A visiting senior official of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) praised the Philippines for its global peace and security contributions through Filipino scientists’ high-quality data gathering and scientific monitoring.
“Your colleagues, your people here, they are doing a super job, and they are contributing to global peace and security by [providing] consistent, good, high-quality data which we put together in Vienna,” Robert Floyd, CTBTO executive secretary, told President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. during a Palace courtesy call on Tuesday.
“We share it with all 187 states that belong to our treaty, so you are making a material contribution towards the confidence states can have that nobody can cheat,” he said.
Floyd said CTBTO believes the organization has to do everything it can to protect the global norm against nuclear testing during turbulent and uncertain times.
He added that this includes the International Monitoring System (IMS), which spans the globe and has a unique network of monitoring stations and laboratories.
The CTBTO maintains 300 stations, monitoring the shaking of the earth’s crust, ocean and atmosphere sound, and any radioactive materials in the atmosphere.
Keeping the best quality of standard assures every state that if somebody conducted nuclear testing, it would enforce the norm against nuclear detonation, Floyd said.
Floyd was scheduled to visit the IMS stations in Tanay and Tagaytay.
“It does my heart good to meet your technical people and down at the Taal volcano observatory who are doing that work and they’re so proud of it. It was a wonderful thing yesterday to visit them,” he said.
Floyd is in Manila to participate in the 16th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Inter-Sessional Meeting on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ISM NPD). He will deliver the keynote address during the ARF ISM NPD dinner and present CTBTO’s work.
The Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO was established in 1996, with headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
It is an organization tasked with building up the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) verification regime in preparation for the Treaty’s entry into force and promoting the Treaty’s universality. | PND
