Yesterday, VERTIC, together with the United Nation’s Office for Disarmament Affairs held a seminar on capacity building for nuclear disarmament verification.

Yesterday, VERTIC, together with the United Nation’s Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA) held a seminar on capacity building for nuclear disarmament verification.

Speakers included:

Ms Hana Cervenka, First Secretary of the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations, Geneva. She provided the room with a status update on the work of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) established under UN General Assembly Resolution 71/67.

Mr Reto Wollenman, Deputy Head of Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-proliferation Section, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland. He provided some ideas on how states can benefit from the relevant experiences in the field to date, including the work of the International Partnership on Nuclear Disarmament Verification.

Mr Marcelo Camara: Head of the Division of Disarmament and Sensitive Technology, Ministry of External Relations, Brazil. He spoke of the importance of multilateral approaches to the study of nuclear disarmament verification, and—in particular—previewed Brazil’s Working Paper to the GGE, which outlines the potential to establish a Group of Scientific Experts subsidiary to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

Ms Ingrid Kirsten, Senior Research Associate, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, Austria. She spoke of South Africa’s disarmament verification process and highlighted how its unique experiences in this regard, could be leveraged in future scientific engagements.

Mr Andreas Persbo, our Executive Director, gave information on the rationale and main deliverables under VERTIC’s new capacity building initiative on nuclear disarmament verification.

The meeting was chaired by Ioan Tudor, chief of the ODA’s WMD Branch.