An international group of nuclear security experts is calling on worldwide leaders to begin work on establishing a global nuclear security regime at the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands. In a report released yesterday, the Nuclear Security Governance Experts Group (NSGEG) suggests that the current global nuclear security regime has been “too slow” to evolve and highlights the 2014 summit as a “critical” opportunity to begin modernizing the regime. “The current nuclear security regime is not robust, adaptable, or coherent enough to adequately protect against the intensifying and evolving threats posed by nuclear terrorism in the 21st century,” the NSGEG wrote. The group is backed by the Asian Institute for Policy Studies, the Partnership for Global Security, and the Stanley Foundation, and includes 22 experts.
The group noted that the first two summits in Washington and Seoul focused on implanting the current nuclear security regime, but it noted that the regime is based on a patchwork of international agreements that don’t always enjoy support from all countries and that leave significant nuclear security gaps in the regime. The third summit “offers leaders an opportunity to demonstrate global leadership and responsibility beyond today’s rules and regulations by endorsing improvements to the international nuclear security system that emphasize confirmed performance and accountability,” the group wrote. “The governance structures of the current regime cannot be reformed overnight, but the process must be initiated by 2014.” The group said the next summit will be successful if there is recognition of the need for a “unifying instrument for the global nuclear security regime to be followed by a process to develop and negotiate a framework agreement for nuclear security with the goal of entry into force by 2020.”
Jobs