Delegates now gathered in New York City for this year’s meeting of the United Nations General Assembly—and people the world over—heard a solemn warning on Sept. 26:
“We gather under a shadow that should have been lifted long ago. A threat born of human design —and prolonged by human folly. Nuclear weapons continue to menace our world, and despite decades of promises, we see this threat as accelerating and evolving … We are sleepwalking into a new nuclear arms race; more complex, more unpredictable and even more dangerous.”
That was the message from UN Secretary-General António Guterres, delivered by Chef de Cabinet Courtenay Rattray, as delegates from more than 80 countries joined with representatives from civil society organizations to speak at the UN’s commemoration of the annual International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
This year’s commemoration took place 80 years after two powerful events profoundly impacting humanity worldwide. One was the U.S. nuclear bombings during World War II that left the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in radioactive ruin, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. The other was the founding of the United Nations.
The gathering was held at a time when arms control agreements negotiated to limit nuclear weapons and their acquisition are steadily being eroded, and nuclear powers are modernizing those weapons with new technologies.
Telling delegates that ending nuclear weapons will not happen overnight, but “will never happen if we keep waiting for perfect conditions,” Guterres called on nations with nuclear weapons to “return to dialogue,” adopting and carrying out measures to prevent catastrophic miscalculations, and making sure all nuclear weapons are fully controlled by humans.
When the UN adopted the International Day in 2013, Sept. 26 was chosen because on that date in 1983 – in the midst of the Cold War – the world was saved from a looming global catastrophe when Col. Stanislav Petrov, the officer in charge at a Soviet early warning command center, correctly determined that reports of an apparent incoming ballistic missile attack were a false alarm.
Guterres called on the 191 countries that signed the UN’s Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), including the original nuclear powers – the U.S., United Kingdom, China, Russia and France – to live up to their obligations under that treaty. He also urged all countries to follow the lead of the 95 nations that have signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), 74 of which have ratified the pact.
“On this International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” said Guterres, “let us make long needed progress to forge a world free of these weapons of extinction. Let us build that world together – with courage, conviction and concrete action.”
As she opened the meeting, the president of the General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, who is from Germany, told delegates, “while we cannot be naïve about the world as it is, neither can we give up on the world as it should be. It’s in our hands. Our efforts must persevere … because we know it’s the right thing to do. Global security rests not in ever-growing arsenals, but in disarmament, in nonproliferation and—one day—in abolition.”
Delegates on the speakers’ list mostly represented nations throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America. Among the nine nuclear weapons states, only delegates from China, India and Pakistan spoke; the seat reserved for the United States remained empty throughout the day.
Urgency of coming together
Speakers emphasized the urgency of nations coming together to honor and carry out international agreements to control and end nuclear weapons. Many emphasized expanding the number of countries signing the TPNW, and achieving a successful outcome at the NPT’s upcoming review conference April 27-May 22 at UN Headquarters in New York.
Several speakers also highlighted their opposition to Israel’s war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Speaking for Japan—to date the only nation to suffer nuclear weapons’ impact in war—Ambassador Nakamura Kimitake said advancing nuclear disarmament has been the highest priority diplomatic effort for his country ever since the General Assembly’s very first resolution, adopted in 1946, called for nuclear weapons to be eliminated.
In this anniversary year, Nakamura said, Japan has been working “to promote the understanding of the realities of atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki … Memories of the hibakusha—the atomic bomb survivors – must be passed down to future generations along with the 80-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons. We must never give up until our resolute leadership and concerted efforts bring about our shared goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Several nations experiencing the consequences of nuclear weapons tests also spoke.
Akan Rakhmetullin, first deputy foreign minister of Kazakhstan, told delegates his country’s “unwavering commitment to nuclear disarmament” is based on the “tragic legacy” of over 450 nuclear tests conducted at the Semipalatinsk nuclear site while Kazakhstan was still a republic of the Soviet Union.
