Three years later, we are celebrating that the Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons will become international law on January 22, 2021.
Making human security the objective of negotiations, instead of privileging military-industrial interests, has resulted in a powerfully different Treaty, based on humanitarian law and feminist security principles.
The preamble clearly sets out the shared security interests of the world’s peoples:
“… the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately addressed, transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, including as a result of ionizing radiation…”
This leads to the core prohibitions on acquiring, developing, manufacturing, testing, deploying, transferring, possessing and using nuclear weapons. It is stipulated that everyone who is bound by the Treaty must also support its full implementation and avoid assisting, inducing or encouraging anyone else to violate its provisions in any way.
Having chosen to boycott the negotiations, the nuclear armed states complain that the Treaty is “dangerous” and doesn’t take their interests into account. In a last ditch derailing attempt, the Trump administration sent a letter and talking points to many governments. Arrogantly describing national decisions to join the Treaty as a “strategic error”, the letter tried to pressure them to pull out.
Among its talking points the US repeats its discredited accusation that the new Treaty undermines the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and complains that the text does not fully determine how its prohibitions and provisions will be verified and implemented.
On the contrary, the Treaty was overwhelmingly adopted by 122 NPT member states in 2017, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently described it as an important pillar to strengthen nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.
Rooted in the humanitarian imperative to prevent nuclear use, war and proliferation, the Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons establishes the principles and conditions for these abhorrent weapons to be eliminated, with a set of practical, adaptable enforcement provisions.
Print
Rebecca Johnson | Radio Free (2020-10-28T12:13:00+00:00) Nuclear disarmament : from ‘open-ended talks’ to ratification and beyond. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/10/28/nuclear-disarmament-from-open-ended-talks-to-ratification-and-beyond/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.