to the nuclear order.

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But on the other hand, you also get to signal your commitment to that same order.

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And so it's this paradoxical sense in which these zones represent contending impulses that actually, ironically, bind them.

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And I would argue in many cases this.

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Explains why nuclear order itself has continued to hang together because it has been able to represent two states in the global south,

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both a rebellion against and an obedience towards global nuclear order.

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And so I think this tension is something that we we should reflect further on when we think about how further examples of nuclear non-proliferation,

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proliferation or enunciation might play out.

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I just like to end, if I might, if I do still have the time.

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Dr. Watson, with with a reflection. Yep. Sorry, very briefly, if you would write.

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Let me do this, let me leave the question of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon free zones for the for the questions,

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perhaps, but try to offer some brief concluding remarks and and show what I think is at least the most low hanging fruit before us.

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The thing for me at the moment is it seems that we have an arrangement from below with nuclear weapon free zones in various regions,

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and then we have a treaty on the prohibitions for nuclear weapons from above.

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And these two things need to marry and meet with the NPT somewhere in between.

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One of the most simple ways or one of the low hanging fruit, it seems to me, is, is this and perhaps I'll leave it here.

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The African nuclear weapon free zone and the latter the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone have have been ratified by China.

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France, Russia and the United Kingdom. The United States has signed but not ratified the African nuclear weapon free zone.

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Same for the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom.

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The United States has signed but not ratified. Surely one of the key steps we could be taking in the immediate term,

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perhaps at this opportune moment with the Biden administration is getting the United

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States to ratify the African and the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone treaty.

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That, it would seem to me, would be a key practical step that could be taken towards the question of nuclear renunciation.

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So lots to ponder on in the comments, lots to move forward on,

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but I would suggest ultimately that if we want to understand how nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear containment, even disarmament works,

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then we ought to cast our eye to the places it actually has worked, continues to work,

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and think from those places how the lessons that have been learnt and the contradictions

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under which those lessons have taken place might apply in a more broad sense.

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Thanks. Look forward to questions and to engaging further. Please do reach out to me if you have any questions after this conference.