Dear friends! Place the letter received from "Basel Peace Office" team
Dear Tolegen,
Over 1000 delegates (government and non-governmental) meet in Vienna in December last year at a conference hosted by the Austrian government to discuss the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.
The conclusion of Austria, at the end of the conference, was that ‘The only assurance against the risk of a nuclear weapon detonation is the total elimination of nuclear weapons.’
Austria then called on the States Parties of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to use the 2015 NPT Review Conference (April 27 – May 22, 2015), to ‘determine the next steps for the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear-weapon-free world.’
We draw your attention to the following recent articles and upcoming actions relating to this goal:
• Vienna conference: legislators vital to nuclear disarmament, which explores the vital roles of parliamentarians to influence policy and ensure governments implement their nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament obligations;
• Will the United Nations ban nuclear targeting of populated areas? Discussion of a proposal made at the Vienna conference to call on the UN to affirm that the nuclear targeting of populated areas would be in violation of existing international law;
• Making sense of nuclear abolition initiatives: a short guide to the key civil society campaigns and nuclear abolition networks, and the government proposals to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world;
• International lawyers group outlines the road to nuclear disarmament, a recent paper by the International Associations of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms on the approaches to achieve nuclear abolition;
• From nuclear taboo to a prohibition (ban) on use: The next step to a nuclear-weapon-free world? a paper exploring the possibilities of achieving a global ban on the use of nuclear weapons;
• Global Wave 2015, a global action on April 26-27 where humanity will ‘wave goodbye to nuclear weapons.’ Global Wave is held in conjunction with the Peace and Planet mobilisation calling on the 2015 NPT Review Conference to establish a diplomatic process to negotiate the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.
Please contact us if you would like further information on any of these articles or initiatives.
Yours sincerely
The Basel Peace Office team
www.baselpeaceoffice.org
www.facebook.com/BaselPeaceOffice