International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
This year ICAN is likely to pass the milestone of having more than half the world’s countries as signatories or full members of the treaty — 197 states are eligible to sign the treaty and currently there are 93 signatories and 70 states parties.
Indonesia and Brazil, two of the most populated countries in the world, are likely to ratify the treaty soon. ICAN keeps highlighting the messages about the flawed nature of deterrence, about noncompliance with international law, and keeping up public pressure on governments, and also pressure on companies and industries themselves through financial pressure.
However to really make a start, actions needs to be initiated by USA, Russia and China to reduce their Nuclear stock piles to the level of India.
Once the four top nuclear nations are on the same level then others will just fall in line. This is the only way out. India has been the first country to suggest total abolition if Nuclear Weapons but it has to be Universal.
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Executive Director Melissa Parke is now set to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki from Jan. 19 to 21, ahead of the three-year anniversary since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force.
The risk of a nuclear conflict is at an all-time high since the end of the Cold War, and the TPNW has taken on an increasingly significant role to abolish all nuclear weapons to ensure safety for humanity.
The Second Meeting of States Parties of the TPNW, which took place last November to December produced a very strong condemnation of nuclear deterrence and that is highly significant. Participants heard from many “hibakusha” A-bomb survivors, victims of nuclear testing, and affected communities from around the world, members of civil society organizations, scientists and academics. You don’t see that same access given in the other nuclear disarmament meetings, like the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
From Japan, the Hiroshima prefectural governor and mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and some Japanese national Diet members were there, and of course, there were many hibakusha, and members of civil society.
People — from the Pacific, from Japan and Korea, from North America, Kazakhstan, Australia — keep telling their stories again and again because there’s always new diplomats and others at these UN meetings who need to learn the truth about nuclear weapons. Hibakusha and members of affected communities are suffering health consequences as the result of nuclear weapon use, and their children and their children’s children are suffering those consequences too. The TPNW is a democratic treaty that gives voice to countries and those peoples, communities, who have traditionally been sidelined and marginalized in this debate, especially countries from the global south who don’t have nuclear weapons but who will be affected by nuclear weapons as much as everybody else.
Hibakusha are the reason for this TPNW treaty, to prevent the same thing from happening again, and so they will always be a central part of the discussion for this treaty.
Australia, Germany and Norway, which are close allies of the United States and under the so-called nuclear umbrella, attended the meeting. But no one from Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government, despite the PM’s claim that he’s personally committed to nuclear disarmament, showed up. It was deeply disappointing and also really puzzling that the Japanese government failed to attend the meeting as an observer. Japan has a unique moral authority to lead on nuclear disarmament, and it’s reasonable for Japan to attend and see what’s happening at that meeting.
The government of Japan must listen to the hibakusha on these issues because they know what will happen if nuclear weapons are used. The most powerful way of convincing governments to do the right thing is public pressure. The people who attended the meeting from around the world gave me positive energy, and I’m really confident that we will achieve our goal of eliminating nuclear weapons.
These meetings, whether it’s the NPT or the TPNW, it tends to be the same people looking at these issues, and sometimes it’s only defense or security experts that are talking about nuclear weapons on the TV. It’s really important that we break down the silos and recognize that nuclear weapons are everyone’s business. Nuclear weapons will destroy everything, (and) are not separate from other global concerns; they are deeply a part of them.
So nuclear weapons worsen environmental problems, they divert essential funds away from addressing pressing global challenges like climate change, species extinction and social inequality; they undermine the principles of human rights and justice. We see the abolition of nuclear weapons as an essential part of respecting and protecting the planet, the climate, humanity and all living things. Essentially, there can be no nuclear weapons on a sustainable planet.
The threat of nuclear war is widely recognized to be at its highest level since the Cold War. The Doomsday Clock was last year moved the closest it’s ever been to midnight — the hour that signifies the annihilation of humanity. Tensions and conflict around the world, the breakdown in nuclear arms control agreements, the renewal of nuclear threats and the increase in the dangerous practice of nuclear sharing, and a new nuclear arms race underway, it’s really never been more important or urgent for the international community to take action to eliminate nuclear weapons.
The new U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides the pathway to their elimination. Despite the current instability and violence across the world, international law remains central to restricting conflict and (ensuring) stability and so the TPNW is a new addition to international law, and outlaws nuclear weapons in the same way that chemical and biological weapons have been eliminated and banned. Despite this nothing will happen unless nuclear countries follow what has been advocated by India.
Deterrence is relied upon by nuclear states and their allies, including Japan, as being central to global stability and security. Never before has a U.N. treaty laid out the threat that nuclear deterrence poses to the future of life on our planet. Deterrence is unacceptable. It’s based on the threat to wage nuclear war, which would kill millions outright and lead to a nuclear winter and mass starvation that recent research shows would kill billions of people as well as other life forms.
Deterrence is deeply flawed as a theory, since it assumes 100% rationality and predictability by all actors, including one’s enemies, 100% of the time. There are many things that can happen that don’t involve the deliberate use of nuclear weapons. There have been many accidents over the decades. You can’t deter accidents, you can’t deter miscalculations, you can’t deter unhinged leaders, you can’t deter terrorist groups, you can’t deter cyberattacks and you can’t deter simple mistakes.
It’s really more dumb luck than good management that we’re all still here to talk about it. Rather than relying upon dumb luck for the future of the planet, we would prefer to eliminate the very real risk that exists of nuclear weapons.
