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Dispatch → Bulletin → WA Opinion
GA Proposal: AGAINST “International Nuclear Compliance Commission”
OWL recommends voting $AGAINST$ the at-vote resolution, “International Nuclear Compliance Commission”". The Delegate has been asked to cast their vote accordingly.
Please find below the Office's Analysis for an examination of the resolution and the reasons for the final recommendation.
The current at-vote GA proposal is "International Nuclear Compliance Commission", which seeks to establish standards surrounding the development of nuclear energy for member states. It does so by creating the regulatory agency that is the namesake for this proposal, The International Nuclear Compliance Commission (INCC), given authority to establish standards, and to aid and oversee members interested in developing nuclear energy technology. The goal here is laudable, but the execution is sorely lacking.
For one, Clause 2a enables the INCC to "publish and maintain an extensive list of safeguards, rules, regulations, and precautions that World Assembly members will subscribe to", but nowhere in the resolution are specific examples of any items on this "extensive list" given. Therefore, this power is vested entirely in the INCC, with limited input from member states. That may not be so problematic if basic standards or ideas were given about the nature of these regulations, but alas, there is none of that to be found. Furthermore, Clause 2c states that "any facility inspections shall require the full voluntary consent of host nations" (emphasis added). In other words, inspections of nuclear facilities, a basic and fundamental core function of the INCC, are only able to be performed if member states voluntarily agree to submit to them. This effectively renders this clause, and really, the entire resolution, completely and utterly useless; making INCC inspections voluntary for members enables those that are non-compliant with INCC safeguards and regulations to simply refuse to agree to INCC inspections. That is, the nations that most need to be inspected will largely not be, thereby deafeating the entire purpose of conducting inspections in the first place. And, just to add insult, this creates a bizarre double-standard; whereas nations that have already achieved criticality may completely opt-out of INCC oversight, Clause 2b places those that are in the process of attempting to achieve criticality directly under INCC oversight.
This proposal spent an unusually brief amount of time in drafting on the forums, and received relatively little feedback in the process; a fact which is made plainly apparent by the presence of these flaws. Because of all of this, OWL recommends a vote AGAINST "International Nuclear Compliance Commission".
Analysis by
Aidenfieeld




