Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Human Rights

  • No More Kosovos!

    I would like to discuss with you what the Global Action to Prevent War program could have done in helping to prevent the Kosovo crisis, what contribution it still might make to a solution there, and what it could do to prevent future Kosovos and Rwandas.

    This is a practical way of reviewing the part of the Global Action to Prevent War program that deals with preventing internal conflict and of eliciting your suggestions to improve the project. And your suggestions are much needed – this is a work in progress and one that is intended to help the practitioner.

    The full text of the Global Action to Prevent War program is on our website (www.globalactionpw.org). The purpose of Global Action where it concerns crises like Kosovo is to enhance the capabilities for conflict prevention of the UN, of regional security organizations, the international judicial system and human rights institutions, as well as of civil society everywhere, and to bring them all more fully into a highly active conflict prevention role.

    To do this, we envision about twenty individual measures, which I would like to describe briefly. (For clarity, I have numbered them in this paper.)

    Please bear in mind that it is unlikely that any of these measures alone could have decisive effect. They have to act together.

    To start with, (1) Global Action foresees a specific treaty commitment to admit official human rights monitors immediately on request to the host country and to facilitate their visits.

    Most countries have already undertaken numerous human rights covenants. There is no point in pressing for additional ones. What is needed is implementation of existing commitments. We know that acute Serb abuse of the Kosovars has been going on for at least ten years since Milosevic revoked the autonomy of Kosovo in 1989. Yugoslavia is a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and many other human rights covenants. These commitments are being violated by the Serb authorities.

    The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has an agreed but complicated procedure for admitting human rights observers even when the host government is reluctant. It was invoked in Chechnya after much negotiation. What we are proposing here is a worldwide commitment that will make immediate entry of monitors to check compliance with existing human rights commitments a recognized right.

    If human rights monitors had visited Kosovo at the outset of the abuses there and immediately publicized their findings, reporting them to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to the international courts, and to the Security Council, and had done this repeatedly, this would have inhibited Milosevic.

    Many NGO’s and diplomatic observers were in Kosovo observing the remarkable development of non-violent self-government there, but their reports did not get action out of Western governments. This is one of the several missed opportunities for preventing Kosovo.

    Remember that the explicit standard for existing human rights covenants, both for the UN and for the OSCE, is that the status of human rights within a given country is not solely a matter of national sovereignty, but a legitimate interest of the international community.

    (2) Another of our measures could have had even more effect — an international treaty on minority rights. This treaty would have promoted Kosovar autonomy and protected that autonomy, once granted, against arbitrary change. And its terms would have given the Kosovars status to complain to the international community and places to lodge these complaints – the UN Human Rights Commission, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and ultimately, the Security Council. After many years of negotiation, in 1992, the General Assembly adopted a declaration on rights of minorities. We want to go a further step to give the declaration binding treaty power.

    (3) We would back this treaty on minority protection by a commitment to teach non-violent conflict prevention and productive intergroup relations in every participating country at every level of education – using the concepts covered in UNESCO’s program for a culture of peace.

    (4) Global Action foresees the establishment of a professional mediator corps at the UN, with counterparts in regional security organizations.

    (5) To feed into these positions and to provide the trained peacekeepers I will mention later, we also propose that, in UN member states, service in mediation, humanitarian aid, and in peacekeeping, be an accepted alternative to military conscription. Where armed forces are professional and there is no conscription, we ask governments to set up a career public service in these fields and to place these practitioners in senior government positions.

    We foresee that a corps of trained mediation professionals at the UN, at the disposal of the Secretary General and Security Council, would collect and analyze information about potential trouble spots and also about proven methods of conflict prevention. They would be sent out individually or in small teams to areas where conflict might develop. Their status would be protected and all UN member states would be committed to receiving them on their territory and facilitating their stay. Small teams could stay on site for months, becoming acquainted with the local population, working with local and foreign NGO’s, trying to bring hostile groups together, proposing solutions, investigating incidents and, if helpful, making their findings publicly known.

    The OSCE already does valuable work of this kind. Our proposal is that the work be intensified and be carried out by trained professionals with a reputation for institutional neutrality. Today, the Secretary General sends out small missions of this kind, but he has neither permanent professional personnel nor adequate funds for this function. A small group of mediation professionals could also be assigned to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague to permit it to undertake a more proactive conflict prevention role.

    These professional mediators in the field could warn UN Headquarters if there is a real possibility of armed violence. (6) They could also alert the Conflict Mediation Panel of the General Assembly that we propose. This open-ended committee of General Assembly members would be a less formal, more flexible conflict prevention group than the Security Council. It would not be subject to the veto and could set its own agenda by majority vote.

