Speaker
Description
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) obliges each State Party to undertake not to carry out any nuclear weapon nuclear explosion or participate in the carrying out of such. States Parties undertake to cooperate for facilitating the verification of compliance with this Treaty. The verification regime of the CTBT uses cutting-edge technologies and scientific methods to monitor nuclear explosions. In order to increase the capability of State Parties to participate in nuclear explosion monitoring, the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) of the CTBTO PrepCom has launched a range of capacity building activities. Many of these activities are funded through voluntary contribution, in particular by the European Union. The activities consist of various phases encompassing country capabilities evaluation, regional NDC development workshops, training courses for NDC technical staff and provision of computer equipment. Even though use of data and products from regions with previous low usage is still lagging compared to the more active regions, there is a marked increase in the last four years with regard to the number of countries involved and the total volume of data transferred. This can be attributed to the enhanced and focused capacity building efforts by the CTBTO in the regions of interest.
