The overwhelming majority of nations on this earth are strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. They know that if those weapons were to be used they would affect everybody on earth. They do not understand that we have successful negotiations to ban chemical weapons, land mines and cluster bombs but have not banned the most dangerous weapons ever.
Even though the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been in force since 1970 and even though more countries joined than any other disarmament agreement the treaty has failed in many ways. The idea had been that: “the NPT non-nuclear-weapon states agree never to acquire nuclear weapons and the NPT nuclear-weapon states in exchange agree … to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”
However under the NPT the number of nuclear weapons states has increased and, instead of dismantling their arsenals completely the most powerful among them are upgrading their weapons and carrier systems.
In response a new international grassroots movement has emerged to abolish nuclear weapons and you will hear from the key staff of two vibrant organizations. Ray Acheson is Director of Reaching Critical Will http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/. That’s the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the oldest women’s peace organization in the world.
Tim Wright is the Campaign Director of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons http://www.icanw.org/. ICAN is already active in 95 countries with the goal of forming a treaty banning nuclear weapons since any use of nuclear weapons would cause catastrophic humanitarian and environmental harm.
Ray Acheson and Tim Wright spoke at the 2015 symposium on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, convened by the Australian physician and anti nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott. Recorded on March 1, 2015.
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