    In this case, the General Assembly Conflict Mediation Panel would send a team to Kosovo composed of UN representatives from various countries. It would hold on-site hearings, publicizing them if it seems desirable. In the Panel’s sessions in New York, as many as possible of them public sessions, it would invite Kosovars and Yugoslav diplomatic representatives, and perhaps some officials from Serbia, to tell their side of the story, and to listen to the Panel’s advice on what to do. It would be the obligation of this Panel to give the UN and the world public comprehensive, balanced information on the disputed issue and to propose possible solutions.

    One of the problems of conflicts like that in Rwanda and Kosovo is that, although government officials are often aware of these conflicts at an early stage, they do not publicize their reports. Media coverage in these early stages is often sporadic. As a result, the conflicts often hit an unprepared world opinion only when they are at an advanced state and organized killing has already begun. To give civil society a chance to do its job, it has to be brought in early. The same goes for governments in other areas and for national legislatures that may have to decide on aid, sanctions, or peacekeeping operations.

    In this case, the work of the professional mediators and of the Conflict Mediation Panel would alert the international community, along with NGO’s and publics in major UN member states, to the Kosovo problem. The media would intensify its coverage of Kosovo, and the political opposition in Yugoslavia would have grounds early on to question the actions of their government in Kosovo.

    (7) An important feature of our proposal is a reformed Security Council, expanded in membership and restricted in use of the veto through an informal understanding among the permanent members of the Security Council.

    We suggest that this reformed Security Council should make a deliberate decision to undertake a highly pro-active role in conflict prevention and should make the commitments in professional backup and financing needed to carry out this role.

    In the Kosovo case, backed by information from the Mediation Corps, whose personnel would serve the Council as professional staff for this program, and by information from the General Assembly’s Conflict Mediation Panel, the Security Council would invite the Yugoslav government to appear before it in a series of hearings to explain its policy in Kosovo. The Council would present the reasons for its own concern over the situation. It would give its advice to the Yugoslav government on treatment of the Kosovars and offer its assistance, both in personnel and money, to carry out this advice. In proposing this procedure, we are thinking also of other unresolved internal conflicts like those in Sudan and Sri Lanka. In the case of Kosovo, if the problem continued, the Council would invite the Yugoslav government to appear before it again and would warn it of the probable future consequences of its anti-Kosovar practices. It would point out to the Yugoslav government and the world public that the problem in Kosovo was becoming a threat to international security.

    This activity by the Security Council would prepare the road to further Council action, including the possibility of full negative publicity, the use of emissaries to Yugoslavia’s leaders, carefully selected economic sanctions, of preventive deployment of a peacekeeping force if the Yugoslav government is prepared to agree, or as a last extreme measure, of peace enforcement. The international community would be alerted at each step.

    (8) We believe the Security Council and the main UN member states should move step by step toward an agreed concept for humanitarian intervention based on the idea that governments are entrusted with stewardship of the welfare of their people, especially their human rights, and are accountable for their conduct of this stewardship, and that when this stewardship is misused or abused in an extreme way, the international community should be prepared to intervene in some form.

    The Council would decide in the individual situation whether this is the case and what action should be taken. Actual practice of the Security Council is moving toward this concept. A clear statement of it would have advantages for member state governments and publics.

    We are proposing that civil society be closely linked to this process by (9) formal liaison with the UN Secretariat and the Security Council and regional organizations and with a biennial conference of NGO’s working on all aspects of the conflict reduction field, with participation of the Secretary General and the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council, to discuss field experience, good and bad methods and improved liaison at all levels.

    If the Security Council is blocked from action by vetoes, then resort should be made to the General Assembly by shifting action to the Conflict Mediation Panel or, in extreme cases, through the Uniting for Peace resolution used in the Korean War and in the big Congo peacekeeping operation of the 1960’s, when the Soviet Union paralyzed the Security Council with vetoes. These proposals for a General Assembly Conflict Mediation Panel, for a proactive role for the Security Council, and for resort to the Uniting for Peace procedure are not “future music.” They could be invoked today.

    (10) This is a logical point to mention that the Global Action project foresees the establishment of universal membership regional security organizations in each major region, each with conflict prevention capability. When intervention is carried out by a regional security organization, the Security Council should give its approval.

    We do not know the long term future of NATO. It may merge with OSCE or both may finally be absorbed into the European Union structure. But, according to our approach, NATO’s membership would have to become universal and NATO would have to recognize the authority of the Security Council.

    (11) We propose in the Global Action program that all newly concluded treaties should provide for referral of disputes to the International Court of Justice for adjudication, giving the court a more active role in conflict prevention. These activities need not be limited to interstate disputes: Under the minority rights treaty we propose, the UN Human Rights Commissioner and the Kosovar community in Yugoslavia would both have status to bring complaints to the Court.

