Preventing nuclear terrorism: International law and nuclear security governance

The threat of nuclear terrorism is widely considered to be one of the most pressing threats facing the international community. This is due in great part to two inter-related issues: firstly, the acknowledged vulnerability of a significant amount of nuclear and other radioactive material throughout the world, both as part of and outside of weapons programs, and, secondly, the demonstrated desire to obtain and expected willingness to use such materials by terrorists. The legal regime relating to nuclear weapons from which the nuclear security framework derives is founded on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Two weaknesses of the NPT regime persist – the lack of universality, leaving four states possessing nuclear weapons outside of the treaty regime, and the fact that the NPT does not adequately address the threat of nuclear terrorism, which is the primary purview of the international legal framework for nuclear security. This study seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the international law applicable to nuclear security. In so doing, it establishes a framework for better understanding how the international law of nuclear security is structured, encompassing both hard and soft law, and why it is structured in this way. It also provides a critical analysis of possible shortcomings as pertains to the component instruments themselves or the legal framework as a whole, and gives a prescriptive assessment looking at how relevant legal mechanisms, processes and institutional arrangements (including, for instance, review, amendment and/or supervision) can be invoked or employed to facilitate efforts to enhance the framework’s effectiveness