This Food-for-Thought paper prepared by Working Group 1 explores the role of transparency in the context of nuclear disarmament. This paper canvasses what transparency is and why it matters for nuclear disarmament, and it considers some key characteristics of transparency measures, identifying two broad categories—formal and informal—and discussing the important contribution of each. It concludes that identifying and implementing optimal transparency measures will be critical to overcoming the challenges posed by nuclear disarmament verification, and suggests that attention should turn to how to apply the concept of transparency to each step of nuclear disarmament verification, commencing with warhead dismantlement.