    (12) We also assume effective operation of an International Criminal Court and authority under its procedures for the Kosovars to inform the court’s prosecutor at an early stage that abuses of their human rights are taking place. Effective operation of the Criminal Court will mean that the Court’s existence and practices would have a deterrent effect on actions and practices like those of the Yugoslav government against the Kosovars. We believe other aspects of the Global Action program will also have deterrent effects.

    (13) The Global Action program foresees the existence of full-time UN volunteer peacekeeping forces, a brigade in each major geographic region, with the capacity to call on member states for backup forces. (14) These units would be financed by the proceeds of an international tax, possibly on airline tickets, levied by member state legislatures.

    If the Yugoslav government was prepared to accept the force, the Security Council could propose preventive deployment of this force in Kosovo, stating an emergency was beginning to emerge. If the Yugoslav government refused, the Council could call for further steps, including carefully articulated economic sanctions and the use of military force under Chapter 7.

    In contrast to the present situation, these pre-financed peacekeeping troops would be ready to move on a few hours notice. (15) They would be backed by a standing UN police force composed of volunteer personnel who could also take on the job of maintaining order in Kosovo. There are many occasions, including Kosovo, where inviting in a police force poses much less of a challenge to national sovereignty than an outside peacekeeping force and could therefore be more acceptable to the host country and to the Security Council as well. UN-directed police personnel have been deployed in Haiti and the OSCE has also done so in Bosnia.

    If either of these forces had already been available, they might have provided a vital component for a negotiated solution of the Kosovo problem. In fact, I have been proposing that a United Nations peacekeeping force be substituted for NATO troops as an international peacekeeping force for Kosovo. A proposal to do this could bring about earlier agreement to end the Kosovo crisis than may be achieved otherwise.

    We are talking here of a more powerful Security Council and regional security organizations. To limit the possibility of abuse of power and to enhance accountability of these organizations, we want to (16) institute on a step-by-step basis the practice of judicial review of Security Council decisions by the International Court of Justice.

    What about the opposite problem from that of arbitrary action, the question of political will? Would governments and institutions really act to use this improved international security system?

    We believe so. First, authority in the system we are describing would be widely dispersed. There would be many separate decisionmakers: NGO’s, human rights officials, UN officials and representatives and governments. Above all, the potential victims themselves would have a much louder voice.

    What about timely decisions by regional security institutions or the UN Security Council to send peacekeepers? The issue of political will might become critical at this point.

    (17) As one measure to deal with this issue, Global Action proposes that the president of the General Assembly or his representative should participate in meetings of the Security Council to report on Assembly views and keep the Council engaged — and also accountable.

    As regards the Security Council’s capacity to act in a timely way without veto, we believe that the five permanent members, in their own self-interest of saving the Council from the cold war oblivion it would otherwise suffer and of preserving their own international influence as members of a functioning Council, may ultimately agree informally among themselves to restrict use of the veto. This restriction could be very limited, ad hoc, or general. Resort to the Conflict Mediation Panel of the General Assembly or to the Uniting for Peace procedure are possible alternatives.

    In addition, we are suggesting that (18) the Secretary General of the UN should be given authority by Charter amendment or decision of the Security Council to deploy a peacekeeping military or police force of limited size for conflict prevention only. For the deployment to continue beyond 30 days, it would have to be confirmed by the Security Council.

    Speaking more generally, when we raise the issue of political will, we are talking about education. A large part of what we call political will is learned behavior. (19) The Global Action project foresees an intense education program for political leaders at all levels, government officials, military officers and NGO’s on recognition of the signs of possible conflict and the logic of determined early action to prevent conflict.

    For Kosovo, we know the lesson already: the costs of failure to intervene early in the Kosovo crisis include the costs of the current NATO military campaign, the costs of caring for the refugees, the costs of an international force, the costs of rehabilitating Kosovo, as well as possibly Serbia, a total which will probably exceed $50 billion for all NATO countries for the next two years.

    Governments do not like to take early action. By and large, they believe that most incipient crises will dissipate and that there will be no need to incur the political and economic costs of action to cope with them. That is one lesson they draw from experience. That lesson is wrong in the field of internal conflict. Here, governments have to learn that when certain indicators are present, it is a necessity to pay for the insurance policy of early preventive action. Doing so will save more lives and it will be cheaper to pay these insurance costs than to risk the heavy costs of waiting.

    Using round figures, the maximum cost of applying all the measures proposed by Global Action for Kosovo and described in this paper would perhaps have been $400 or $500 million — excluding the standing peacekeeping brigades, $100 million — as contrasted to the loss of life and uprooting of thousands of lives and costs of at least $50 billion in the belated action now going on.

    This lesson about the need to act early can in fact be learned. A whole generation of Westerners went through World War II and came out with one lesson – the danger of allowing the human and material resources of Europe to fall under hostile hegemony. Without real hesitation, they followed that lesson into the cold war. Debate during the cold war was mainly about the methods.

