UN General Assembly approves historic resolution

UN General Assembly approves historic resolution

Postby Oscar » Sat Dec 24, 2016 7:43 am

UN General Assembly approves historic resolution

[ http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/un-g ... esolution/ ]

from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), December 23, 2016

The United Nations General Assembly today approved a historic resolution [ http://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/ ... ns/L41.pdf ] to launch negotiations in 2017 on a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. The vote [ http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/un-v ... s-in-2017/ ] follows a decision on 27 October by the General Assembly’s First Committee – which deals with disarmament and international security matters – to begin work on the new treaty despite fervent opposition from some nuclear-armed nations.

The resolution was adopted by a large majority, with 113 UN member states voting in favour, 35 voting against and 13 abstaining. Support was strongest among the nations of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. A cross-regional group comprising Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa initiated the resolution and are likely to lead next year’s negotiations.

At a UN budget committee meeting earlier this week, the United States attracted the ire of other nations when it objected to a funding request for the planned four weeks of negotiations on the treaty, to be held at UN headquarters in New York. But under intense pressure from supporters of nuclear disarmament, it eventually withdrew its objection, and the committee authorized the request.

In a leaked document [ http://www.icanw.org/wp-content/uploads ... CT2016.pdf ] distributed to all NATO members in October ahead of the First Committee decision, the United States – which possesses some 7,000 nuclear weapons – urged its allies to oppose the resolution and to boycott the negotiations, fearing that the treaty would erode the perception that nuclear weapons are legitimate for certain nations and make it more difficult for NATO to engage in nuclear war planning.

A number of close US allies that voted against the resolution or abstained have indicated their intention to participate in the negotiations anyway, in order to help shape the treaty. For example, the Netherlands, which hosts US nuclear weapons on its territory and abstained from voting, has confirmed that it will take part, and Japan’s foreign minister, despite opposing the resolution, wants his country to attend.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is urging all nations to take part. “Every nation has an interest in ensuring that nuclear weapons are never used again, which can only be guaranteed through their complete elimination. We are calling on all governments to join next year’s negotiations and work to achieve a strong and effective treaty,” said Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN.

ICAN stressed that the negotiations [ http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/negotiations/ ] should proceed whether or not nuclear-armed nations agree to participate. “As a matter of principle, weapons that are indiscriminate in nature and are intended to cause catastrophic humanitarian harm should be prohibited under international law. This new treaty will place nuclear weapons on the same legal footing as other weapons of mass destruction,” said Fihn.

“We believe that, through its normative force, the nuclear weapon ban treaty will affect the behaviour of nuclear-armed nations even if they refuse to join it. It will also affect the behaviour of many of their allies that currently claim protection from nuclear weapons, including those in Europe that host nuclear weapons on their territory. It will contribute significantly towards achieving a nuclear-weapon-free world.”

The negotiations will be divided into two sessions, from 27 to 31 March and from 15 June to 7 July. ICAN plans to send a large delegation of campaigners to both sessions. The campaign is urging governments to make every effort to conclude the treaty by the end of the four weeks of negotiations, noting that much preparatory work has already been done, including by a UN working group that met in Geneva this year.

The treaty is likely to include provisions similar to those found in existing treaties banning biological weapons, chemical weapons, anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions. These include prohibitions on use, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and transfer, as well as assistance, encouragement or inducement of anyone to engage in any of these prohibited activities.

Multilateral negotiations for nuclear disarmament have been deadlocked for two decades, as all nine nuclear-armed nations have invested heavily in upgrades to their nuclear forces. Alternative proposals for advancing a nuclear-weapon-free world have failed to gain traction or produce results. A majority of UN member states view the ban treaty approach as the most viable and promising pathway forward.
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Re: UN General Assembly approves historic resolution

Postby Oscar » Sun Jan 08, 2017 12:31 pm

Historic vote at the UN means nuclear weapons will be illegal in 2017

From ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), http://www.icanw.org, via Pressenza,

[ http://www.pressenza.com/2016/10/histor ... egal-2017/ ]

Last week something historic happened at the United Nations.

Despite enormous pressure from the United States, 123 nations, all with equal standing at the UN General Assembly, voted to start a process in 2017 to negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons [ https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/gadis3563.doc.htm ]. Why isn’t this news circulating like wildfire? Why aren’t there parties on the street?

Well, one reason is that no one takes the threat to humanity from nuclear weapons seriously any more. And when we say “no one” what we mean is the mainstream media, which gives the subject almost zero space in their newspapers, radio stations, websites and TV stations. And so “no one” in this case means the media moguls who are in league with the banks, the politicians and the military-industrial complex to keep the status quo going for as long as possible, regardless of the consequences to humanity, because these people are only capable of thinking about how much money they can make in the present and maybe a few years into the future.

Another reason (actually an extension of the first reason) is that most people would surely think that nuclear weapons are already illegal. If chemical and biological weapons are illegal, if landmines and cluster bombs are illegal, surely nuclear weapons, being several orders of magnitude more destructive, were outlawed years ago? Didn’t the world eliminate nuclear weapons when the Berlin Wall came down?

