Climbing The Mountain:
Legislators collaborating on bilateral, plurilateral and global measures towards a secure nuclear-weapons-free-world
Parliamentary Conference and PNND Annual Assembly
February 25-27, 2014 — Washington, DC
Hosted by Honorary Chair US Senator Ed Markey, Co-President of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND)
Organized by PNND and the Frederich Ebert Foundation
Supported by The Simons Foundation and the Kazakhstan Embassy to the United States
Global Security Institute is pleased to announce the upcoming 2014 assembly for one of its programs, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND), a non-partisan forum for parliamentarians to share resources and information, develop cooperative strategies and engage in nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament issues and initiatives.
This Parliamentary Assembly will bring together legislators from across the political spectrum and from around the world in order to facilitate dialogue, enhance understanding and build parliamentary engagement in practical measures to advance nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and achieve a nuclear-weapons free world.
In 2007, four high-level US statesmen advanced the vision of a nuclear-weapons-free world as a goal that must be sought collectively to reverse nuclear proliferation and achieve security, but noted that such a goal was like an extremely high mountain that would take some effort to climb. Since then, the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world has been endorsed by President Obama, leaders of other nuclear weapon states and their allies and by the collective membership of the United Nations.
However, governments have been unable to transcend political differences in order to achieve this goal. Parliamentarians can work together to ensure progress. In 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon contacted every legislature in the world commending PNND on its work, and reminding parliamentarians of their key roles in responding to ensure sustainable global security and work ‘on the legislative agendas needed to achieve and sustain the objective of nuclear disarmament.’
The conference will focus particularly on engagement between US legislators and legislators from key countries where progress is required to build cooperative security, phase-out the reliance on nuclear weapons and establish the framework for a secure nuclear-weapons-free world.
It will follow on from the 2012 PNND Assembly in Kazakhstan which was attended by parliamentarians from over 80 countries, including from most of the nuclear-armed states, and at which the ATOM Project was launched, focusing on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons as an imperative for their abolition.
PNND Assembly Program and Itinerary