    To cite another example, in the century between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, the British political class learned the lesson of early warning and early intervention and acted on these lessons scores of times. Sometimes the objective was laudable, sometimes not, but the point is that this kind of alertness can be learned.

    That is the kind of political understanding and political will that must ultimately arise with regard to prevention of conflict. It must be part of the training of every NGO, legislator, diplomat, and soldier on the planet to recognize and react to these symptoms early on. It is a central part of the job of supporters of Global Action to help to carry out this educational task with their political leaders and government officials.

    This description covers only that part of the Global Action program aimed at reducing the outbreak of internal war. Global Action’s program of conflict prevention is backed by a systematic program of transparency on all the components of military power, confidence-building, and conventional disarmament to prevent interstate war and big power war — a necessary complement.

    Let me draw a conclusion from these comments: This list of preventive measures is not and cannot be complete. We need the help of everyone who has ideas on this issue and of the many experienced workers in this field. Please give us your suggestions and help us make the Global Action approach better.

    Our argument is not that any single one of the 18 or 19 measures I have described today would have prevented the Kosovo disaster.

    It is that, working together, these measures, combined with the widespread conviction that armed conflict can in fact be prevented, and combined with insistent pressure from civil society – from all of us — can be a powerful force in drastically reducing the outbreak of armed conflict and in preventing future Kosovos.

    This is the main subject that the United Nations and world civil society should be working on in their preparations for the agenda-setting Millennial forums next year – and this is the subject that we at the Hague Peace Appeal conference should be thinking of today.

    * Jonathan Dean is an adviser on International Security Issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Suite 310, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036, 202-332-0900 FAX: 202-332-0905, Global Action to Prevent War.

  • U.S. Military Action Undermines the Rule of Law

    When it was first announced by President Clinton that the United States would launch a military strike against Iraq, I wondered about the legality of this attack under international law. I carefully read President Clinton’s speech announcing the attack, and found a reference to a UN Security Council resolution that condemned Iraq’s defiance of the UN inspection team by a vote of 15 to zero. Upon review of the resolution, however, I found that it contained no authorization for the use of force against Iraq. Nor did any previous Security Council resolution, except for the 1991 resolution authorizing the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, an issue clearly not relevant to the current situation.

    President Clinton announced that the purpose of the military action was “to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.” Clinton and his security advisors, who he announced were unanimous in their recommendation to attack, were responding to a report filed by Richard Butler, the head of the UN inspection team in Iraq.

    But this is what the Washington Post wrote about Butler’s report, “Butler’s conclusions were welcome in Washington, which helped orchestrate the terms of the Australian diplomat’s report. Sources in New York and Washington said Clinton officials played a direct role in shaping Butler’s text during multiple conversations with him Monday at secure facilities in the U.S. mission to the United Nations.”

    The article in the Washington Post also pointed out that a “companion report” by the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed “broad satisfaction with Iraq’s cooperation.”

    What this suggests is that there were reasonable differences of opinion about Iraq’s cooperation with the UN, and that there was improper collusion between Richard Butler, the head of the UN inspection team who is supposed to act in a neutral manner, and U.S. officials. If this is true, Butler was clearly acting in an improper manner and bears some of the responsibility for the military action against Iraq. If it is true, Kofi Annan should act immediately to fire Butler.

    President Clinton justified the attack as being necessary “to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.” This justification raises many questions. What was the “national interest” that was being protected? How was it determined? Should any country have the right to attack another country in the name of national interest without proper authority under international law?

    The behavior of President Clinton and his “security team” sends the wrong message to the international community. It is a similar message to the one they sent when they attacked a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which they unconvincingly claimed was a chemical weapons factory.

    The message we are sending to the world is that we are the big boys on the block, and we are willing to throw our weight around regardless of the law. The Russian Duma referred to our attack in a nearly unanimous vote as “international terrorism.” This does not bode well for our future relations with the Russians.

    The Pakistani Parliament unanimously characterized the military action against Iraq as “an attaack on humanity and the Islamic world.” This does not bode well for our relations with other Islamic nations.

    Of the many consequences of our attack against Iraq, I believe the most serious is our undermining of the rule of law. For any use of force against Iraq, we should have had express authority from the UN Security Council, which in all of its resolutions on this matter indicated clearly that it would “remain actively seized of the matter.” By choosing not to do so, we once again demonstrated our willingness to defy international law for vague reasons of national interest.

    The bottom line is that our attack against Iraq was bullyism, and undermines international law. It did not serve the interests of the United States, nor of the world. Kofi Annan had it right when he said, “This is a sad day for the United Nations and for the world.”

  • Nuclear Weapons and Sustainability

    Nothing threatens sustainability more than nuclear weapons. And yet these weapons are rarely considered in discussions of sustainability, which tend to focus on resources and environmental degradation. The simple fact is that nuclear weapons are capable of destroying not only our most precious global resources and degrading our global environment, but of destroying civilization if not humanity itself. The possession and threat to use nuclear weapons also afflicts the souls and spirits of their possessors.

