Countries vote to ban nuclear weapons
More than 120 countries approved the first treaty to ban nuclear weapons Friday at a UN meeting boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations.
To loud applause and cheers, Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the UN conference that has been negotiating the legally binding treaty, announced the results of the “historic” vote — 122 nations in favour, the Netherlands opposed, and Singapore abstaining.
“The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years,” since the use of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 at the end of the Second World War, she said.
The treaty is “the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years,” Whyte Gomez said.
It will be opened for signatures in September and come into force when 50 countries have ratified it, she said.
In December, UN member states overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for negotiations on a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons, despite strong opposition from nuclear-armed nations and their allies who refused to participate in the talks.
Whyte Gomez said 129 countries signed up to take part in drafting the treaty, which represents twothirds of the 193 member states. But all nuclear states and NATO members have boycotted the negotiations except for the Netherlands, which has U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory and was urged by its parliament to send a delegation to the negotiations.
The treaty requires of all ratifying countries “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
It also bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices — and the threat to use such weapons.
None of the nine countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons — the U.S., Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — are supporting the treaty.
The U.S. and other nuclear powers instead want to strengthen and reaffirm the nearly half-century-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, considered the cornerstone of global nonproliferation efforts.