Action 9

France is a party to four protocols of the treaties establishing NWFZs. In addition to the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 (which provides for complete demilitarisation), France is a party to the protocols of the Treaty of Tlatelolco (ratified in 1974 and 1992), the Treaty of Rarotonga (ratified in 1996), the Treaty of Pelindaba (ratified in 1996) and the Treaty of Semipalatinsk (joined in 2014) establishing nuclear-weapon-free zones in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Pacific, Africa and Central Asia, respectively. France also recognised Mongolia’s status as a nuclear-weapon-free zone in 2012.

France expressed its support for the project of a WMD free zone in the Middle East. France participated, as an observer state, in the first three Conferences (2019, 2021, and 2022) on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery in the Middle East, which have been held in New York since 2019 pursuant to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 73/546.

Of the five major Nuclear Weapons Free Zones (NWFZ), the United States has only ratified the protocols of one: the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which banned nuclear weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. The United States has signed, but not ratified, the protocols of the Rarotonga Treaty, the Pelindaba Treaty, and the Semipalatinsk Treaty. The Obama administration submitted the protocols for all three treaties to the Senate in 2011 and 2015; however, they all remain stalled with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The United States, like the other Nuclear Weapon States, has not signed the Bangkok Treaty.

Negotiations over a Middle East WMD-Free Zone have been stalled, in part due to the United States’ insistence upon regional consensus and resistance of language that it believes would single out Israel. This issue was one of the key reasons why the 2015 Review Conference did not achieve consensus on an outcome document.