    Nuclear weapons are a holocaust waiting to occur, but this understanding is obscured by comforting though unprovable theories of deterrence. Decision makers and the public alike confuse deterrence with defense. In fact, deterrence is not defense. Deterrence is only a theory that an attack can be prevented by threatening to retaliate. It is a bad theory because deterrence cannot prevent attacks that occur by accident or miscalculation, nor attacks by terrorists or criminals who have no fixed place to retaliate against.

    National security “experts,” such as Henry Kissinger, who propound theories of deterrence, are the sorcerers of our time. The public is expected to be humble before the apparent wisdom of such self-absorbed theorists. Clearly, there has been a price to pay for accepting their rhetorical invocations in the name of national security. The price is the willingness to place in jeopardy our human future, and our own humanity.

    Nuclear weapons incinerate human beings and other forms of life on a massive scale. This lesson was not lost on the people of Japan, who experienced two attacks with atomic weapons. It was apparently lost, however, on those who used these weapons. The possessors of nuclear weapons, and particularly Americans and Russians, suffer the delusion that they are protected by these weapons.

    Obstacles to the elimination of nuclear weapons include official secrecy concerning nuclear policies, lack of public discourse on these policies, confusion and muddled thinking regarding deterrence by policy elites, and a lack of courage and imagination on the part of political leaders. All of these translate into a lack of political will to radically change nuclear policies and take bold steps toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Until the public demands the abolition of nuclear weapons, the world will remain hostage to these instruments of genocide residing in the hands of mere mortals. What will arouse the public from its stupor? This may be the most important question of our time. Moral and legal arguments have not prevailed. Arguments concerning the concentration of power and undermining of democracy have not succeeded. Not even arguments concerning the vulnerability of citizens of nuclear weapons states to others’ nuclear weapons have awakened the power of the people.

    We live at a critical time in human history, in which we share the responsibility to pass the future on intact to the generations to follow. On the shoulders of those of us now living has fallen the responsibility to end the nuclear weapons era, or to face the almost certain spread of nuclear weapons and the likely use again, by accident or design, of these instruments of genocide.

    Sustainability and a future free of nuclear weapons are inseparable. Anyone concerned with a sustainable future should embrace the abolition of nuclear weapons, and become a vocal and active advocate of this cause. Because nuclear weapons abolition affects the future as well as the present, this cause provides an important challenge to the youth of today, who are the inheritors of the future.

  • Nelson Mandela Calls for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

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    President Mandela, in an impassioned speech to the United Nations General Assembly today, called on the nuclear-weapon States to make a firm commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons and on the global community to eradicate poverty. Mandela, the third to speak in the Assembly’s opening session after Brazil’s Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia and U.S. President William Clinton, received two standing ovations from the full assembly hall.

    Mandela recalled the very first resolution of the United Nations, adopted in January 1946, which called for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction,” and lamented the fact that “we still do not have concrete and generally accepted proposals supported by a clear commitment by the nuclear-weapon States to the speedy, final and total elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons capabilities.”

    Mandela asked those who justify “these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction – why do they need them anyway?”

    “In reality, no rational answer can be advanced to explain in a satisfactory manner what, in the end, is the consequence of Cold War inertia and an attachment to the use of the threat of brute force to assert the primacy of some States over others.”

    Mandela announced that in an attempt to contribute to the elimination of these weapons, South Africa, together with Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia and Sweden will be submitting a draft resolution to the First Committee (Disarmament and Security) for consideration by the General Assembly. He called on all members of the United Nations to support the resolution, which will be entitled “Towards a Nuclear Weapons Free World: The Need for a New Agenda.”

    Ambassador Luiz Felipe Lampreia, Foreign Minister of Brazil, who opened the General Assembly debate, also noted the nuclear disarmament initiative of the eight aforementioned countries.

    Commendation letters can be sent to President Mandela, C/o The Permanent Mission of South Africa to the United Nations, 333 East 38th Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Fax (1) 212 692 2498.

    _________________________________________________________________________________
    Address by President Mandela at the 53rd United Nations
    General Assembly
    New York, 21 September 1998

    Mr. President;
    Mr. Secretary General, the Hon. Kofi Annan;
    Your Excellencies;
    Ladies and Gentlemen,

    Mr. President, may I take this opportunity as President of the Republic of South Africa and as Chairperson of the Non-Aligned Movement to extend to you our sincere congratulations on your election to the high post of President of the General Assembly. You will be presiding over this august Assembly of the nations of the world at a time when its deliberations and decisions will be of the greatest consequence to the continuous striving of humanity at last to achieve global peace and prosperity.

