NTI in Geneva to Celebrate the IPNDV’s 10 Years of Progress

NTI President and COO Joan Rohlfing and more than 100 experts from 20 countries gathered this week in Geneva to mark the 10th anniversary of the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification (IPNDV), a public-private partnership between NTI and the U.S. Department of State with 30 Partner countries.

For the last ten years, the IPNDV has worked to explore potential verification solutions to facilitate future arms control agreements that not only verifiably reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons, but also verifiably dismantle nuclear weapons. Together, the Partners have developed a toolkit of inspection and monitoring options for verifying the dismantlement of nuclear weapons and built international capacity and expertise by convening experts from countries with and without nuclear weapons.

The two-day event, hosted by Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and State Secretary for Security Policy, began with a pre-recorded statement from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and opening remarks from Swiss Deputy State Secretary for Security Policy Pälvi Pulli, U.S. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability Mallory Stewart, and Rohlfing.

“Fostering a community of political and technical experts familiar with nuclear disarmament procedures, techniques, and technologies is an investment in the future. It is also an expression of optimism that the world won’t stay as it is but will move in a positive direction towards a world without nuclear weapons,” said Rohlfing.

The program also included a panel of Geneva-based ambassadors and government officials discussing the value of the IPNDV, presentations by IPNDV partners on their progress developing verification processes and evaluating technologies, and an arms control research symposium. The event also included the release of a video about the Partnership and a report on key insights from its decade of work.

The IPNDV’s efforts to develop procedures and technologies to address the challenges of nuclear disarmament are essential even when no active disarmament negotiations are taking place because “when the time is right, [the] IPNDV will have produced knowledge which can be drawn on by [arms control] negotiators and which can build confidence,” said NTI consultant and former U.S. Ambassador to the 1985 NPT Review Conference Lewis A. Dunn.

Learn more about the IPNDV here.