Well, actually, no. Despite Gorbachev’s offer to Reagan to eradicate nuclear weapons [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjav%C3%ADk_Summit ], it never happened, although there were reductions in the number of bombs through various treaties. Today the USA and Russia have around 14,000 bombs (depending on whose estimates you believe) [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ar_weapons ], which is a lot less than the 80,000 at the height of the cold war, but still a huge number when you understand that 100 bombs dropped on cities [ http://www.ippnw.org/pdf/nuclear-famine ... k-2013.pdf ] would lead to a nuclear winter that would eliminate 25% of the world’s population, who knows how many other species, and essentially lead any survivors to most likely take the more preferable course of action of committing suicide.

But regardless of the media silence and the lack of street parties, history was made and in a most extraordinary way.

Ever since the end of the 2010 NPT review conference – the 5-yearly conference that reviews progress of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to see how disarmament is developing and to recommend further steps – a few governments and civil society have been refocusing the debate regarding disarmament away from the alleged “security concerns” of the P5 and onto “humanitarian concerns” [ http://www.icanw.org/pledge/ ]: the fact that a nuclear war will wipe human beings, and probably all forms of life – except perhaps a few short-lifespan insects and bacteria – from the face of the earth.

In other words, according to this new strategy, regardless of security concerns, if a nuclear war breaks out, we all lose. Einstein famously said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” However, it seems, with the new knowledge available thanks to advances in climate science, that Einstein may have been over-optimistic: there won’t be a World War IV – ever.

The NPT was a grand bargain: you guys without nuclear weapons will never get them, you guys with nuclear weapons will give them up and all of us will have the right to develop nuclear energy. It was a great idea at the time (1968) because no one fully understood the dangers of nuclear energy, something that only really hit human consciousness with the accidents at Three Mile Island and the subsequent disasters at Chernobyl and, more recently, Fukushima.

The problem with the grand bargain was that it has not been fulfilled 47 years later and countries without nuclear weapons are fed up of being held hostage by the nuclear-armed states to the threat of huge nuclear violence. And it doesn’t matter that the P5 say that they are “responsible” countries; their security doctrines allow for the use of these weapons and like a bank-robber brandishing a gun around, it doesn’t matter if there are bullets in it or not, the fact that he or she has one in their hand constitutes use.

The process of getting this resolution approved has been tough [ http://www.pressenza.com/2016/09/govern ... otiations/ ]. Despite the supposed equality of member states at the UN, there are clearly some states that are more equal than others. The P5 have a veto at the Security Council and economic differences are such that developed countries are capable of manipulating developing countries.

However, to everyone’s delight in the civil-society anti-nuclear movement and among those 57 governments who sponsored the resolution [ http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/draf ... s-in-2017/ ], very few countries submitted to the pressure and 123 countries voted to start negotiations next year.

And the position of the nuclear weapons states and those who exist under a so-called “nuclear umbrella” defence agreement has never been more divided. Of the 9 countries with nuclear weapons, five (The USA, The UK, France, Russia and Israel) voted against the resolution, three (China, India and Pakistan) abstained and one (North Korea) voted for the resolution.

Of the nuclear umbrella states, the Netherlands were forced to abstain as a result of an increasingly effective civil society campaign [ https://nonukes.nl/historic-vote-bannin ... r-weapons/ ] in the Dutch parliament, also abstaining were Armenia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.

Japan voted against a ban: something that constantly leaves observers astounded given that it is the only country with first-hand knowledge of what it means to have a bomb dropped on their cities.

At the end of the vote, countries used their usual speeches to support their positions. Some countries said that they fear that the new process will undermine the NPT, despite the fact that supporting countries have expressed time and time again that this resolution will do nothing but strengthen article VI of the NPT [ http://www.un.org/en/conf/npt/2005/npttreaty.html ]. Others say the new process is divisive, being happy to stick with the status quo in which nothing has moved in disarmament talks in 47 years: The Test-Ban Treaty has not come into force [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehen ... Ban_Treaty ], the Fissile Material treaty [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fissile_M ... off_Treaty ] has not been written, the USA has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ball ... ile_Treaty ] and we are still waiting for talks about a zone free of all weapons of mass-destruction in the Middle East [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ea ... _free_zone ]. On top of this ALL nuclear weapons states are drawing up plans for, or are in the process of, modernising their arsenals, at an astronomical cost [ https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ ... ernization ] to the global economy and the world’s poor.

The new treaty will certainly not put one nuclear weapon out of use on the day it’s ratified, but it will make them effectively illegal in the eyes of international courts and multinational corporations and banks who will not want the general public to know that they are involved with something illegal and so the treaty will ratchet up the pressure to divest [ http://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/ ]. Civil society campaigns to stigmatise nuclear weapons will be hugely boosted and no politician will ever be able to say that the NPT gives their country the legal right to keep nuclear weapons: and ultimately this is why the United States (and their friends) were so anxious to avoid this resolution being brought to the General Assembly.

And this is why its approval is so historic. Those who have for decades accused other states of being “irresponsible” and “pariah” nations will now find themselves on the receiving end of those accusations and for a very good reason.

——————————————

You may be interested in this year-end interview with Gordon Edwards :

Nuclear renewal or review in wake of Trump tweets

[ http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/12/23/nucl ... mp-tweets/ ]

By Carmel Kilkenny, Radio Canada International, 23 Dec 2016
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