    The Non-Aligned Movement, as well as my own country which is a proud member of that Movement, invest great trust in this organisation that it will discharge its responsibilities to all nations especially at this critical period of its existence. Quite appropriately, this 53rd General Assembly will be remembered through the ages as the moment at which we marked and celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    Born in the aftermath of the defeat of the Nazi and fascist crime against humanity, this Declaration held high the hope that all our societies would, in future, be built on the foundations of the glorious vision spelt out in each of its clauses.

    For those who had to fight for their emancipation, such as ourselves who, with your help, had to free ourselves from the criminal apartheid system, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights served as the vindication of the justice of our cause. At the same time, it constituted a challenge to us that our freedom, once achieved, should be dedicated to the implementation of the perspectives contained in the Declaration.

    Today, we celebrate the fact that this historic document has survived a turbulent five decades, which have seen some of the most extraordinary developments in the evolution of human society. These include the collapse of the colonial system, the passing of a bipolar world, breath-taking advances in science and technology and the entrenchment of the complex process of globalisation. And yet, at the end of it all, the human beings who are the subject of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights continue to be afflicted by wars and violent conflicts. They have, as yet, not attained their freedom from fear of death that would be brought about by the use of weapons of mass destruction as well as conventional arms.

    Many are still unable to exercise the fundamental and inalienable democratic rights that would enable them to participate in the determination of the destiny of their countries, nations, families and children and to protect themselves from tyranny and dictatorship.

    The very right to be human is denied everyday to hundreds of millions of people as a result of poverty, the unavailability of basic necessities such as food, jobs, water and shelter, education, health care and a healthy environment.

    The failure to achieve the vision contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights finds dramatic expression in the contrast between wealth and poverty which characterises the divide between the countries of the North and the countries of the South and within individual countries in all hemispheres.

    It is made especially poignant and challenging by the fact that this coexistence of wealth and poverty, the perpetuation of the practice of the resolution of inter and intra-state conflicts by war and the denial of the democratic right of many across the world, all result from the acts of commission and omission particularly by those who occupy positions of leadership in politics, in the economy and in other spheres of human activity.

    What I am trying to say is that all these social ills which constitute an offence against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not a pre-ordained result of the forces of nature or the product of a curse of the deities. They are the consequence of decisions which men and women take or refuse to take, all of whom will not hesitate to pledge their devoted support for the vision conveyed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    This Declaration was proclaimed as Universal precisely because the founders of this organisation and the nations of the world who joined hands to fight the scourge of fascism, including many who still had to achieve their own emancipation, understood this clearly that our human world was an interdependent whole.

    Necessarily, the values of happiness, justice, human dignity, peace and prosperity have a universal application because each people and every individual is entitled to them.

    Similarly, no people can truly say it is blessed with happiness, peace and prosperity where others, as human as itself, continue to be afflicted with misery, armed conflict and terrorism and deprivation.

    Thus can we say that the challenge posed by the next 50 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by the next century whose character it must help to fashion, consists in whether humanity, and especially those who will occupy positions of leadership, will have the courage to ensure that, at last, we build a human world consistent with the provisions of that historic Declaration and other human rights instruments that have been adopted since 1948. Immediately, a whole range of areas of conflict confronts us, in Africa, Europe and Asia.

    All of us are familiar with these, which range from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Sudan on my own continent, to the Balkans in Europe and Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Sri Lanka in Asia.

    Clearly, this Organisation and especially the Security Council, acting together with people of goodwill in the countries and areas concerned, has a responsibility to act decisively to contribute to the termination of these destructive conflicts.

    Continuously, we have to fight to defeat the primitive tendency towards the glorification of arms, the adulation of force, born of the illusion that injustice can be perpetuated by the capacity to kill, or that disputes are necessarily best resolved by resort to violent means.

    As Africans, we are grateful to the Secretary General for the contribution he has made to help us find the way towards ending violent strife on our Continent. We have taken heed of his report, which will reinforce our efforts to banish war from our shores.

    The very first resolution of the General Assembly, adopted in January 1946, sought to address the challenge of “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction”.

    We must face the fact that after countless initiatives and resolutions, we still do not have concrete and generally accepted proposals supported by a clear commitment by the nuclear-weapons States to the speedy, final and total elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons capabilities. We take this opportunity to salute our sister Republic of Brazil for its decision to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and urge all others that have not done so to follow this excellent example.

    In an honest attempt to contribute to the definition of the systematic and progressive steps required to eliminate these weapons and the threat of annihilation which they pose, South Africa together with Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia and Sweden will be submitting a draft resolution to the First Committee for consideration by this Assembly. This is appropriately titled: “Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World: The Need for a New Agenda”.

    I call on all members of the United Nations seriously to consider this important resolution and to give it their support. We must ask the question, which might sound naove to those who have elaborated sophisticated arguments to justify their refusal to eliminate these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction – why do they need them anyway!

