By Julia Cooper, Center Fall 2025 Policy Intern, and Jules Zacher, Board Chair
Nuclear non-proliferation advocates are overlooking a major development in international law that could make our advocacy efforts more comprehensive and effective. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), despite being a critical element of the pursuit of non-proliferation, creates a loophole around producing nuclear weapons that may be able to be addressed by a human rights law. The potential implications of this development in human rights law are significant but hindered by the United States’ general attitude toward international law, especially under President Donald Trump, which non-proliferation activists must challenge to drive change.
While the NPT is credited with stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, a loophole allows states to continue proliferation by developing all of the elements of nuclear weapons as long as they don’t actually assemble them. The NPT explicitly states that non-nuclear weapons states must not acquire nuclear weapons or “assist in their manufacture.” This language around the manufacturing of nuclear weapons is ambiguous and, per experts, is subject to a broad understanding that could refer only to the actual construction of such a weapon. Furthermore, the NPT protects civilian nuclear power generation, a process that could result in states developing technology for producing fissile materials under the guise of nuclear power generation. This means states can teeter on the edge of developing nearly everything required to build a nuclear weapon legally under the NPT — a loophole states like Iran and North Korea have exploited.
Human rights law appears to have a solution to this gap in the NPT, as is demonstrated by the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s 2019 General Comment No. 36 (GC-36), which focuses on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the right to life. While General Comments from the Human Rights Committee are considered authoritative interpretations of the law, they are not legally binding. GC-36 illustrates the Human Rights Committee’s understanding of Article 6 and includes a paragraph on nuclear weapons. A key new development in human rights law regarding nuclear weapons is laid out in paragraph 66 — the notion that the proliferation of such weapons is inherently counter to the right to life. The comment states that, “states parties must take all necessary measures to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction… refrain from developing, producing, testing, acquiring… them.” This reflects a development in human rights law that can be useful for non-proliferation efforts: that nuclear weapons may not only be illegal when states detonate them, but also when states develop them. Where the NPT’s broad language around manufacturing nuclear weapons and allowance for civilian nuclear power generation creates a loophole, the General Comment sets a precedent in international human rights law that even the “development, production, and testing” of nuclear weapons may be against the ICCPR, and demonstrates an understanding of the law that may provide the opportunity to outlaw high level uranium enrichment. This would mean states like Iran, that already toe the line of illegality under the NPT, would actually be in violation of another realm of international law.
While GC-36 has huge potential to expand international law’s abilities to pursue tangible non-proliferation, the United States’ exceptionalism and refusal to ascribe to international law threatens these abilities. In September of this year, the U.S. Navy began conducting lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean, raising questions of lack of probable cause and potential violations of international law. While he justified these strikes by calling them “preemptive,” President Trump has not provided evidence that these boats were carrying drugs. Legal scholars have warned that the strikes are illegal under maritime law, the law of armed conflict and human rights law. The Trump administration, despite these warnings, has continued carrying out strikes, even while French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot says they “disregard international law.” Part of the Trump administration’s aim appears to be to assert that the United States is not bound by international rules, which will ultimately be self-defeating. By seeming to disregard international legal principles, President Trump has weakened not only a potential case for reinforcing non-proliferation with human rights standards but undermined human rights law in general. For the opportunity opened by GC-36 to be officially recognized in the United States, it is critical that advocates for non-proliferation challenge Trump’s attitude toward both international law and human rights.
On top of challenging President Trump’s outlook on international human rights law, which threatens the United States’ ability to set a global standard, non-proliferation advocates can also push for other avenues to explore the illegality of proliferating of nuclear weapons under human rights law. First, the United Nations, using the legal understandings and framework put forth in GC-36 as a basis, should seek to normalize the principle that proliferation explicitly violates international law. Second, advocates in the United States can contact our representatives and push for greater documentation of the connection between human rights law and non-proliferation via a Congressional hearing. Broadly, the more recognition of human rights law there is, the more useful this promising development in the field of international human rights law can be for non-proliferation advocacy.
