Is a world free of nuclear weapons achievable? North Korea is actively developing its nuclear programme, the fate of the Iran nuclear deal is in the balance, and the United States and Russia are both seeking to modernise their nuclear forces. With the Nobel Committee’s decision to honour the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons with the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, the Committee sent a powerful message of concern. In the same year, the General Assembly decided to convene a UN conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.

Territorial disputes in the South China Sea involve both island and maritime claims among several sovereign states within the region, namely Brunei, the People’s Republic of China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. A significant aspect of the territorial dispute in the South China Sea concerns China’s construction of (artificial) islands. The disputes in the South China focus on the question whether the (land reclamations on the) reefs in the South China Sea are islands or rocks or Low Tide Elevations.