{"id":37756,"date":"2013-12-23T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=37756"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:20:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:20:10","slug":"nobel-peace-laureates-statement-nuclear-abolition-is-a-humanitarian-imperative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/12\/nobel-peace-laureates-statement-nuclear-abolition-is-a-humanitarian-imperative\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Peace Laureates\u2019 Statement: Nuclear Abolition Is a Humanitarian Imperative"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 13th<\/sup> World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, meeting in Poland from 21-23 October 2013, adopted a powerful declaration on nuclear abolition as a humanitarian imperative. The declaration is a follow-on from the Nobel Peace Summit Declaration on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons<\/a> adopted in Hiroshima in 2010 in which the Nobel Peace Laureates gave strong support to \u2018\u2026the UN Secretary General\u2019s five point proposal on nuclear disarmament and proposals by others to undertake work on a universal treaty to prohibit the use, development, production, stockpiling or transfer of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon technologies and components and to provide for their complete and verified elimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

***************<\/p>\n

Nuclear weapons are an existential threat to humanity, and must never be used again, under any\u00a0circumstances. We therefore welcome the recent shift in the international discourse about nuclear\u00a0weapons towards the recognition by a number of States that the catastrophic and irremediable\u00a0consequences of the use of nuclear weapons require decisive action to outlaw and eliminate\u00a0them.<\/i><\/p>\n

The nature and scope of the medical, environmental, and humanitarian disaster that would result\u00a0from any use of nuclear weapons was examined in detail at the Oslo conference on the\u00a0Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in March 2013, and will be the subject of a follow-up\u00a0conference this February in Mexico.<\/i><\/p>\n

We know, from the tragic experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that even a single nuclear\u00a0weapon exploded over a city can kill tens of thousands of people in an instant and leave tens of\u00a0thousands more with untreatable blast, burn, and radiation injuries. More recently, we have\u00a0learned that a limited, regional nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons\u2014a fraction\u00a0of current global arsenals\u2014would disrupt the Earth\u2019s climate and curtail agricultural production\u00a0so severely that more than a billion people would be at risk of starvation from the resulting\u00a0\u201cnuclear famine.\u201d A conflict employing the large arsenals of the US and Russia\u2014which cannot\u00a0be ruled out as long as the weapons exist\u2014would threaten the very existence of everyone on\u00a0Earth.<\/i><\/p>\n

The continued possession of over 17200 nuclear weapons by nine countries, together with large\u00a0amounts of fissile material with attendant proliferation risks, poses a real danger to the existence\u00a0of humankind. The use of nuclear weapons by design or accident and by possessor states or nonstate\u00a0actors threatens all of us.<\/i><\/p>\n

The dangers that we face from nuclear weapons\u2014and the humanitarian imperative to outlaw and\u00a0eliminate them\u2014have become a major focus of several official and unofficial gatherings of\u00a0States in the past year, including preparatory meetings for the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty\u00a0Review Conference, the meetings of the Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear disarmament,\u00a0and the High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament at the UN General Assembly on\u00a0September 26. We urge those States to take the next step and to initiate a process for a treaty that\u00a0will ban nuclear weapons and, ultimately, abolish them before they abolish us.<\/i><\/p>\n

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said \u201cthere are no right hands for the wrong weapons.\u201d\u00a0This new humanitarian-based initiative to remove the most abhorrent weapons ever created from\u00a0everyone\u2019s hands, which is now supported by a growing number of States and by civil society,\u00a0offers a pathway to a nuclear-weapons-free world that is inspiring, hopeful, and practical. We\u00a0give this initiative our full endorsement.<\/i><\/p>\n

International Physicians for the Prevention of\u00a0Nuclear War
\nPresident De Klerk
\nAmerican Friends Service Committee
\nMairead Corrigan Maguire
\nHis Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama
\nProf. Muhammad Yunus
\nDr. Shirin Ebadi
\nPugwash Conferences
\nPresident Walesa
\nInternational Peace Bureau
\nJody Williams<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nobelforpeace-summits.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 13th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, meeting in Poland from 21-23 October 2013, adopted a powerful declaration on nuclear abolition as a humanitarian imperative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nobel-laureates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}