    In reality, no rational answer can be advanced to explain in a satisfactory manner what, in the end, is the consequence of Cold War inertia and an attachment to the use of the threat of brute force, to assert the primacy of some States over others.

    Urgent steps are also required to arrive at a just and permanent peace in the Middle East, on the basis of the realisation of the legitimate aspirations of the people of Palestine and respect for the independence and security of all the States of this important region.

    We also look forward to the resolution of the outstanding issues of Western Sahara and East Timor, convinced that it is possible to take these matters off the world agenda on the basis of settlements that meet the interests of all the peoples concerned.

    Similarly, we would like to salute the bold steps taken by the and Government to cooperate fully in all regional and international iniiatives to ensure that the peoples of the world, including our own, are spared the destructive impact of these crimes.

    The world is gripped by an economic crisis which, as President Clinton said in this city only a week ago, has plunged “millions into sudden poverty and disrupt(ed) and disorient(ed) the lives of ordinary people ” and brought “deep, personal disappointments (to) tens of millions of people around the world “.

    “Recent press reports”, President Clinton went on, “have described an entire generation working its way into the middle class over 25 years, then being plummeted into poverty within a matter of months. The stories are heartbreaking – doctors and nurses forced to live in the lobby of a closed hospital; middle class families who owned their own homes, sent their children to college, traveled abroad, now living by selling their possessions”.

    He said “fast-moving currents (in the world economy) have brought or aggravated problems in Russia and Asia. They threaten emerging economies from Latin America to South Africa ” and he spoke of “sacrifice(ing) lives in the name of economic theory” President Clinton further recognized that, in his words, “with a quarter of the world’s population in declining growth we (the United States) cannot forever be an oasis of prosperity. Growth at home (in the US) depends upon growth abroad”.

    I have quoted the President of the United States at this length both because he is correct and because he is the leader of the most powerful country in the world. Accordingly, we would like to believe that with the problem facing all humanity, and especially the poor, having thus been recognised, courage will not desert the powerful when it comes to determining the correct course to be taken and following this course, to address the challenge that has been identified.

    The tragedy President Clinton describes goes far beyond the sudden impoverishment of the middle class to which he correctly refers. Poverty has been and is the condition of the daily existence of even larger numbers of ordinary working people.

    Paradoxically, the challenge of poverty across the globe has been brought into sharp focus by the fact of the destructive “fast movements of currents” of wealth from one part of the world to the other. Put starkly, we have a situation in which the further accumulation of wealth, rather than contributing to the improvement of the quality of life of all humanity, is generating poverty at a frighteningly accelerated pace. The imperative to act on this urgent, life and death matter can no longer be ignored. The central challenge to ensure that the countries of the South gain access to the productive resources that have accumulated within the world economy should not be avoided by seeking to apportion as much blame as possible to the poor.

    Clearly, all relevant matters will have to be addressed, including such issues as greater inflows of long-term capital; terms of trade; debt cancellation; technology transfers; human resource development; emancipation of women and development of the youth; the elimination of poverty; the HIV/AIDS epidemic; environmental protection and the strengthening of financial and other institutions relevant to sustained economic growth and development.

    Fortunately, the matter is no longer in dispute that serious work will also have to be done to restructure the multilateral financial and economic institutions so that they address the problems of the modern world economy and become responsive to the urgent needs of the poor of the world.

    Similarly, this very Organisation, including its important Security Council, must itself go through its own process of reformation so that it serves the interests of the peoples of the world, in keeping with the purposes for which it was established.

    Mr. President; Your Excellencies: The issues we have mentioned were discussed in a comprehensive manner at the Twelfth Summit Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement held in the city of Durban, South Africa, earlier this month. I am privileged to commend the decisions of this important meeting to the General Assembly and the United Nations as a whole, including the Durban Declaration, which the Summit adopted unanimously. I am certain that the decisions adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement will greatly assist this Organisation in its work and further enhance the contribution of the countries of the South to the solution of the problems that face the nations of the world, both rich and poor. This is probably the last time I will have the honour to stand at this podium to address the General Assembly.

    Born as the First World War came to a close and departing from public life as the world marks half-a-century of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I have reached that part of the long walk when the opportunity is granted, as it should be to all men and women, to retire to some rest and tranquility in the village of my birth.

    As I sit in Qunu and grow as ancient as its hills, I will continue to entertain the hope that there has emerged a cadre of leaders in my own country and region, on my Continent and in the world, which will not allow that any should be denied their freedom as we were; that any should be turned into refugees as we were; that any should be condemned to go hungry as we were; that any should be stripped of their human dignity as we were. I will continue to hope that Africa’s Renaissance will strike deep roots and blossom forever, without regard to the changing seasons. Were all these hopes to translate into a realisable dream and not a nightmare to torment the soul of the aged, then will I, indeed, have peace and tranquility.

