Africa's Policy Imperatives: Issue 2

This update to ‘Africa’s Policy Imperatives’ Issue 1 published in May 2009, provides a brief overview of international efforts to

strengthen disarmament and non-proliferation through a number of conventions, protocols and agreements and addresses some of the capacity and resource constraints within the African context preventing their full implementation. A number of specific recommendations to States – both African and global - in a position to offer technical implementation assistance and who are able to build co-operative partnerships and political support towards full African universality of the various conventions are made. These conventions and agreements include the:

• Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT);

• African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Pelindaba);

• Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;

• Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention;

• Chemical Weapons Convention; and,

• United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1540.

The Background Paper has been compiled as a result of research undertaken by the Norwegian-funded ISS’ “Africa’s Development and the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction Project” since May 2007. This ISS project aims to identify and strengthen Africa’s role in these international efforts in the context of the continent’s developmental imperatives.

Africa's Policy Imperatives: Issue 2