doing. it here on. the frozen water known to exist on the moon's shadow surface is difficult to reach if the water on the moon's bright side is more easily accessible it may help sustain more human missions or even an outpost researchers say the next step is to use sophia to look again for longer and at a greater area and that the possibilities on the moon are tantalizing castro al-jazeera washington. says al jazeera and these are the headlines an explosion in pakistan has killed at least 10 people including children the blast happened at a religious school in the city of pasha more than $100.00 others were injured kemal hyder is in islamabad with more. according to preliminary and rector gaijin

a book on carrying a bag full of explosives walked in. prime dead by rear door 5 you could get a load of explosives i doubt bomb going all during the election we wrote your door got the number of wounded not over 100 more are under treatment and hochberg good and but peculiarly the lady reading hochberg and they're all feared dead dr we've got some of the. badly wounded in a car bomb blast in a special forces unit in eastern afghanistan has killed 2 people fighting is ongoing in the city of cost afghanistan's interior ministry says $25.00 others were injured in the attack including 9 civilians no group has claimed responsibility. as main opposition party says 3 people have been shot dead by police during pre-election protests they reportedly killed on the island of pemba main in tanzania and semi autonomous sounds of the hold presidential and parliamentary

elections on wednesday. the u.s. secretary of state and the defense secretary are in india where they're expected to sign an agreement expanding information sharing for military satellites it's part of a 5 day asia trip aimed at strengthening strategic ties to counter chinese at. the u.s. supreme court has a new justice any county barrett was sworn in a short while ago after the republican controlled senate approved her appointment this means the top court now has a conservative majority of 6 to 3 the u.n. is warning the humanitarian crisis in yemen is westing with $98000.00 children at risk of dying unicef says half a 1000000 under fives in southern yemen acutely malnourished well there's the headlines next stop it's inside story. to al-jazeera. is the government to take the necessary action to really address some of the structural issues we

listen i still think that travel is the safest mode of travel and to spend that we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter to 0. a global treaty outlawing nuclear weapons has reached its ratification goal and is set to come into force in january but no nuclear power has signed it so is the treaty a sign that the world is changing or just an empty gesture this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program. it's been hailed as a new chapter for nuclear disarmament but opposed by the world's major powers a u.n. treaty banning nuclear weapons has now been ratified by 50 countries and will come into force next january but none of the countries that have approved it actually

have a nuclear arsenal and no country that has one has approved the treaty all this raises doubts about how much it can achieve the u.n. secretary general antonio cherice has called ratification the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons it represents a meaningful commitment towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons which remains the highest disarmament priority of the united nations. we'll bring in our guests in a moment but 1st some background it's formally called the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and the u.n. opened it up for signatures in 2017 countries signing a promise to never develop test produce manufacture otherwise acquire possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices that commitment is legally binding but critics say there's no real way to enforce it and as we mentioned none of the world's acknowledged nuclear powers have signed it in fact

the u.s. government has spent the last several years trying to get some countries to withdraw their signatures. all right let's bring in our guests in london sahil shah a policy fellow at the european leadership network in geneva beatrice fen executive director of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons or i can the group was awarded the nobel peace prize in 2017 and in monterey california shot to joshi an associate professor of nonproliferation and terrorism studies at the middle bear institute of international studies a warm welcome to you all beatrice let me start with you just how historic a milestone is this treaty. but we would say that it's extremely significant and i actually agree with me a historic achievement much in line with you know other huge legal developments of this past century the u.n. charter the geneva conventions the ban on biological weapons the ban on chemical

weapons the bottom up mines crust and now also the ban on weapons so this treaty follows on all of these legal instrument aimed to constrain states behavior in warfare and protect the world that people shouted how many nuclear bombs are there in the world and just how quickly can they be launched. well i mean the is there are estimates of thousands of of warheads that are of a local to. the countries that are both nuclear weapons states under the not profession treaty as well as those countries which are outside the not that gratian treaty and or. and possess nuclear warheads so i think in total it becomes to several 1000 warheads. they can be launched on warning within

a matter of minutes depending on which arsenal you're you're talking about so the risk certainly is pretty pretty high. yeah so how is disarmament actually possible now or is this treaty just the 21st century version of the kellogg brianne pact pact that was signed in 1928 signatories promised not to use war to resolve disputes or conflicts that certainly didn't prevent world war 2 from happening. well i think all of us would like to think that global disarmament is possible given the immense risks attached to nuclear weapons but the main nuclear weapon states in the world today believe that the environment is not conducive for nuclear disarmament to occur and this is their main argument that they use but the t.p.m. w. will inevitably change discourse on nuclear weapons and it will change how we think about them how we speak about them as well as who thinks and speaks about nuclear

weapons and you know the countries that reject it they have vested interests in the military status quo they have interests in being able to project power and benefit financially and at the end of the day. that maintaining stability and nuclear weapons go hand in hand is just based off of sophisticated political academic and military theories and even though some countries have turned them into doctrines at the end of the day they are just theories and the t.p.n. w. flips those theories on their heads and it memorializes all those that were affected by the production testing and use of nuclear weapons and it calls everybody to be accountable for what they've done to the planet and to those populations and continue to put us all at risk beatrice all the countries that have ratified the treaty are bound by its requirements how is it going to be enforced.

