Features

by the "Nuclear Weapons Can Be Eliminated" Reporting Team

Nuclear weapons can, and should, be eliminated. Since last year, the Chugoku Shimbun has reported on the issue of nuclear weapons in connection with 17 visits overseas to 13 countries, including the United States and nations in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, and we have made the appeal that the abolition of nuclear weapons is an obligation of human beings. Reflecting now on the articles we have produced, we would like to conclude this long-running series by envisioning a road map for a world free of nuclear weapons.

On May 7, at the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference held at United Nations headquarters in New York, Jody Williams, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate from the United States, raised her voice to the state delegates, questioning how nuclear weapons, which are so horrific they instantly obliterated people in Hiroshima like evaporating water, can be justified. Ms. Williams was one of the hardworking champions behind the realization of the Land Mine Ban Treaty, stressing the inhumanity of these weapons. She was among the 17 Nobel Peace laureates who jointly signed the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration of Nobel Peace Laureates, a statement calling for efforts to achieve nuclear abolition which was released by the Chugoku Shimbun in May 2009.

Ever since the atomic blast of August 6, 1945, Hiroshima has persistently pointed out the inhumanity of nuclear weapons. Along with the fierce heat and shock wave, the bomb's radiation assailed residents of the city both physically and mentally. The difference between the damage of war brought about by such attacks as air raids and that wrought by the atomic bombings is that the radiation released by nuclear arms causes harm to human genes.

Contrary to international law

During the NPT Review Conference, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations held an A-bomb exhibition in the lobby of U.N. headquarters. Many visitors to the exhibition looked closely at the panels which introduced the lives of eight A-bomb survivors in the aftermath of the atomic bombings. The visitors thus became aware of the inhumanity of nuclear weapons, which impacts even subsequent generations.

At the NPT Review Conference, a representative from Switzerland said in the General Debate that nuclear weapons are fundamentally contrary to the principles prescribed by international humanitarian law and that nuclear weapons should be outlawed.

Not only at this conference, but at many other venues, too, the inhumanity of nuclear weapons is being expressed. This is due to the fact that, among civil society and some governments, the idea is spreading that nuclear abolition cannot be achieved only by relying on the NPT regime. In other words, a world free of nuclear weapons does not seem viable if only five nations are recognized as nuclear weapon states -- the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China -- and these nations are simply permitted to reduce their nuclear arsenals under their own initiative.

Language included in the final document

As Jody Williams advocates, a nuclear weapons convention would be one effective measure for advancing toward nuclear abolition. The need for such a convention is becoming increasingly clear to the NPT member states and, for the first time, language referring to a nuclear weapons convention ("consideration of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention") was included in the final document adopted at the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

The Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (HANWA), a citizens' group in Hiroshima, is calling for a provision which would ban the use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, to be added to the supplementary protocol of the Geneva Convention, which sits at the center of international humanitarian law.

First, nuclear weapons should be clearly defined as inhuman and evil weapons. Then, their very existence should be eradicated via a nuclear weapons convention. It is high time the international community took steps forward in this process.

(Originally published on June 14, 2010)

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