On 27 October, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in favor of opening negotiations to draw up a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The text was approved by a vote of 123 to 38 with 16 abstentions.
It is certainly a very significant step since the resolution recognizes the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and the risk they pose to civilian populations. The international community has sufficient evidence on the long-lasting irreversible effects of nuclear weapons, and numerous civil society organizations, working together on the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, have fought for decades to achieve the abolition of such weapons. Nevertheless, the number of countries that have nuclear weapons has gone up from five to eight in recent years, and the world’s most industrialized countries, including the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and most members of the European Union voted against this resolution.
A long road lies ahead and it will not be free of obstacles; the United Nations will be holding the first negotiation conferences in 2017 with the objective of having a “legally binding instrument to ban nuclear weapons and to move towards their total elimination.” ICIP welcomes the result of the last vote and we hope that the road that lies ahead is a road of no return.
03.01.2016