well i mean international law is like that you know if it doesn't work there's no world pretty sick comfort to impress that if you violate it but and that gives international law sometimes an unfair reputation of not be meaningful but we do see that these kind of treaties do constrain governments they do shift behaviors and they work not dollars they of course not all works flawlessly but they do work and we see that based on the conventions that have banned other weapons like the bio weapons conventions like the chemical weapons. and for many of those it has even impacted countries that not joined the treaty or didn't participate in the gauche ations we have seen for example the us china russia shift their behavior when it comes to land mines they did not join those that treaty we've seen them ship behavior when it comes to cluster bombs they have not joined the treaty either so i think we can see that the is treating him whether or not these countries will join and we do think that eventually countries nuclear are allied states states with us

new growth on the territory and eventually nuclear arms that will join this treaty but in the meantime it will also hopefully shift their behavior made to more pressure on production near a start treaty that they see to be coming into for us and other steps and i think would also give you know much more political pressure on these countries it took china strong almost 20 years to sign up to the treaty stopping proliferation of nuclear weapons the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and we believe that they will go faster with this one sided there are those who make the argument that nuclear weapons as terrible as they are actually have been a key element in preserving global peace for the last 75 years what do you say to that so that so that's a debate between. the perforations after this versus the proliferation pessimists

but at the disposal of the free. search which has shown that even during the korean war there were near misses they were. accidents the risk was fairly high did throughout the cold war period and it's now that we are getting access to classified documents or. test of aliens from people who are in both of those cases we realize that it wasn't as stable as it much it was made out to be silent let me. let me ask you to expand on a point something that shattered just mentioning you because you talked about the middle east so there's been concern growing for a while now about the threat of nuclear proliferation in the middle east but the only signatories to the treaty from the immediate region are sudan algeria and palestine that's not going to alleviate worry about what could happen in the middle east going forward is it. no but what it will do is that for

a very long time there's been a discussion on middle east weapons of mass destruction free zone and this has been an issue that has been in gridlock for for many many decades and what the t.p.n. w. will do is help generate a conversation that could help positively contribute towards that effort as well as just you know socializing these issues more to populations in the middle east and the wider global south who don't necessarily hear about it on a day to day basis like we do in the united states in europe in russia where our presidents are currently in the middle of trying to quickly come to an agreement on whether or not to extend the only remaining arms control agreement that limits the nuclear arsenals of 2 of these major countries and these 2 countries will over 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons so i think that while it's you know it's where you get to see how many countries from the middle east and north africa join

the t.p.n. w. the point is it is part of it right now these treaties don't do their job the moment they're adopted or entered into force they do it over time and all of them play an important role but they don't ever solve the problem on its own and i don't think that beatrice and all of the thousands and thousands of supporters across the world that have generated be energy needed to get the t.p.m. w under the finish line argued that they're doing it on their own it's part of a constellation of efforts and if we truly want to see the middle east wm d. free zone come to fruition i hope that the t.p. m.w. will positively contribute to that and beatrice from your vantage point which is more worrying which is more concerning the fact that the us has threatened countries that have signed on to this treaty have asked them to rescind their commitments or the fact that none of the acknowledged nuclear powers have signed up

to begin with. well i mean as an immediate step we are obviously very concerned that the united states is asking countries to withdraw from a multilateral instrument regulating into a i mean we haven't seen a withdrawal from the most natural nuclear weapons since that north korea and the empathy and to develop its nuclear weapons and that's certainly nothing that anyone should support or want to see again so that's extremely concerning but the real threat of course is the continued modernization as a new sort of nuclear arms race the threats progress to make with them all the 9 nuclear arms states that are continuing to invest you know trillions of dollars into this weapon even doing out a full blown pandemic. so i think that's really the key challenge now that we need to use this treaty to leverage pressure on the nuclear arms states and i think that the letter asking countries to withdraw is a clear sign that the united states government fully recognize the impact of this

