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Speaker:  Professor Ramesh Thakur

Senior Vice Rector, United Nations University, Tokyo

"Recent trends – what chance for nuclear disarmament?"

Date: 15 February 2007

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Ramesh Thakur, a political scientist and peace researcher, was born in India in 1948. He earned his Ph.D. in political studies at Queen's University, Canada. Prof. Thakur spent 16 years with the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he established eminent foreign policy and study forums. In 1995, he was appointed to head the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University establishing policy-oriented research, workshops, and dissemination on numerous undertakings, such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Prof. Thakur is the author of numerous peace-related publications and has taken on various responsibilities with national bodies in New Zealand and Australia. He was appointed Vice-Rector of the United Nations University (UNU) in April 1998 and became Senior Vice-Rector and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations in October 2003. He is a member of the UNU's senior academic staff and works as head of the University's Peace and Governance Programme.

Roundtable Topic

From R. Thakur, “North Korea Test as Spur to Nuclear Disarmament”, Economic and Political Weekly, October 21, 2006.

“It truly is remarkable how those who worship at the altar of nuclear weapons condemn others wishing to join their sect as heretics. The problem is not nuclear proliferation, but nuclear weapons. The solution therefore is not non-proliferation, but nuclear disarmament through a universal, non-discriminatory, verifiable and enforceable nuclear weapons convention, modelled on the lines of the chemical weapons convention.

It is a sobering reflection that two generations of people have grown up under the shadow of the mushroom cloud. For most people the nuclear reality has become an inescapable element of the strategic landscape. Confronted with a world they cannot change, sensible people accommodate their behaviour to reality. But the turning points in history have come from the actions of those unreasonable people, including Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, who decided to change the world instead. We need similar apostles of peace to break out of the nuclear box today.”

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