South Africa deposited its Instrument of Ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) with the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New York today.
Following South Africa's signature of the Treaty on 24 September 1996, the South African parliament approved its ratification earlier this month. South Africa's role in the negotiation of the Treaty has been significant.
The Director-General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Mr Jackie Selebi, while serving as South Africa's Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, served as the first Chair of the Preparatory Commission of the CTBT Organisation.
The CTBT represents an historic achievement and aims to end nuclear tests for all time globally and is a welcome umbrella to the advances made on the African continent which culminated in the signing of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, known as the Pelindaba Treaty.
Under article 1 of the CTBT each State Party "undertakes not to carry out any nuclear-weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any, such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control". There is no limitation on duration or place: the CTBT provisions extend to all environments, underwater, in the atmosphere and underground.
In terms of the Treaty an International Monitoring System (IMS), comprising various monitoring stations (Radionuclide, infrasound, hydroaccoustic, seismic) across the world, is to be established. This will deter and monitor all nuclear explosions, be they underground, under water or in the atmosphere. South Africa will have five such stations located on its territory.
The data collected from these stations will be relayed by satellite to an International Data Centre (IDC) in Vienna. This information will be available to all States Parties and could be used not only as an early warning mechanism of nuclear explosions, but serve, on our own continent, to warn of seismic movement, underwater earthquakes or even weather patterns all of which could pose great harm to our countries and to our people.
In recognition of its role, South Africa was elected as the first Chair of the Preparatory Commission of the CTBT Organisation. South Africa was also one of the members of the core group of countries that managed the process of the resolution on the CTBT adopted in New York in September 1996. Two of the items of the Treaty text can be attributed to South African proposals - those dealing with funding of the International Monitoring System and on the levels of explosions, an issue important to our mining industry.
South Africa encourages all Signatories to ratify the Treaty, thereby ensuring its entry into force as soon as possible.
ISSUED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
PRETORIA
30 MARCH 1999
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
South Africa was one of the first group of sixteen states to sign the Treaty in 1996.
To date, more than 151 states have signed and close to thirty have already ratified it.
The Treaty has a long and detailed history. An ad hoc committee of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva (an autonomous negotiating body and the only standing multilateral disarmament negotiating forum) started to negotiate the text for a CTBT in January 1994. At the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), NPT Parties made a commitment to complete negotiation of the CTBT "no later than 1996". It was adopted on 10 September 1996. South Africa signed the Treaty on 24 September 1996.
Under Article 1 of the CTBT, each State Party "undertakes not to carry out any nuclear-weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any, such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control". There is no limitation on duration or place: the CTBT provisions extend, to all environments, the existing bans on nuclear test explosions - underwater, in the atmosphere and in space.
Under the Treaty an international network of 321 monitoring stations will continuously measure shock-waves in air, water and rock, and measure atmospheric radioactivity, using one or more of the four relevant technologies. Each station will transmit data back to the IDC in Vienna, for collation and analysis. South Africa will have five such stations on it territory.
Three of the technologies used by the IMS deal directly with the mechanical effects of nuclear explosion:
- seismological monitoring measures shock waves through the earth;
- hydroaccoustic monitoring measures shock waves in water;
- infrasound monitoring measures low frequency pressure fluctuations in the atmosphere.
Radionuclide monitoring is the fourth technology used. The detection of certain radioactive products - that is, the fission ones - enables an event to be identified as nuclear in origin.
The scientific experts who proposed the number, composition and distribution of the monitoring stations judge that the network will be capable of detecting identifying and locating nuclear explosion anywhere in the world, at least down to a yield of one kiloton (a unit of explosive power equivalent to 1,000 tons of the conventional high explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT).
The CTBT will enter into force 180 days after it has been ratified by the 44 States which took part in negotiating the CTBT at the Conference on Disarmament, and which are identified in Annex II of the Treaty as having a nuclear capacity (whether civil or military). If the CTBT has not entered into force three years after the anniversary of its opening for signature on 24 September 1996, and if asked to do so by a majority of States Parties, the Secretary-General of the UN will convene a conference of those States which have ratified the CTBT to consider possible measures to accelerate the ratification process.