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107 states commit to prohibiting, eliminating nuclear weapons
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) executive director Beatrice Fihn says the wide and growing international support for âHumanitarian Pledgeâ has sent a signal that a majority of the worldâs governments are ready to move forward with the prohibition of nuclear weapons, even if nuclear weapon states are not ready to participate
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nternational Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) executive director Beatrice Fihn says the wide and growing international support for 'Humanitarian Pledge' has sent a signal that a majority of the world's governments are ready to move forward with the prohibition of nuclear weapons, even if nuclear weapon states are not ready to participate.
'Regardless of what has happened here today, the humanitarian pledge must be the basis for the negotiations of a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons,' she said in a release on Wednesday.
Through the Humanitarian Pledge, over 100 governments have committed to work for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.
Fihn said it had been made clear that the nuclear weapon states were not interested in making any new commitments to disarmament.
'So now it is up to the rest of the world to start a process to prohibit nuclear weapons by the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,' she said.
The ICAN executive director was speaking in response to the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, which ended without an agreement being made on an outcome document, last week.
ICAN says the failure of the conference to adopt an outcome document is the fifth time since the treaty came into force in 1970.
'The content of the final draft proposed in the conference draws sharp criticism from many state parties because it was very weak on disarmament commitment.'
The coalition further explained that the process to develop the final draft was also extremely problematic and many states felt they were excluded from the consultation and negotiation process.
'Even so, the majority of states are prepared to accept the flawed final draft as to ensure there will be an outcome,' says the group of more than 400 non-governmental organizations in 95 countries.
ICAN reports that the failure occurred as a result of rejections by three states, namely Canada, the UK and the US, of one point in the draft on the commitment to initiate a conference to negotiate the Middle East Weapon of Mass Destruction Free Zone.
'Ironically, these three states rejected the draft on behalf of Israel, a state that is not even party to the NPT,' it said. (ebf)(++++)
