Lassina Zerbo has been appointed to a second four-year term as executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) Organization. Zerbo assumed his current role in August 2013, having previously served as the director of the organization’s International Data Center. In announcing the news, the Vienna, Austria-based organization highlighted in a tweet Zerbo’s “professionalism & leadership.”
The CTBTO Preparatory Commission is working to establish a global verification regime, the International Monitoring System, which is over 85 percent complete and consists of hundreds of monitoring stations worldwide to detect potential underground nuclear tests.
President Barack Obama during his time in office has pushed for U.S. ratification of the CTBT, which the Senate originally rejected in 1999. The United States is now one of eight nations that must still ratify the treaty for it to enter into force. Despite the Obama administration’s campaign to build public support for the treaty, U.S. ratification remains far off. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council in late September adopted a resolution urging global ratification of the treaty and sustaining the moratoria on nuclear testing until the accord enters into force.