treaty i mean they are they have recognized in other documents that this threatens the legitimacy of nuclear deterrence the question the legitimacy of these weapons and it will have an impact on them even if they don't join it and that's why they are trying to stop it but luckily these 50 countries have moved forward and obviously it doesn't stop at the 50 countries we're going to continue working we are putting a lot of effort into to bring in more countries in the middle east for example on to the treaty and we hope to increase that number but also the nuclear allies states countries in europe with nuclear weapons on their territory and of course eventually also the nuclear arms that sylar saw you nodding to somewhat beatrice was saying did you want to do you want to add to the point she was making. i don't want to add but actually i would be very keen to hear more from beatrice on the effort to get europe on board because as everybody's aware europeans host american nuclear weapons and also are caught in the middle between the us and russia as you

know a nuclear risk paradigm where right now we don't know what the fate of the new strategic arms reduction or new start treaty is going to be when it potentially may expire in early february of next year so it would be really interesting to hear about what europeans are thinking in saying about the t p n w especially now that it is going to enter into force beatrice would you like to respond to that question from song. absolutely i think that's the really key the group of countries that are going to be very important in the coming years one of the real benefits of the treaty on the prohibition under go up as is that it has kind of exposed some countries that have been hiding behind the new plans that like so many issues you know you have the problem countries the one you kept arms states of course that are the key countries with the weapons that we want to change around them there's a whole like circle of around $3040.00 other countries that protect them and protect them uphold this structural problems of nuclear weapons and that is the

nato countries in the nuclear ally countries like south korea japan of strain they are for example that are participating in exercises hosting them to up and and at that their military would be part of using weapons of mass destruction on civilian population and these are countries a very often also have this that reputation of being humanitarian superpowers they're committed to human by the u.n. peace loving countries in that way but this is an extreme double standard when it comes to nuclear weapons and mistreated puts a lot of pressure on them so what we're going to do you know in order to get to the nuclear arms states we have to get through these countries that protect the legitimacy of nuclear weapon and we've seen positive things that that for example the latest the new belgian government for example doesn't hold us new grew up on its territory the new belgian government declaration has a positive reference to the t p n w in sort of platform and we're going to work with that we see an annex in coming

in germany made in next year which we see going to change the political landscape there we have lots of other programs in these countries to get them to take a stronger position and help push the nuclear arms states to assignment shut how worried are you that the proliferation of nuclear weapons could spin out of control or that the situation is already spinning out of control. well i mean you've got both vertical and horizontal proliferation trends going on you've got existing nuclear states which are expanding their their nuclear arsenal so that's one. so that's one dynamic that we're seeing and then we we see other countries like say iran for instance wage is moving ahead with acquiring nuclear weapons capability or at least you know working towards the word stack so on both of these

levels we see an expansion taking place rather than some kind of gap or slowing down and going to use whether in terms of fissile material production or expansion of delivery systems you were going to every systems by different countries different kinds of systems whether it's longer range ballistic missiles or cruise missiles so so you've got an expansion taking place in most of the nuclear weapon states so. so so that's a very sort of moving away from the ideals of this particular of this particular treaty among the countries that do possess nuclear weapons so yeah so that so from the perspective of this treaty that certainly would be a lot of exciting beatrice the new start arms control treaty between the u.s. and russia it's one of the most important nuclear arms agreements in the post cold

war era it's been close to collapse but it now looks like both countries might extend it possibly for another year or do you believe that we'll see an extension and if there is a breakthrough or ever rather if there's not a breakthrough how much more dangerous does the situation become. yeah i mean i certainly hope that there will be an extension as we said earlier that this is the last. sort of perrier to a full scale nuclear arms race between the russian the united states where they can just control increase their arsenal massively very important that they extend that i know there's a lot of work going on right now a lot but it's also a lot of uncertainty in the motivation of these demonstrations what they actually are if they're actually interested or they are just pretending to be interested. but i do think it's very important to remember that this is not extending your

start it's not actually a step forward. it's of course prevents a huge setback which is very important to do but i think that we have to remember that sometimes you know when you have a government the going in the complete the direction we company check in thinking keeping the same level is good enough and that that's a huge success we also have to remember that the aim of what they all have joined the new cannot place gratian treat it which is the legally binding commitment to to get to disarmament. if that they have to move towards lower levels of nuclear weapons they have to continue the process of new reductions not just maintain the current levels that exist of course in a in a situation where russia and the us and all the exams there's a threat are investing in modernization programs continue on the level it's necessary something we have to get so it's something very very important but it's it is important for the public to demand more of the i mean this is also important to remember that you know we talk a lot about and i can look at us all and have been

a kind of not happen of course it can happen it's not a natural law that nuclear weapons exist people make daily choices to keep nuclear weapons all the time governments military leaders parliamentarians that authorized the budgets so we can make different decisions it's completely in our ability and our power as populations to demand that our government take different editions shouted let's talk for a minute about the iran nuclear deal when you see the u.s. pull out of a historic deal like that how much does that set back nonproliferation efforts in other countries how negative is the impact i think the in fact can be quite severe you can think about cascading effects emerging from the from any movement that iran takes to are acquiring nuclear weapons capability and so ever since the united states walked out of the j.c.b.

