The Role of the Public in Eliminating Nuclear Weapons

“THIS WILL BE A historic moment,” announced Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gómez on July 6, the day before 122 countries adopted the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a legally binding agreement to outlaw nuclear weapons—and a major step toward their complete elimination. (Sixty-nine nations refused to vote, including all the nuclear weapon states and all NATO members except the Netherlands.)

 

“I have been waiting for this day for seven decades, and I am overjoyed that it has finally arrived,” said Setsu-ko Thurlow, a renowned antinuclear activist and survivor of the U.S. nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

 

Parties to the treaty are prohibited from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, possessing, or stock-piling nuclear weapons. The treaty also creates, for the first time, obligations to support the victims of nuclear weapons use and testing, as well as remediation of environmental damage caused by nuclear weapons.

 

Equally as significant is the normative change the treaty brings. It declares the global norm that the use or threat to use nuclear weapons, under any circumstances, is impermissible, and it delegitimizes their roles in international security. It also reinforces the global legal norm for nuclear weapons abolition, building on past efforts, including those of more than 100 countries that have formed nuclear-weapon-free zones. Furthermore, this new legal norm can be universalized to include current nuclear states that are willing to take significant steps toward disarmament.

 

Changes once thought impossible have happened throughout history because people acted to shift the norms, not because the dominant stakeholders lost interest. To skeptics—even “progressives” who disagree with nuclear weapons in principle but see no way forward without the participation of nuclear-armed states—I say that there is no need to give those states the power to decide when such weapons will be prohibited or abolished.

 

The treaty’s preamble stresses “the role of public conscience in the furthering of the principles of humanity as evidenced by the call for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” As conscious citizens, we must inform our families and communities about the treaty. We must encourage nuclear-weapon states, such as the U.S., to adopt a supportive stance toward the treaty, even if they don’t sign it, because it complements the existing nonproliferation regime that they do support. Most important, we must have confidence that we can achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

I grew up in Japan, but it wasn’t until I arrived in the United States that I took a deeper interest in anti-nuclear work. In 2015, I joined youth activists from more than 20 countries at the International Youth Summit for Nuclear Abolition held in Hiroshima. Our pledge was to “refuse to stand by while nuclear weapons continue to threaten our lives and future generations.”

 

Though nuclear weapons may not be in our daily consciousness, they affect us all. If one nuclear weapon is dropped—even by accident—it will cause catastrophic damage to lives, health, environment, food production, and climate, not only in the present but also for future generations. The effects of the bombs dropped in 1945 are still greatly felt by the survivors and their families in Japan. Their resolve to never let anyone else go through that experience has fueled global activism.

 

Whyte Gómez identifies the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a “global public good.” Around the world people of faith support this treaty as part of our common obligations to one another and our planet—because the status quo is not working.