I had the privilege of attending the opening and penultimate sessions of the Nuclear Weapons Ban and Prohibition Treaty negotiations at the U.N. this spring and summer. And, midst considerable celebration, on July 7, representatives of the majority of the world’s governments agreed to a treaty designed to outlaw the development, testing, producing, possession, stockpiling, use and threatened use of nuclear weapons and considerably more.
The next major steps will be to get those governments to agree to sign the treaty by September 20 and then to ratify it. Our other priority is educating the public about the treaty so that we can build the popular pressure needed to move the nuclear weapons and umbrella (NATO, Japan, South Korea etc.) to eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
My e-mail in box has been flooded with articles about the Ban Treaty, but by far, and not surprisingly, the best article has been written by Zia Mian of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. It appears in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
PLEASE READ AND SHARE it at: http://thebulletin.org/after-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-new-disarmament-politics10932
For Peace, Justice and Environmental Sustainability,
Joseph
Joseph Gerson, Director of American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)’s Peace and Economic Security Program.
