The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) discussions begin in New York this week with 196 countries attending. This five-yearly review of the NPT assumes critical significance because of the growth of the nuclear danger in so many ways.
Hundreds of copies of a booklet written by former Supreme Court and International Court of Justice Judge, Chris Weeramantry, are being distributed in New York to all participants. Titled "Why the Nuclear Danger Grows from Day to Day" it sets out 15 reasons why the danger is growing to dangerous proportions and why action is urgent if civilization is to survive.
Judge Weeramantry is the President of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and was the author of the principal dissenting opinion in the International Court of Justice on the total illegality of the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances whatsoever.
The following is an extract from the booklet:
Failure to bring the NPT conference to a successful conclusion would be a total betrayal of responsibilities owed to the community of states, the global population and the generations yet to come. It would be a betrayal of legal obligations, of moral obligations and of express undertakings given to the international community.
In addition more than six billion of the world's 6.8 billion people are adherents of the different world religions. Support of the nuclear bomb with its potential to destroy all civilizations and all the values we cherish, is a gross betrayal of the basic teachings of every religion. Every one of them is categorically opposed to the use of weapons which cause cruel and unnecessary suffering. No government in the world can afford to be guilty of this fundamental breach of the teachings to which the bulk of its people are committed.
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| Testing of a nuclear warhead |
Such conduct is also an absolute betrayal of every concept on which international humanitarian law is based. This is the living law and represents the high water mark of legal achievement in the difficult task of imposing some restraints on the brutalities of unbridled war. It has been forged by the community of nations under the impact of the sufferings of untold millions in two global cataclysms and many smaller wars. As with all legal principles, it governs without distinction all nations great and small. Retaining a nuclear weapon arsenal is a flagrant violation of these rules and a betrayal of the duties owed by powerful states to the entire world community.
Any use of nuclear weapons is also a complete betrayal of the duties we owe to future generations. The adverse effects on the environment would last for multiples of 24,000 years, which is the half life of just one of the residual elements of a nuclear explosion. Other adverse effects will cause birth defects and horrible deformities for several generations. A nuclear winter destroying all food crops and causing famine on a worldwide basis would be the inevitable consequence of nuclear war. Creating all this peril to the entire human race is the greatest betrayal of humanity that can possibly be imagined.
The retention of nuclear weapons is also in utter contradiction of the unanimous pronouncement of the International Court of Justice which categorically lays down the obligation of every nuclear power to take meaningful steps to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. No higher pronouncement of an international law obligation is possible than such a unanimous opinion of the world's principal international tribunal. It would be a sad example to the entire world community and a gross betrayal of international obligations if this pronouncement should be ignored, particularly by the world's leading powers.
Any nation which does not take the steps to fulfil its obligation to rid the world of nuclear weapons cannot claim any longer to be concerned with human welfare and the human future.
No state would want to be so regarded by the world community and to incur the further opprobrium of having been a party to the destruction of human civilization.
In short, failure to bring these negotiations to a successful conclusion would be a betrayal of all the values we cherish and of all that human civilization has built up through millennia of effort and sacrifice. |
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