News and Developments

November 3, 2025: Scientific Advisory Group of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) Holds Landmark Session on Disability Rights

At the request of the Disability Rights and Disarmament Initiative, the TPNW’s Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) convened a session on disability rights in relation to the implementation and review of the treaty’s efforts to redress the historic and ongoing impacts and harms of nuclear use and testing.

The session, chaired by Dr. Zia Mian of Princeton University, heard first from Dr. Tammy Bernasky, who outlined the central importance of the Convention on the Rights and Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in ensuring the maximum meaningful inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in the design and provision of victim assistance programmes, in alignment with the Convention’s rights-based approach and social model.

Dr. Sean Howard then placed the issue of disability rights in the TPNW in the broader context of disability rights and disarmament across the UN system, arguing that addressing the topic seriously had the potential to increase awareness of, and support for, humanitarian disarmament treaties such as the TPNW. Howard also made an appeal for ‘expertise’ in addressing nuclear impacts – especially in the work of the SAG – to be defined expansively enough to include persons with disabilities caused and/or compounded by nuclear violence who may not have had the opportunity to attain high academic and scientific qualifications. To exclude them from the process of assessing their own experience, needs, and priorities, he argued, would be a grave disservice in violation of the CRPD.

A constructive, supportive, and wide-ranging discussion followed. For more information on the SAG’s work, including the November 3 session, please see here.