On the margins of the September 2014 IAEA General Conference, the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP) and the World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS), with the support of the United States and the Netherlands, organized a panel on the future of the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) process. Its purpose was to begin discussions now among the political, industry and academic communities that must work together to create a broad, effective scope for the fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit to be hosted by President Obama in Washington, D.C. in the spring of 2016.
The 2016 agenda will focus on the implementation of commitments made by the countries that attended the three prior Summits. It will identify the objectives that were set in the first three Summits, describe the concrete steps that must now be taken to ensure their implementation, and create a roadmap for doing so. Participants’ consensus was that the final Summit needs to ensure that a strong nuclear security architecture is in place so that the process begun in 2010 will move forward successfully in the future. An important tool for taking the work forward is the 35-country Joint Statement on Strengthening Nuclear Security Implementation. This Statement contains important commitments including universality of the nuclear security regime and ensuring that personnel with accountability for nuclear security are demonstrably competent. The Statement can be put forward as a gift basket for other countries that attend the summit.
Event participants concluded that the Nuclear Industry Summits (for industry) and the Nuclear Knowledge Summits (for NGOs and academia) that have run concurrently with the Nuclear Security Summits have had numerous important benefits, especially the crossover effect of interactions among members of both groups. Considering that the Industry and Knowledge organisers have already begun drafting their work plans for 2016, the sharing of information should begin now to ensure that the final Communiqués support and integrate ideas from different stakeholders. There is clear recognition that the work will not end—in fact the bar will get higher—and that integration of the political, industry and expert communities will become even more important in the future.
