The United Nations Disarmament Yearbook, volume 41 (Part II): 2016, with a foreword by the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, summarizes developments and trends in 2016 on key issues of multilateral consideration at the international and regional levels; reviews the activity of the General Assembly, the Conference on Disarmament and the Disarmament Commission; and contains a handy timeline of highlights of multilateral disarmament in 2016.

The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) Occasional Papers is a series of ad hoc publications presenting, in edited form, papers or statements made at meetings, symposiums, seminars, workshops or lectures that deal with topical issues in the field of arms limitation, disarmament and international security. They are intended primarily for those concerned with these matters in Government, civil society and in the academic community. This paper provides historical background on the special sessions of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament (1978, 1982 and 1988) and discusses efforts to convene a fourth special session. The Assembly has used these sessions to enable Member States to participate in the process of developing or strengthening global norms in disarmament. Complementing work done elsewhere in the multilateral disarmament machinery, the sessions enable consideration of how the various parts of the disarmament puzzle fit together in a coherent whole.

On November 10, 2017, Pope Francis became the first pontiff in the nuclear era to take a complete stand against nuclear weapons, even as a form of deterrence. At a Vatican conference of leaders in the field of disarmament, he made it clear that the possession of the bomb itself was immoral. A World Free from Nuclear Weapons presents the pope’s address and original testimony from Nobel Peace Prize laureates, religious leaders, diplomats, and civil society activists. These luminaries, which include the pope and a Hiroshima survivor, make the moral case against possessing, manufacturing, and deploying nuclear arms. Drew Christiansen, a member of the Holy See delegation to the 2017 United Nations conference that negotiated the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, helps readers to understand this conference in its historical context. A World Free from Nuclear Weapons is a critical companion for scholars of modern Catholicism, moral theology, and peace studies, as well as policymakers working on effective disarmament. It shows how the Church’s revised position presents an opportunity for global leaders to connect disarmament to larger movements for peace, pointing toward future action.

Forbidden moves beyond the conceptualization of a ban on nuclear weapons to the implementation of the Pope's teachings, the first pontiff to condemn possession. This book interweaves the essential witness of survivors of nuclear attacks and test explosions with the voices of leaders who provide needed context for Pope Francis's condemnation.

Rising concern over the increasing threat of nuclear war impelled the 2017 United Nations (UN) negotiations and adoption by 122 UN member states of a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Treaty seeks to ban nuclear weapons globally in the same way chemical and biological weapons have already been prohibited. This book provides the first in-depth comprehensive analysis of the implications and possibilities of the new treaty, drawing on the insights of international relations, international laws, and disarmament experts and specialists from Europe, America, the Asia-Pacific, and the UN. In a context where existing nuclear weapon states have so far declined to be party to the new treaty, the book examines not only its emergence and significance but also the prospects and possibilities for its implementation, the challenges associated with verifying the new agreement, the role of both civil society and governments, and the treaty’s wider implications in addressing regional and global nuclear threats. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Change, Peace & Security but additionally includes the special section articles on the treaty in the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament.

This book examines the linkage between deviance and norm change in international politics. It draws on an original theoretical perspective grounded in the sociology of deviance to study the violations of norms and rules in the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. As such, this project provides a unique conceptual framework and applies it to highly salient issues in the contemporary international security environment. The theoretical/conceptual chapters are accompanied by three extensive case studies: Iran, North Korea, and India.

This document summarizes the main findings and implications of the first empirical study investigating the scale and scope of arms trafficking on the dark web, which was conducted by RAND Europe and the University of Manchester from September 2016 to July 2017. There is an ongoing debate over the extent to which online black markets on the so-called "dark web," the part of the Internet not searchable by traditional search engines and hidden behind anonymity software, facilitate arms trafficking. Details have emerged in the media following the Munich shooting in 2016 linking the weapons used by the attacker to vendors on dark web marketplaces (also known as cryptomarkets). Some media reports have also linked the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015 to these platforms. While these reports appear to have raised concerns about the role of such dark web markets in arms trade, evidence on the subject is largely anecdotal, based on secondary data as reported after events such as terrorist attacks or successful law enforcement operations.