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The potential stigmatizing effect of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Author(s): Tom Sauer, Mathias Reveraert

In: The Nonproliferation Review, Vol 25, No 5-6, 2018, pp. 437-455

Advocates of the TPNW know that it will not automatically lead to a world without nuclear weapons. The treaty’s main goal, the authors argue, is to stimulate a societal and political debate inside the nuclear-armed states and their allies, by strengthening the antinuclear norm and by stigmatising nuclear weapons and their possessors. This article assesses to what extent this process of stigmatisation might take place. It concludes by looking at different stigma-management approaches that could be used by the nuclear-armed states and their allies.