After becoming independent in 1991 following the USSR’s collapse, Rakhmetullin said Kazakhstan “became the first nation to close such a site and voluntarily renounce the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal. That decision was an act of principle, transforming tragedy into responsibility. It defines our national identity and our role as committed to peace.”
The path forward is clear, Rakhmetullin said: “Nuclear-armed states, at a bare minimum, must reduce the role of these weapons in their doctrines, lower their operational readiness, cease any further buildup and return to the fullest fulfillment of their disarmament obligations.”
Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, an island nation in the mid-Pacific midway between Hawaii and the Philippines, told of the ravages those islands experienced before they became an independent nation in 1986.
Between 1946 and 1958, Heine said, the United States conducted 67 known nuclear weapons tests there, the “most infamous” being the Castle Bravo test of March 1, 1954. That bomb, the largest ever tested by the U.S., had a yield of 15 megatons—almost a thousand times bigger than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima.
“The Bravo shot caused the darkest day in the history of my people,” Heine said, “and its consequences have carried through over the generations. We became sick with cancers, infertility, stillbirths and the births of ‘jellyfish babies,’ children born without a skeletal structure and with translucent skin, only to die shortly after.” Even today, she said, Marshallese people continue to suffer serious health effects, and some cannot return to their ancestral lands because radioactive contamination remains.
Connection is undeniable
“For the Marshall Islands, the connection between nuclear disarmament and the protection and enjoyment of human rights is undeniable,” Heine said, “as we have lived experience that informs this understanding.”
Uganda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeje Odongo Abubhakar spoke on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement of 121 countries across the world. He said at last year’s meeting in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, the Movement reaffirmed that nuclear disarmament is its highest priority.
Abubhakar said Non-Aligned Movement members are deeply concerned at the nuclear weapons states’ lack of progress towards eliminating their arsenals in accord with their legal obligations and commitments, especially as arsenals are growing and include new, more advanced types of weapons. Movement members are calling on the UN’s Conference on Disarmament to convene urgent negotiations for the weapons’ total elimination.
Mohammad Hassani-Nejad, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s director-general for international peace and security, called the trend by the U.S. and other nuclear powers to introduce more usable nuclear weapons “alarming,” and warned that nuclear weapons states are arbitrarily bypassing obligations under the NPT.
Calling the “unprovoked and premeditated war of aggression” Israel launched against his country in June, with direct U.S. involvement, “shocking,” Hassani-Nejad reaffirmed Iran’s “steadfast commitment to the total and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide” and his country’s call for establishing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
As the hours of remarks by General Assembly delegates drew to a close, civil society representatives took the podium.
Tanaka Satoshi, a leader with Nihon Hidankyo, Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations, told delegates: “As a hibakusha who has lived to the age of 81, I feel compelled to raise a warning: the fear that all of humanity may become hibakusha. This is the lived experience of one who has felt the reality of the nuclear age first-hand … We must act now, before it is too late.”
Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States at the Vatican, warned of the dangers of a “new arms race characterized by the integration of artificial intelligence into military system.” He urged nations to live up to the NPT’s provisions and to join the TPNW “as a concrete step towards achieving a world free from nuclear weapons and preventing the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would ensue from their use.”
Dr. Deepshikha Kumari Vijh, executive director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, spoke for over 500 peace, human rights, environmental, religious, youth and other organizations and hundreds more individuals around the world when she presented their Joint Appeal to leaders, legislators and officials at all governmental levels in UN member states, on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
That appeal calls on all countries to affirm that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible; stand down nuclear forces and adopt policies never to start a nuclear war; commit to eliminate nuclear weapons by the UN’s 100th anniversary in 2045; and redirect the billions now spent on nuclear weapons to urgent global needs—peace, protection and sustainable development—as outlined in the United Nations Charter.
The organizations say “no time is better than 2025—the 80th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the establishment of the United Nations—to undertake these actions to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world to protect current and future generations.”
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