World must unite to eliminate growing nuclear threat
Christopher Weeramantry
NUCLEAR: In the past week alone, North Korea failed to meet a
deadline to halt its nuclear programme, and Iran announced it was
seeking bids to build two more nuclear power plants, despite
international concern that the enriched uranium is destined to fuel
weapons.
As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists declared this year: “We
stand at the brink of a second nuclear age.
Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous
Judge Christopher Weeramantry
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choices.” The significant threats caused by North Korea and
Iran’s increasing nuclear ambitions are among a long and terrifying list
of reasons driving us closer to disaster.
They include unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the
continuing launch-ready status of thousands of American and Russian
weapons, escalating terrorism, increasing availability of the materials
with which to make a bomb, and a dangerous lowering of the threshold for
use in several nuclear weapons states.
The main reason we are held hostage by the most destructive
technology on earth is simple: the complete lack of international
resolve to ban nuclear weapons and banish them from the arsenals of the
world.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was launched in
Melbourne. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser spoke, joined
by former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans via video, some of Australia’s
leading medical experts and community leaders in a plea for action.
The campaign’s demand is simple. It calls for a Nuclear Weapons
Convention, similar to those already achieved for chemical and
biological weapons and for landmines.
Such is the seriousness of the nuclear threat that high-profile and
bipartisan leaders in Australia have joined to urge action to create a
nuclear weapons-free world. Australia has a key role. For decades
Australia has provided uranium to several nuclear weapons states, with a
misplaced faith that safeguards will keep that uranium out of weapons.
Australia, as a provider of a raw material that has such catastrophic
potential, has a responsibility to help eliminate the ultimate weapons
of terror.
Australia should also reinforce the message by ceasing uranium
exports to any nation that maintains nuclear weapons.
There have been strong international signals of support for a Nuclear
Weapons Convention. At the 2006 United Nations General Assembly, 125
governments voted for the start of negotiations for such a convention.
Yet if we want more than the kind of snail’s pace action of the past
50 years, we need a public campaign worldwide that is vocal enough to
force swift action by Australia and every other nation that has
expressed grave concern over weapons of mass destruction.
There have been several attempts to reduce the number of nuclear
weapons globally. In 1970 the world’s Governments agreed to abolish such
weapons through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Since then, the number of countries with nuclear weapons has
increased to nine - Russia, United States, China, Britain, France,
Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea - that possess a staggering
27,000 between them. None show signs of eliminating their arsenals. The
director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei,
believes up to 30 countries have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons
in a short time.
The bomb also clearly stands categorically condemned by at least a
dozen basic principles of international law.
I was one of the 14 judges on the panel of the International Court of
Justice that unanimously held in the Advisory Opinion on the legality of
the threat or use of nuclear weapons that: “There exists an obligation
to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading
to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective
international control.”
But elimination will only happen if all countries - nuclear and
non-nuclear states - genuinely work towards this result. Nuclear states
must abolish their arsenals, as was indicated by the unanimous opinion
of the international Court of Justice, the highest international
tribunal. The five nuclear states seem to expect others to refrain from
obtaining bombs while at the same time maintaining their own caches of
deadly weapons.
In particular, Russia and the United States - far from making a
serious effort to disarm - still possess 26,000 of the world’s 27,000
nuclear weapons.
According to the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, the two countries combined have more than 1000 warheads
ready to be activated within tens of minutes.
Each of these weapons has a potential destructive force up to 40
times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima that killed 100,000
people.
Fifty of today’s nuclear weapons could kill 200 million people.
The creation of a nuclear weapons convention is not only achievable,
it is imperative if civilisation is to survive.
The international campaign to ban the landmine was successful. In
1997, governments finally listened to millions of people demanding
action.
One decade later, the call for a Nuclear Weapons Convention must be
made even more loudly. So compellingly that all states including
Australia will have no choice but to end any form of support, direct or
indirect, to the nuclear menace which threatens us all. The Age
Judge Christopher Weeramantry is a former vice-president of the
International Court of Justice. |