AFRICAN NUCLEAR-WEAPON-FREE ZONE
Treaty of Pelindaba

On November 24, 1961, as a consequence of the first French nuclear test in the dessert of Western Sahara, in the territory of today’s Algeria, the General Assembly appealed the United Nations Member States to stop these tests carried out in the densely populated territories of North Africa. Three years after, the African Heads of State and Government gathered at the Summit Conference of the African Unity (OAU) solemnly declared by means of an international treaty that they were ready to achieve a treaty prohibiting the production and the absolute control over nuclear weapons in their region. Of course this proposal had not made any progress till the Cold War was over. Indeed it was since 1991 that South Africa, the African continent’s only country that had developed technological capacity for making nuclear weapons, became an integrant of the NPT, when real prospects for establishing a nuclear weapon free zone in Africa opened. The African Treaty bears the name of Pelindaba in honor of the South African nuclear plant that developed an important number of nuclear warheads and were dismantled. The fact that South Africa took such a decision of political character allowed the Pelindaba Treaty to have an end that had been expected for so many decades. The Treaty was opened for signature on April 12, 1996, in the city of Cairo. With the Pelindaba Treaty there are 54 independent states of international community that may be members of this nuclear weapon free zone. Like its precedents the Pelindaba Treaty has its text supplemented by three additional protocols. The first one is intended for the five nuclear powers; the second one prohibits nuclear tests in the application zone and the third one involves the states which de jure or de facto have territories under their jurisdiction in the Treaty application area.