Barbados Signs and Ratifies CTBT

Hats off to Barbados, which both signed and ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on Monday. The country joins a slew of recent ratifications, including four last year: the Bahamas (November 30), the Dominican Republic (September 4), Palau (August 1), and Moldova (January 16). Before Barbados, the last country to sign the CTBT was Montenegro on October 23, 2006. Can Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, or Trinidad and Tobago be far behind?

The addition of Barbados brings the number of Treaty signatories to 178 and Treaty ratifiers to 142. In order for the CTBT to enter into force, however, it must ratified by the 44 countries identified in Annex 2 of the Treaty (countries that participated in the negotiations of the Treaty in 1996 and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at the time).

While 41 of these countries have signed the Treaty, only 34 have ratified it, leaving the U.S. as only one of ten countries to stand in the way of its full implementation. The other countries are China, Columbia, North Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, and Pakistan. Of these only North Korea, India and Pakistan have not signed the CTBT.