The Priorities for 2026 NPT Review Conference (4)

NPT reaffirms the inalienable right of Treaty parties to develop research production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination. Nothing in the Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting this right

Consequently, safeguards shall be implemented without affecting this inherent right, including the sovereign right of each State to define its national energy and fuel-cycle policies, which, inter alia, includes an inalienable right to develop, for peaceful purposes, a full national nuclear fuel cycle.

Nevertheless, in recent decades, a group of States has made sustained, extensive efforts to demonise the exercise of certain aspects of this right or artificially linked them to proliferation concerns, and consequently, either hampered such activities or made them conditional on irrelevant parameters.

Evidently, any measure that aims at hampering, fully or partly, the fullest exercise of this right, materially breaches the Treaty, violates the Treaty’s object and purpose, and seriously jeopardizes the delicate balance between the rights and obligations of the States parties.

Accordingly, one of the main priorities of the 2026 NPT Review Conference must be to take a decisive practical decision on the full and effective realization of this right.

It must, inter alia, expressly call for ending such policies and practices, and unequivocally declare that possible concerns related to nuclear proliferation shall not, in any way, restrict the inalienable right of any State party to develop all aspects of nuclear science and technology for peaceful purposes.