Honor the Victims of the Nuclear Age by Bringing It to an End

The following speech was delivered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee on July 23, 2024 at the United Nations in Geneva.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) state parties are meeting for a third year in a row in the shadow of the devastating war in Ukraine, which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed key infrastructure in Ukraine and elsewhere, and turned friends and family members into enemies. In the past 10 months, the attack on Israel and the war in Gaza have shattered all who have dared to confront the enormous civilian toll, the ongoing justifications of violations of international humanitarian law, and the divisiveness that the conflict has brought to environs from university campuses around the world to the halls of the United Nations.

The human suffering we witness on repeat is unfathomable, and yet, the fact that both of these conflicts involve—directly and indirectly—states that possess nuclear weapons is a stark reminder that things could be far worse. Whether deliberately, as has been threatened by Russian and Israeli politicians, or by accident, and especially if the current conflicts widen to regional wars, the use of nuclear weapons is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. This is so as long as nuclear weapons exist, and most especially as long as current policies not only allow but call for their instantaneous use to defend interests of states.

The NPT state parties can no longer pretend that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil and sweep the nuclear testing era under a pile of rugs.

Taking nuclear disarmament seriously is not only an existential imperative at this very moment, but an obligation of all state parties to the NPT. The Nuclear-Weapon States—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—have a special responsibility. According to Article Six of this treaty, they are mandated to negotiate in good faith toward nuclear disarmament, something that they have ostensibly not been doing. This must change.

All other NPT state parties must move away from threats of nuclear annihilation as a strategy for conducting international affairs. The stationing of U.S. and Russian weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye in the case of the U.S. and Belarus in the case of Russia must end imminently. So must the so-called nuclear umbrella promise. Nuclear weapons don’t make anyone safer—they put all of us, all of humanity, and all of life on the planet at risk of extinction. To state that this is unacceptable is to state the obvious.

What should be done?

Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. The Nuclear-Weapon States should use this and next year’s Preparatory Committee to chart a path that includes signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in conjunction with the other four nuclear-weapon possessors: India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. Doing so by 2035 would allocate 10 years to make history. Once all possessors have ratified the TPNW, all nuclear weapons should be eliminated by 2045.

As we look toward a future in which nuclear weapons are abolished, eliminated, and no longer threaten to extinguish human civilization, we also must look to the past and present in order to address the suffering of communities that were impacted by nuclear weapons use and testing. The NPT state parties can no longer pretend that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil and sweep the nuclear testing era under a pile of rugs. The evidence of harm is all too real, and the scars are more than visible.

In Algeria, the radioactive equipment from the French nuclear testing program remains buried in the Saharan sands. In the Marshall Islands, the food on the famous Bikini Island, after which the swimsuit was named by the French designer who wanted his design to be explosive, still brims with cesium-137 left over from the U.S. nuclear testing. On Kiritimati Island in Kiribati, the local population has yet to receive an acknowledgment and assistance for harms done by the U.K. and the U.S. during their nuclear weapon testing programs. And in Kazakhstan, too many of the victims of the Soviet nuclear testing program need far more help than they have received so far. This is despite the earnest efforts of the Kazakhstan government, which has taken serious steps toward environmental remediation and victim assistance in the affected region. The stories go on and on and circle the globe.

The states responsible for these heinous acts must begin by issuing an apology. Next, they should come together with the international community to right these historical wrongs and to promise never to commit such crimes ever again.

Here too, the TPNW paves the way forward through its humanitarian provisions, spelled out in Articles six and seven. We furthermore call on all states, including the nine that abstained or voted last December against the resolution in the U.N. General Assembly to address the legacy of nuclear testing; the resolution provides an opportunity for a wide-reaching conversation about nuclear justice, which has been elusive for far too many and for far too long. Every state must come to the nuclear justice table.

There is work to be done. Statements and gatherings must be followed by real action and by concrete and time-bound steps.

We must honor the victims of the nuclear age by bringing about its end and by helping them earnestly and wholeheartedly. But beyond these tasks, we must recommit to the promise of the U.N. Charter in which states address their differences through negotiations; engage in peaceful cooperation and competition; and reject all threats, including those of nuclear Armageddon, as not just an enormous risk to humanity, but as an insult to our humanity. We are better than that.

The work and ideas of Mozart, Gandhi, Mandela, Parks, Franklin, Allende, and so many others blaze the path forward. This path does not include nuclear weapons.