After 70 years new hope for abolition

Carol Urner for Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee

Hiroshima/Nagasaki days are just a month away. The world’s first atom bomb, named Trinity by hubristic males, was exploded on July 16, 1945. The two bombings in Japan followed soon afterward. We sense this 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bombs as a special year. The world seems closer now to nuclear catastrophe than since the early 1960s.

At the same time there is new hope for abolition as increasing numbers of non-nuclear states are campaigning for getting on the road to nuclear abolition NOW.

Many of us are currently involved in preparations for this year’s commemorations. Most of us will take some kind of special action like signing a petition or contacting our Congress persons even if we find no memorial to attend or significant group action to join. Here are a few actions and resources supported by WILPF which we hope can help each of us find the best ways to spend those days.

1. Among US elected officials, our mayors are WILPF’s best friends. This year the US Conference of Mayors passed unanimously another strong resolution calling for nuclear weapons abolition. So now we have two wonderful opportunities to work with our Mayors. Check the US Conference of Mayors website to see if your Mayor participated. Can you share with him/her your plans for this 70th  anniversary? Also see the Mayors for Peace Vision 2020 site. Mayors for Peace, started by the Mayors for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, continues to grow and now includes 6,733 cities in 160 countries and regions around the world. Is your city a member? If yes work with your mayor to publicize the relationship. If not, help the mayor and your city join.

2. And we still have some wonderful friends in Congress, and especially among those in the House Progressive and Black Caucuses. HR 1976, introduced in the house on Earth Day 2015 by Eleanor Holmes Norton, is the only nuclear weapons abolition bill in Congress. See our June e-news introduction to our campaign to gain new co-sponsors for the bill and to stimulate the needed dialog on nuclear abolition in Congress.  Sound impossible? Contact Ellen to join us in trying.

3. WILPF’s biggest international project is the proposed Nuclear Weapons Ban treaty that would make nuclear weapons totally illegal. We in the US are told little about this, but there is much all of us need to learn.  Every one of the nuclear powers is enlarging and/or modernizing their nuclear arsenals with the US far in the lead. Two recent WILPF publications give us the background. Assuring Destruction Forever, 2015 edition shows us that, rather than working toward nuclear disarmament as expected under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, every one of the nine nuclear powers  is spending vast sums to enlarge and/or modernize their arsenals. (Actually North Korea, which as yet has very few weapons, is not included as the ninth but that country is also involved in this new arms race.) The second new publication, Filling the legal gap: the prohibition of nuclear weapons makes clear the problems WILPF, and our friends in the international community, are trying to solve. Ray Acheson points out that the key legal gap is the lack of a treaty which, as in the case of the chemical and bio-weapons treaties, specifically bans such weapons for any purpose and provides a framework for their elimination. The chart (produced jointly with the British NGO Article Six) shows 22 other legal gaps which need to be closed if a treaty is negotiated.

4. You can also sign the petition in support of the Marshall Islands and their courageous suit in both the US Federal and the World Courts. The suit and petition are aimed at moving the nuclear weapons states to actually start negotiations on the comprehensive nuclear weapons abolition treaty. Take time to explore the site and learn about the nuclear bombs the US dropped on those islands as part of our nuclear testing in the 1950s and 60s. It is hard to accept that our own military, condoned by the State Department and the Dulles brothers, could have participated in anything so barbaric and inhumane. (The most recent version of this website is here. On it you can also find the petition and the story of the restoration of The Golden Rule in which WILPFers also have a stake via JAPA.)

5. Peace and Planet is a new international peace movement coalition based in the USA. It was formed to plan for and carry out significant NGO actions on the eve of the May four week long UN Nuclear Non Proliferation Review Conference. These weekend events included a large march beginning at Union Square and culminating in a festival in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations buildings on Turtle Bay. The Peace and Planet website in June was devoted to follow-up of those events, but their success has led to its transition to a continuing nuclear abolition movement now stretching across the summer months with resources for Hiroshima/ Nagasaki observances.

It will then move on into the week beginning September 21 (United Nations International Day of Peace) and culminating in September 26 (the new United Nations Nuclear Weapons Abolition Day).

WILPF is listed as member of the original international planning committee with both Ellen Thomas and Carol Urner on the international Advisory Committee, Joe Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee, Kevin Martin of Peace Action and Jackie Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation, UFPJ and Mayors for Peace (and life member of US WILPF) are at the center of this new coalition. Its goal is nuclear weapons abolition, but it ties this abolition into the net of other pressing concerns that need resolution if this abolition is to succeed and humanity is to survive into another century. (WILPF has also taken this same integrated approach and has done so again in its 2015 Manifesto and in its 2015-2019 Program of Work which was agreed upon but which has not yet been publicly posted.)

Photo: 7,500 gather in Union Square, Manhattan, including over a thousand Japanese activists and 80 Hibakasha, before marching with Peace and Planet to the United Nations for nuclear weapons abolition. Courtesy of Massachusetts Peace Action.