Introduction
If the international community is ever going to get rid of nuclear weapons, it must start by clearly rejecting them.
On 27 October 2016, member states of the United Nations adopted a decision in the General Assembly to convene in 2017 negotiations for a new legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons – or, as it is widely known, a ban treaty.
This is a genuine opportunity for the international community, at long last, to break the logjam in multilateral nuclear-disarmament efforts and to make real progress towards a world free of nuclear weapons. An understanding of the need for a ban has emerged through the so-called ‘humanitarian initiative’, a movement led by governments, international organisations and civil-society groups to make humanitarian consequences the focus of discussions about nuclear weapons.
Many believe that the effort to prohibit nuclear weapons is a result of frustration with nuclear-armed states and their lack of progress in disarmament. They are right that frustration runs high at the lack of implementation of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review-conference agreements and the deadlock in the Conference on Disarmament – and that this frustration has helped the ban treaty’s cause – but this is not why nuclear weapons are being banned.
Rather, this effort is about determining which weapons the international community deems unacceptable, and preventing catastrophic humanitarian harm. It reflects a shift in security and development policies towards a more central role for humanitarian concerns and humanitarian law. It also reaffirms multilateralism, and the understanding that problems with global impact mean all regions of the world – not just the permanent members of the UN Security Council – must have a say in the solutions.
The case for prohibiting nuclear weapons is clear: they are by nature inhumane and indiscriminate. The use of a nuclear weapon on a populated area would immediately kill tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of people, with many more injured. As Norway’s then-foreign minister Espen Barth Eide said at the 2013 Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons: ‘It is unlikely that any state or international body could address the immediate humanitarian emergency caused by a nuclear weapon detonation in an adequate manner and provide sufficient assistance to those affected.’ The long-term impact would significantly harm survivors and their descendants for decades to come. Yet, somehow, several states, including some who see themselves as champions of humanitarian principles and law, stand ready to use these weapons and unleash inhumane suffering on civilians as a result. Such states claim that they are weapons to deter war, rather than to fight it, a claim that can only be true, if at all, until deterrence ultimately fails – which, one day, it will.
Negotiating a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons will codify the stigma against causing such inhumane consequences. Weapons that cause unacceptable harm to civilians cannot remain legal or be considered legitimate options for states in warfare.
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