away. agreement with with iran we've seen more and more work that the iranian government has been putting in 2 words its nuclear weapons program. and so that naturally causes concern amongst other powers in the region especially saudi arabia united arab emirates and so how would they respond to this so we've seen. you know there are reports so in recent years about saudi interest in various weapons alliances with different countries including say pakistan and so and so there is this worry that that the expansion of iran's nuclear weapons research capability that will lead to these countervailing effects from

a counter really boluses from countries like saudi arabia turkey. and certainly there will be some concern within pakistan also they share a border so in the vicinity of pakistan and so you know maybe difficult to control a lot of these a lot of these effects of the iranian nuclear expansion so it's certainly one side the abrogation of this treaty or rather the u.s. walking out of this treaty and iran saying that ok you know we'll continue our head with our in richmond capabilities that will have. an impact yes south the fact that u.s. president trump has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the u.s. would honor its security commitments the fact that there's been a loss of confidence by u.s. allies in american security agreements does that have the potential to lead more

countries to pursue nuclear weapons. just to respond very briefly to the previous 2 questions i think because they work hand in hand when it comes to new start europeans are trying to desperately publicly and privately lobby the united states to not just go for a one year extension but to fully extend the treaty for the 5 years that it is allowed to be extended so that they can actually work with the russians and come up with a verifiable way to get some of these additional you know legal instruments such as a warhead freezes on the table and signed but until we have new start extended there is no basis for stepping stone to get those additional you know confidence building measures secured so i think that the united states and russia both are hearing from europeans who are caught in the middle on why the treaty

should not just be extended for one year but for 5 years and why this should be the basis from which further discussions happen not just between the u.s. and russia but also the wider p 5 the 5 nuclear weapons states under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty which includes the u.k. france and china while the u.k. france and china have far less nuclear weapons the 5 of them do need to continue forward in a united way and come up with some proposals that all 5 of them can contribute towards ahead especially of the n.p.t. view conference that will happen next year on the iran front this was a giant wake up call to europeans and the u.s. withdrawal from the j.c. v.o.a. can be seen as a you know a sacrificial lamb of something much bigger this withdrawal has generated conversations in europe about the need for european strategic autonomy the need to move away from the dollar and increase the salience of the euro it has also led the

europeans to think hard about whether they can trust the united states in. dealings on further arms control measures that other countries so both new start being in limbo and the j c p a way barely clinging on to life at the moment are because the united states is playing games and europeans are not happy because there is. you know an understanding between the united states and europe that they will work together on these issues especially because they have a more proximate threat to europe iran is closer to europe its missiles are closer to you're a russian missiles are closer to europe so you know in terms of how devastating these things are it does have an effect and it does wake people up and make them think and i wouldn't be surprised if as a result europeans are more willing and open to hearing about the frustrations that underlie the keep the n.w.

and trying to find ways to compliment that effort if not just join it and support it fully all right we are out of times we're going to have to leave it there thanks so much to all our guests sahil shah beatrice finn and shouted joshi and thank you too for watching because he the program again any time of visiting our website al jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a.j. inside story for me and the entire team here in doha i for now was. building a wall was the promise made in the bid for the white house 0 tolerance approach the southern border became government policy detaining children and separating families

the stark reality of picture too much to bear for many americans in a country that was built on immigration. follow the key issues of the us elections on al-jazeera. amidst a climate of violence and paranoia. there are those still willing to dream. in honduras dennis seeks a brighter future for his son and community. using aat to reclaim the city. and transform the very symbol of past oppression. you find in latin america liberating a prison on al-jazeera. trust is fundamental to all our relationships we trust banks with our money talk to us without really personal thought what happens to trust in a world driven by our. as more want to citizens are made for us by these complex

piece of code the question that comes up is inevitable can we trust algorithms in the 1st of a 5 part series questions the neutrality of digital deduction trust me i'm an algorithm on a jersey or. at least 8 killed and dozens more injured after a bomb attack as a religious school in pakistan. there are no stars here ted this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up strengthening ties with india the u.s. secretary of state seeks closer military cooperation in the face of growing regional influence from china. the toll being taken on children by the war in yemen the u.n. says thousands are at high risk of dying from hunger.