Between Prosperity and Destruction: A Modern Interpretation of the Right to Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy in Light of the Protection of Human Rights and Future Generations

by Daniel Rietiker Abstract: This chapter takes a new approach to the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The pros and cons of nuclear energy will be assessed in light of human rights standards, whereby civil as well as economic, social and cultural rights will be equally taken into account. Contrary to environmental…

Troops Who Cleaned Up Radioactive Islands Can’t Get Medical Care

By Dave Philipps, New York Times, 28 Jan. 2017 RICHLAND, Wash. — When Tim Snider arrived on Enewetak Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to clean up the fallout from dozens of nuclear tests on the ring of coral islands, Army officers immediately ordered him to put on a respirator and a bright…

IALANA Bids Farewell to Judge Weeramantry

A giant of the law, Christopher Gregory Weeramantry, died peacefully at his home in Sri Lanka on January 5, 2017. He was everything a lawyer could be: barrister, professor, judge. From 1967 to 1972 he served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then as a judge of the…

IT IS TWO AND A HALF MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT! До конца света осталось 2,5 минуты Стрелку Часов Судного дня передвинули на 30 секунд вперед

Only in 1953, when the USA and the USSR tested their hydrogen bombs, the world was a more dangerous one according to scientists! For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In…

Russia: U.S.-Russian Relations and the Future Security of Europe (Ulrich Kühn)

Very readable article published in Arms Control Today, January/February 2017

Nuclear disarmament is alive: Negotiations with a view to concluding a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons to start in March 2017!

Nuclear disarmament is not dead yet and interesting times are ahead of us. The UN General Assembly adopted, on 27 October 2016, a landmark resolution to launch negotiations in 2017 on a treaty banning nuclear weapons. This historic resolution might mark the end of two decades of paralysis in multilateral nuclear disarmament efforts. At a…

The incompatibility of WMDs with the right to life (Article 6 ICCPR) – a submission to the UN Human Rights Committee

By Daniel Rietiker The UN Human Rights Committee is currently drafting a new General Comment No. 36 on the right to life. Since the current draft does not entirely reflect the duties of the States Parties to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Politicial Rights (ICCPR) with regards WMD, including nuclear weapons, Swiss Lawyers…