PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

SEPT 29 2016 IMMEDIATE USE
HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT
PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

ALL GOVTS MUST SUPPORT NUCLEAR PROHIBITION RESOLUTION: ITS A MATTER OF HUMAN SURVIVAL



People for Nuclear Disarmament and the Human Survival project have welcomed news that the governments of Austria, South Africa, Ireland, Mexico, and Nigeria are tabling a resolution in United nations General Assembly's First Committee, that would call a conference in 2017 to negotiate a legally binding multilateral 'instrument' to prohibit nuclear weapons, known more briefly as a 'ban treaty'.

The resolution also calls for comprehensive risk reduction measures to decrease the probability of an accidental apocalypse, against a background in which expert opinion is that the risk of nuclear war is as great or greater than during the last part of the cold war.

This has taken place in spite of aggressive diplomatic 'demarches' from the five nuclear weapon states demanding that governments not support this idea.

The idea for a ban, framework agreement, convention or prohibition was contained in the majority recommendations of the Open Ended Working Group, which met in February, May, and August of 2016. The OEWG as it was called consisted of governments, expert people and bodies, and nongovernmental organizations, and the ban/prohibition recommendation was supported by 107 governments, with 20 opposing.

According to John Hallam of People for Nuclear Disarmament who attended the Open Ended Working group last may and will be at the UN First Committee from 3 Oct,
“ The elimination of nuclear weapons, whether by 'simple ban', by a telephone-book size nuclear weapons convention, or by a series of nested 'framework agreements' or by some hybrid of all of these, is quite literally a matter of human survival. As long as nuclear weapons exist and as long as a number of thousands of them in the US and Russia are maintained on high alert, the likelihood of an accidental apocalypse, or one into which we mindlessly stumble, is unacceptably high. The longer this continues without radical change, the more likely it will be that a series of miscalculations and malfunctions will destroy civilization and possibly humans as a species. The stakes really are that high.”

“The nuclear weapons states and the states that merely 'possess' nuclear weapons are arguing desperately that making nuclear weapons illegal – as this measure will do – is 'meaningless' and may even, nonsensically, increase risks. These arguments are thoroughly dishonest. The fact is that under the laws of war as any reasonable human would interpret them, nuclear weapons have always been illegal. This resolution merely sets up a process that will set in cold print what we have always known – that these are weapons whose inherent properties are so destructive that not only can their use never be reconciled with the laws of war, but are so destructive that their use imperils civilization and human survival.”

“The governments that put up this resolution are merely displaying commonsense: They don't wish to become toast or to freeze in the dark after others have become toast, and this resolution is a survival ticket not just for them but for all of us. The nuclear weapon states cling to the delusion that nuclear weapons somehow guarantee their safety when blind Freddie can see they endanger all of us.”

“There is literally not a government on the planet who, if they understood clearly and undeludedly what is in their own existential interest, wouldn't be voting for this resolution. Unfortunately the states that hold nuclear weapons are delusional. Their delusions imperil all of us.”

John Hallam
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