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Open letter re: Ottawa’s decision to lift moratorium on Saudi arms exports
May 15, 2020The Right Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, P.C., M.P. Prime Minister of Canada 80 Wellington Street Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2 14 May 2020 Re: Final Report – Review of Export Permits to Saudi Arabia Dear Prime Minister Trudeau, The undersigned, representing a cross-section of Canadian civil society organizations focused on arms controls, human rights, and international security, are writing in ...
In-depth conversation: The Nuclear Ban Treaty
March 18, 2020Cesar Jaramillo talks with ICAN’s Tim Wright about the significance of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, its impact, and how close we are to a world without nuclear weapons.
Q&A: Mining social media for peace
March 17, 2020Evidence from social media is becoming essential to the study of modern conflict. Civilians and combatants are documenting war in real time, providing researchers with contemporary accounts, complete with photos and video.
How Canada can get up to speed on the ban on autonomous weapons
March 16, 2020Disarmament and arms control have not featured prominently, if at all, in mandate letters to Canada’s foreign ministers in many years. But at the end of 2019, Canadian Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne was given a new mandate to “advance international efforts to ban the development and use of fully autonomous weapons systems.”
Nobel Lecture: Forging a durable peace in the Horn of Africa
March 16, 2020We have an old saying: “yoo ollaan nagayaan bule, nagaan bulanni.” It is a saying shared in many African languages, which means, “For you to have a peaceful night, your neighbor shall have a peaceful night as well.” The essence of this proverb guides the strengthening of relations in the region. We now strive to live with our neighbors in peace and harmony.
The role of the U.S. Space Force in the future of warfare in outer space
March 16, 2020The United States Space Force is taking shape. A uniform of camouflage fatigues and an insignia that looks like something from Star Wars have been designed. A contest is under way to name its troops (both “space cadets” and “spacemen” are off the table). There are suggestions that the Force will be modeled after the U.S. Navy.
In a welcome shift, Canada makes banning killer robots a foreign policy priority
March 16, 2020It sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Enabled by significant advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, fully autonomous weapons systems with the ability to select targets and employ lethal force with no human involvement—also known as killer robots—may soon emerge.
The Ploughshares Monitor: Spring 2020
March 16, 2020Volume 41 Issue 1 A quarterly publication of Project Ploughshares Please click on attachment to view document:
Countering 5 misconceptions about a political declaration on EWIPA
January 29, 2020The use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA), by both state and nonstate actors, has become a top humanitarian concern, given the devastating impact it has on civilian lives and livelihoods.
4 key messages on humanitarian advocacy
December 10, 2019The latest Humanitarian Disarmament Forum was held October 19 and 20 in New York City. In attendance were civil-society groups, such as Project Ploughshares, which work on arms control and disarmament concerns that fall under the umbrella of “humanitarian disarmament.” According to the Harvard Law School Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection Initiative, humanitarian disarmament “seeks to prevent and remediate the human and environmental harm inflicted by arms through the establishment and implementation of norms.”
How to keep outer space weapons-free
December 10, 2019The history of arms control in outer space reads like a success story. Outer space is one of the few domains of human activity in which the focus has been on prevention. Although military satellites that provide communications, remote sensing, navigation, and timing services once dominated space and continue to provide essential military services, their operations have long been considered peaceful. Those of us working in space security say that space is “militarized but not weaponized.”
The use of drones by nonstate actors
December 10, 2019In January of this year, armed drones owned by Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, killed several Yemeni government officials. This was the first time, as far as we know, that a nonstate group had successfully deployed a drone to carry out a precision-targeted operation. In September, the Houthis, with alleged support from Iran, were suspected in the attack on the world’s largest oil-processing facility in Saudi Arabia.
Statement to the 74th Session of the General Assembly First Committee
December 10, 2019Outer space now provides vast social, scientific, and economic benefits to humanity, but the continued enjoyment of these benefits is anything but guaranteed. As the number of space users and applications has increased, so too have the threats to its long-term sustainability.
Putting controls on remote warfare to protect civilians
December 10, 2019Earlier this year, Amnesty International (AI) released a report, The Hidden US War in Somalia: Civilian Casualties from Air Strikes in Lower Shabelle. According to this report, which explored five incidents, at least 14 civilians had been killed by airstrikes from both manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones).
A challenging nuclear disarmament landscape for 2020
December 10, 2019The next year will be critical in the attempt to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons—and the outlook is hardly promising. The global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime, already at the breaking point, will certainly face various overlapping challenges. Here are some focal points that Project Ploughshares will be following closely:
The Ploughshares Monitor: Winter 2019
December 9, 2019Volume 40 Issue 4 A quarterly publication of Project Ploughshares Please click on attachment to view document: