Why South Africa gave up the bomb

Date: 25 November 2015

Time: 10h30 - 13h00

Venue: Conference room, ISS Pretoria, Block C, Brooklyn Court, map

This event will be webcast live. Note that proof of identity is required for access to the ISS offices.

South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme remained a mystery for many years. Finally, in 1993, former president FW de Klerk announced that the country had secretly built and destroyed six-and-a-half nuclear bombs.

This event launches The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme by Nic von Wielligh and Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn.

From 1975, Nic von Wielligh helped produce nuclear weapons material, dismantle the nuclear weapons and provide evidence of South Africa’s credentials to the international community.

The author will be joined by a panel of well-known experts on South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme. They will provide an insider’s perspective into why South Africa developed a limited nuclear weapons deterrence and then voluntarily dismantled the programme. Lessons learnt for current and future disarmament and non-proliferation needs will be discussed.

Chair: Noel Stott, Senior Research Fellow, ISS

Speakers:

• Dr Nic von Wielligh, author of The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme
• Tom Wheeler, former South African Foreign Service officer
• Anna-Mart van Wyk, Head of the School of Social Science and Associate Professor of History and International Studies, Monash University, SA

Venue:

Conference room
ISS Pretoria
Block C
Brooklyn Court
map

RSVP:

Agar Ngwenya
Phone: +27 12 346 9500
Email: angwenya@issafrica.org

Enquiries:

Noel Stott
Phone: +27 12 346 9500
Email: nstott@issafrica.org

Conference report: Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, Oslo, Norway 4-5 March 2013

Reaching Critical Will has published a conference report for the meeting hosted by the government of Norway on 4-5 March 2013 on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

The report contains an analysis of the conference's importance, highlights from government and other interventions, a brief overview of the Civil Society Forum hosted by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) before the government conference, and lists some additional resources.

Source: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/

Conference: The Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons

From 4 - 5 March, the Norwegian government hosted an international conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. Below are links to all documents related to the conference.

Chair’s summary Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons (05.03.2013)

Opening Statement at Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons (04.03.2013)

Statements (04.03.2013)

Nett-TV: Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons - Day 2 (04.03.2013)

Presentations (03.03.2013)  

ICAN Video Statement

List of participants

For more details of the conference, click HERE

Sixty-six years on: Nagasaki remembers bombing

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan at
the Nagasaki Peace Park in Nagasaki. (AP)

The United States sent its first representative on Tuesday to the annual memorial for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, one of two horrific attacks that led Japan to surrender in World War II.

The Nagasaki bombing by the United States 66 years ago killed about 80 000 people. Three days earlier, the US had dropped another nuclear bomb that killed up to 140 000 in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

US Charge d'Affaires James P Zumwalt, the first American representative to visit the Nagasaki memorial, said that President Barack Obama hoped to work with Japan toward his goal "of realising a world without nuclear weapons" -- a commitment Japan has made repeatedly since the war.

Obama last year sent Ambassador John Roos to the 65th anniversary memorial of the bombing in Hiroshima, and Roos visited Nagasaki twice last year on other dates, according to the US Embassy in Japan.

For a full version of the article, click HERE.