News on Nukes

The Role of Civil Society in Strengthening the NPT International Conference from 6-8 November in Stockholm, Sweden The conference was facilitated by the Swedish Network for Nuclear Disarmament including several Swedish organizations, the Foreign Ministry of Sweden, the Folke Bernadotte Academy and the Olof Palme Foundation. More details and the program you can find at www.nucleardisarmament.se.

The first session was held under the topic of “Reaching Nuclear Disarmament”. Hans Blix explained about the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction he has written together with colleagues and Sergio Duarte underlined the importance of bringing democracy to the disarmament process by including the civil society. Hans Corell also made an important point about lobbying during the NPT conference but also before when he was saying we have to „educate the decision makers because often their arguments are so ignorant”.

In the second session we discussed about “Framing the Picture - Legal, Normative and Human Aspects of Nuclear Disarmament”. Different experts gave the participants an overview on the legal framework of Nuclear Disarmament and the international bodies and treaties that are dealing with it. Josef Goldblat emphasized the illegality of nuclear weapons “The International Humanitarian Law makes clear that weapons must be used on military targets and not cause unnecessary suffering” and drew as a first step towards nuclear disarmament the prohibition of the use of nuclear weapons.
“The Fundamental logic of zero is that it is working if everybody wants it because than the purpose for nuclear weapons are missing.” With this Jan Lodal got to the point of Global Zero and he stressed that before it is important to agree that “there is no other purpose for nuclear weapons than to prevent that other nuclear weapons are used.”
Another seminar was held on the incredible climate effects of a nuclear war and the urgency of connecting the topics Climate – Nuclear Power – Nuclear Weapons was underlined. For getting active on this topic please visit the campaign “Don’t nuke the Climate” (www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org).
Gunnar Westberg summarized the situation “We have the choice between abolition of proliferation”.

“The Role of Civil Society in Strengthening the NPT” was the title of the third session which was the quite most interesting one. Different NGO representatives suggested and discussed on which topics must be our main point until and during the NPT conference next year. Ray Acheson summarized the message we should send to the NPT: “supporting the 13 steps from 2000, make nuclear weapons illegal, to destruct the nuclear umbrella and pushing for a nuclear weapons convention”. Ray also underlined the importance of dealing with security strategies “because nuclear weapons must not longer play a role in the security doctrines of Nuclear Weapons States”. On the Nuclear Weapons Convention Merav Datan said that “The genie is out of the bottle so we need to let the treaty out of the bottle” and Igor Neverov explained that the time for it is now because “deterrence kept nuclear weapons for decades but this was during a different time - the cold war”. In the ongoing discussion a comment from the audience was that “we have to ask the US to become a nation under nations” before a convention is possible.

At the whole conference there were less concrete steps planed for the NPT conference in 2010. Some ideas were raised like Rebecca Johnson spread the idea of having a big event one or two weeks after the conference no matter what the result is. The most concrete action was announced by the young generation during the NPT conference called “Global Zero now”. The first step of the action is lobbying by talks with all nuclear weapon state countries about their ways to global zero. Then there will be symbolical lines painted on the streets from all embassies to a common place where there is “Global Zero”. To raise the awareness of the public on this project there should be an event in the second week of the conference called “Critical Mass”. To learn more about this action and to participate please visit bangeurope.wiki.zoho.com.