Treaty to ban nuclear arms becomes law

UNITED NATIONS — The first treaty in history to ban nuclear weapons entered into force on Friday, hailed as a historic step to rid the world of its deadliest weapons but opposed by the world’s nuclear-armed nations.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is part of international law, culminating a decades-long campaign aimed at preventing a repetition of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

When the treaty was approved by the U.N. General Assembly in July 2017, more than 120 approved it. But none of the nine countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons — the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — supported it, and neither did the 30-nation NATO alliance.

Japan, the world’s only country to suffer nuclear attacks, does not support the treaty, though the survivors of the bombings in 1945 push for it to do so. Japan renounces use and possession of nuclear weapons, but the government has said pursuing a treaty ban is not realistic with nuclear and non-nuclear states so divided over it.

But Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning coalition whose work helped spearhead the treaty, called it “a really big day for international law, for the United Nations and for survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

The treaty received its 50th ratification on Oct. 24, triggering a 90-day period before its entry into force Friday.

As of Thursday, Fihn said, 61 countries had ratified the treaty, with another ratification possible soon, and “from Friday, nuclear weapons will be banned by international law” in all of those countries.