[E-rundbrief] Info 1626 - Alice Slater: Time to Ban the Bomb

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1626 - Alice Slater (World Beyond War, USA): Time 
to Ban the Bomb.

Bad Ischl, 30.5.2017

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Time to Ban the Bomb

By Alice Slater

This week, the Chair of an exciting UN initiative formally named the 
“United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument 
to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination” 
released a draft treaty to ban and prohibit nuclear weapons just as 
the world has done for biological and chemical weapons.  The Ban 
Treaty is to be negotiated at the UN from June 15 to July 7 as a 
follow up to the one week of negotiations that took place this past 
March, attended by more than 130 governments interacting with civil 
society.  Their input and suggestions were used by the Chair, Costa 
Rica’s ambassador to the UN, Elayne Whyte Gómez to prepare the draft 
treaty. It is expected that the world will finally come out of this 
meeting with a treaty to ban the bomb!

This negotiating conference was established after a series of meetings 
in Norway, Mexico, and Austria with governments and civil society to 
examine the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. The 
meetings were inspired by the leadership and urging of the 
International Red Cross to look at the horror of nuclear weapons, not 
just through the frame of strategy and “deterrence”, but to grasp and 
examine the disastrous humanitarian consequences that would occur in a 
nuclear war.   This activity led to a series of meetings culminating 
in a resolution in the UN General Assembly this fall to negotiate a 
treaty to ban and prohibit nuclear weapons. The new draft treaty based 
on the proposals put forth in the March negotiations requires the 
states to “never under any circumstances … develop, produce, 
manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons 
or other nuclear explosive devices … use nuclear weapons …  carry out 
any nuclear weapon test”. States are also required to destroy any 
nuclear weapons they possess and are prohibited from transferring 
nuclear weapons to any other recipient.

None of the nine nuclear weapons states, US, UK, Russia, France, 
China, Indian, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea came to the March 
meeting, although during the vote last fall on whether to go forward 
with the negotiating resolution in the UN’s First Committee for 
Disarmament, where the resolution was formally introduced, while the 
five western nuclear states voted against it, China, India and 
Pakistan abstained.   And North Korea voted for the resolution to 
negotiate to ban the bomb! (I bet you didn’t read that in the New York 
Times!)

By the time the resolution got to the General Assembly, Donald Trump 
had been elected and those promising votes disappeared.  And at the 
March negotiations, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, flanked 
by the Ambassadors from England and France, stood outside the closed 
conference room and held a press conference with a number of “umbrella 
states”  which rely on the US nuclear ‘deterrent” to annihilate their 
enemies (includes NATO  states as well as Australia, Japan, and South 
Korea)  and announced that “as a mother” who couldn’t want more for 
her family “than a world without nuclear weapons” she had to “be 
realistic” and would boycott the meeting and oppose efforts to ban the 
bomb adding, “Is there anyone that believes that North Korea would 
agree to a ban on nuclear weapons?”

The last 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) five year review 
conference broke up without consensus on the shoals of a deal the US 
was unable to deliver to Egypt to hold a Weapons of Mass Destruction 
Free Zone Conference in the Middle East.  This promise was made in 
1995 to get the required consensus vote from all the states to extend 
the NPT indefinitely when it was due to expire, 25 years after the 
five nuclear weapons states in the treaty, US, UK,  Russia, China, and 
France, promised in 1970 to make “good faith efforts” for nuclear 
disarmament.  In that agreement all the other countries of the world 
promised not to get nuclear weapons, except for India, Pakistan, and 
Israel who never signed and went on to get their own bombs. North 
Korea had signed the treaty, but took advantage of the NPT’s Faustian 
bargain to sweeten the pot with a promise to the non-nuclear weapons 
states for an “inalienable right” to “peaceful” nuclear power, thus 
giving them the keys to the bomb factory. North Korea got its peaceful 
nuclear power, and walked out of the treaty to make a bomb.    At the 
2015 NPT review, South Africa gave an eloquent speech expressing the 
state of nuclear apartheid that exists between the nuclear haves, 
holding the whole world hostage to their security needs and their 
failure to comply with their obligation to eliminate their nuclear 
bombs, while working overtime to prevent nuclear proliferation in 
other countries.

The Ban Treaty draft provides that the Treaty will enter into effect 
when 40 nations sign and ratify it.  Even if none of the nuclear 
weapons states join, the ban can be used to stigmatize and shame the 
“umbrella” states to withdraw from the nuclear “protection” services 
they are now receiving.    Japan should be an easy case.   The five 
NATO states in Europe who keep US nuclear weapons based on their 
soil–Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Turkey– are good 
prospects for breaking with the nuclear alliance.  A legal ban on 
nuclear weapons can be used to convince banks and pension funds in a 
divestment campaign, once it is known the weapons are illegal.   See 
www.dontbankonthebomb.com

Right now people are organizing all over the world for a Women’s March 
to Ban the Bomb on June 17, during the ban treaty negotiations, with a 
big march and rally planned in New York.   See 
https://www.womenbanthebomb.org/

We need to get as many countries to the UN as possible this June, and 
pressure our parliaments and capitals to vote to join the treaty to 
ban the bomb.   And we need to talk it up and let people know that 
something great is happening now!    To get involved, check out 
www.icanw.org

Alice Slater serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War

http://worldbeyondwar.org/time-ban-bomb-2/?

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Termine:

15.6. - 7.7.2017 NEW YORK CITY (United Nations Plaza, USA): 
UN-Verhandlungen für ein Atomwaffenverbot 2017. - 2. 
Verhandlungsrunde. (Infos: United Nations, UN’s First Committee for 
Disarmament, www.icanw.org)

17.6.2017 12:00 NEW YORK CITY: Women’s March to Ban the Bomb. (Infos: 
www.womenbanthebomb.org )


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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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Ausgezeichnet mit dem (österr.) "Journalismus-Preis von unten 2010"

Honoured by the (Austrian) "Journalism-Award from below 2010"