Her Voice: Engendering Nuclear Disarmament - Challenges and Possibilities

Welcome by Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath, Life Trustee, IIC and Director, WISCOMP

Keynote Address: Engendering Disarmament: How Practical, How Possible

To be delivered by Amb. Jayant Prasad, former Ambassador of India to the UN Conference on Disarmament, Geneva & Member of U.N. Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters

Detailed break-up of the sessions

The UNGA Resolution 71/57 of 2016 underscores the importance of disarmament and non-proliferation education. In order to encourage nations to implement the resolution, the UN Secretary General announced a Disarmament Agenda as part of his visionary document “To Secure our World and our Future” in 2018. Interestingly, he not only called upon States to take the lead in educating the larger public on disarmament and bringing new voices to the forefront, but also prioritized gender parity in this context as “a moral duty and an operational necessity”. 

We find ourselves in the midst of a strange dialectic. On one hand, the Treaty on prohibition of nuclear weapons has entered into force and outlaws nuclear weapons, on the other, stressed nuclear dyads, unregulated emergence of new technologies that impact nuclear deterrence, and crumbling arms control architecture, has increased the salience of nuclear weapons. This ‘hurting’ landscape is clearly visible in the ongoing Ukraine Crisis as the risk of use of nuclear weapons looms large.

The symposium is organized in collaboration with Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP)