7/27/2019 NOBEL PEACE LAUREATES STATEMENT: NUCLEAR ABOLITION IS A HUMANITARIAN IMPERATIVE

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NOBEL PEACE LAUREATES STATEMENT:

NUCLEAR ABOLITION IS A HUMANITARIAN IMPERATIVE

Nuclear weapons are an existential threat to humanity, and must never be used again, under anycircumstances. We therefore welcome the recent shift in the international discourse about nuclear

weapons towards the recognition by a number of States that the catastrophic and irremediable

consequences of the use of nuclear weapons require decisive action to outlaw and eliminatethem.

The nature and scope of the medical, environmental, and humanitarian disaster that would resultfrom any use of nuclear weapons was examined in detail at the Oslo conference on the

Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in March 2013, and will be the subject of a follow-upconference this February in Mexico.

We know, from the tragic experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that even a single nuclear

weapon exploded over a city can kill tens of thousands of people in an instant and leave tens ofthousands more with untreatable blast, burn, and radiation injuries. More recently, we have

learned that a limited, regional nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weaponsa fractionof current global arsenalswould disrupt the Earths climate and curtail agricultural production

so severely that more than a billion people would be at risk of starvation from the resultingnuclear famine. A conflict employing the large arsenals of the US and Russiawhich cannot

be ruled out as long as the weapons existwould threaten the very existence of everyone onEarth.

The continued possession of over 17200 nuclear weapons by nine countries, together with large

amounts of fissile material with attendant proliferation risks, poses a real danger to the existenceof humankind. The use of nuclear weapons by design or accident and by possessor states or non-

state actors threatens all of us.

The dangers that we face from nuclear weaponsand the humanitarian imperative to outlaw andeliminate themhave become a major focus of several official and unofficial gatherings of

States in the past year, including preparatory meetings for the 2015 Non-Proliferation TreatyReview Conference, the meetings of the Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear disarmament,

and the High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament at the UN General Assembly onSeptember 26. We urge those States to take the next step and to initiate a process for a treaty that

will ban nuclear weapons and, ultimately, abolish them before they abolish us.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said there are no right hands for the wrong weapons.This new humanitarian-based initiative to remove the most abhorrent weapons ever created from

everyones hands, which is now supported by a growing number of States and by civil society,offers a pathway to a nuclear-weapons-free world that is inspiring, hopeful, and practical. We

give this initiative our full endorsement.

International Physicians for the Prevention ofNuclear War

President De KlerkAmerican Friends Service Committee

Mairead Corrigan MaguireHis Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

Prof. Muhammad YunusDr. Shirin Ebadi

Pugwash ConferencesPresident Walesa

International Peace BureauJody Williams