Jakarta. Indonesia has long ratified the world’s anti-nuclear test treaty, and the country is now hoping that the US and China will follow suit.

Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi recently flew to Vienna for a meeting on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). During her trip, Retno met with Robert Floyd, the executive secretary to CTBTO -- the organization that oversees the treaty. The CTBT bans all nuclear explosive testing. The document is now waiting for ratification by eight other countries of the so-called “Annex 2 states” before it can come into effect. Those states include major powers China and the US, according to Retno.

“The treaty will only be in effect if the Annex 2 states have completed their ratification. … The CTBT is now waiting for ratification by eight Annex 2 states, namely China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the US before the treaty can enter into force,” Retno told reporters via a recorded press statement.

“We also agreed to continue to push for the treaty’s ratification by the other Annex 2 states,” Retno said, commenting on her meeting with Floyd

To this day, as many as 187 countries across the globe have signed the CTBT, 178 of whom have completed the ratification process, according to Retno. Papua New Guinea was the latest country to ratify. 

Annex 2 states refer to the 44 countries who negotiated the CTBT from 1994-1996, and possessed nuclear power or research reactors. CTBT will enter into force 180 days after the Annex 2 countries have all ratified. Indonesia inked the treaty in 1996, but it took over a decade before it ratified the CTBT in 2011.

The US Senate did not approve the treaty in 1999. The country, however, has observed a moratorium on nuclear explosive testing since 1992. Russia late last year said they would withdraw from the CTBT, saying that it would put Moscow on “equal footing” with the US who had not ratified the pact. At a UN Security Council meeting in 2021, China claimed it would work towards bringing the CTBT into force. Both China and the US are two of the recognized nuclear weapon states -- a term classifying the countries that had manufactured or denoted nukes prior to 1967.

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