JOINT STATEMENT FROM CIVIL SOCIETY TO THE STATES PARTIES OF THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY

Although the NPT Review Conference was postponed, civil society composed a joint statement, which outlined their perspectives on the current state of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The text is below and the video statement can be found here.

We are thrilled that Marcina Langrine, a representative of the Marshallese Educational Initiative, a partner organization of Reverse The Trend, contributed to the video statement.

Introduction

As the world mobilises in response to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot afford to lose sight of the other global challenges that threaten all of us, including the worsening planetary climate emergency and the ongoing threat of catastrophic nuclear war. These are all, in the words of former UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan, “problems without passports”.1

The scale of the global crisis caused by this pandemic is due to multiple political failures. Time and again, governments and other actors have ignored and dismissed the warnings made by scientists throughout the world about transnational threats and the steps necessary to prevent and/or mitigate the effects. In the case of COVID-19, those warnings were ignored for too long and now it is too late.

We’re not only at a pivotal point in the struggle against the fast-moving coronavirus; we are also at a tipping point in the long-running effort to reduce the threat of nuclear war and eliminate nuclear weapons (Continue Reading)