S. Basak¹ , G. JHA¹

¹Jawaharlal Nehru University

Abstract:

On 6th august 1945, when the B29 Enola Gay took off from Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands to drop nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, it changed the balance of power of the international system, which divided the world into two: nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states, thereby altering the discourse of the conventional idea of security. In this course of series, worst victim became the small islands states of south Pacific, site of most of nuclear tests and later it turned as prominent destination for dumping of radioactive wastes from all over the world. It hampered the bio-diversity of the region and degraded the environment. The Rarotonga treaty (1986) was a just voice against such oppression. The treaty declares south pacific zone largely as denuclearized. The approach to Regional Denuclearisation is a commitment to ensure no testing, manufacture or possession any sort of nuclear weapon. In this scenario, the paper attempts to review the treaty of Rarotonga by comparing it with other NWFZs in the world, assess its performance and how this model can be emulated globally. Finally, this paper attempts to find out how the great powers, especially U.S., China and Japan, are reacting to this endeavor.