    Then would history and the billions throughout the world proclaim that it was right that we dreamt and that we toiled to give life to a workable dream.

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  • Joint Statement Against Nuclear Tests and Weapons by Retired Pakistani and Indian Armed Forces Personnel

    Recent developments in South Asia in the field of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery are a serious threat to the wellbeing of this region.

    The fact that India and Pakistan have fought wars in the recent past and do not as yet enjoy the best of relations, makes this development all the more ominous. The signatories of this statement are not theoreticians or arm-chair idealists; we have spent many long years in the profession of arms and have served our countries both in peacetime and in war.

    By virtue of our experience and the positions we have held, we have a fair understanding of the destructive parameters of conventional and nuclear weapons. We are of the considered view that nuclear weapons should be banished from the South Asian region, and indeed from the entire globe.

    We urge India and Pakistan to take the lead by doing away with nuclear weapons in a manifest and verifiable manner, and to confine nuclear research and development strictly to peaceful and beneficient spheres.

    We are convinced that the best way of resolving disputes is through peaceful means and not through war – least of all by the threat or use of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan need to address their real problems of poverty and backwardness, not waste our scarce resources on acquiring means of greater and greater destruction.

    Signed

    Air Marshal Zafar A. Choudhry (Pakistan)
    Admiral L. Ramdas (India)
    Lt. Gen Gurbir Mansingh (India)

  • JAMA Study Calls for Medical Organizations to Unite in Campaign for Nuclear Abolition

    BOSTON, Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ — Since Hiroshima, physicians have frequently warned of the horrifying burn, blast, and radiation casualties a nuclear war would produce. Even in the post-Cold War era, the world faces the continuing risks of proliferation, terrorism, and deliberate or accidental nuclear war. An organized, global campaign led by medical organizations in support of a verifiable and enforceable Nuclear Weapons Convention would make a significant contribution to safeguarding health in 21st century, according to a study published in the August 5 Journal of the American Medical Association.

    “With a united, global voice, we in medicine must call for the zero tolerance of nuclear weapons — no different from the world’s zero tolerance of chemical and biological weapons,” says Lachlan Forrow, MD, principal author of the JAMA article, “Medicine and Nuclear War: From Hiroshima to Mutual Assured Destruction to Abolition 2000,” and internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

    The study, co-authored by Victor Sidel, MD, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and former president of the American Public Health Association (APHA), of the Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, traces the history of nuclear weapons, from a medical perspective, since the blast at Hiroshima in 1945 and reviews the current status of nuclear arsenals and the dangers they pose worldwide. According to the JAMA authors, today’s dangers include the 35,000 warheads that remain in superpower nuclear arsenals, many of them still on hair trigger alert.

    For more than 50 years, physicians have played important roles in public policy related to nuclear weapons, first as partners in the government’s civil defense planning in the late 1940s and the 1950s. A decade later, in the 1960s, physicians organized to help end atmospheric nuclear testing and, in the 1980s, doctors would again unite, helping to end the superpowers’ plans to fight a nuclear war.

    The authors report that as early as 1946, just one year after the attack on Hiroshima, a high-level U.S. Government committee was urging a United-Nation-enforced global ban on all nuclear weapons. When their efforts failed, the superpowers, led by the United States, entered an era in which having “more” and “better” nuclear weapons was thought to be the best safeguard against nuclear disaster. Dangers of radiation from nuclear weapons was routinely minimized, according to Dr. Forrow, with U.S. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project testifying before the U.S. Congress that radiation poisoning, was “a very pleasant way to die.”

    In 1962, there was an abrupt change in the medical profession’s role in the fight against nuclear weapons. An issue of the New England Journal of Medicine was dedicated to articles on the medical consequences of nuclear war and a new force emerged. Physicians for Social Responsibility was born and began documenting in graphic detail the dire health effects of nuclear explosions. The NEJM articles and an accompanying editorial concluded that physicians, because of their special knowledge of the real medical effects of nuclear weapons also had a special responsibility to prevent their use.

    Countless medical studies have documented the toll of nuclear weapons production and testing. According to the authors, the U.S. National Cancer Institute estimated recently that the release of I-131 in fallout from U.S. nuclear test explosions was responsible for nearly 50,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer among Americans. In a separate study by the IPPNW, the physician organization estimated that the Strontium-90, Cesium-137, Carbon-14, and Plutonium-239 released worldwide in all such explosions would be responsible for 430,000 cancer deaths by the year 2000.

    In an NEJM article earlier this year, Forrow and his medical colleagues warned that the risk of an “accidental,” nuclear attack has increased recently and called for immediate de-alerting steps to be rapidly followed by a signed global agreement by the Year 2000 committing the world to the elimination of all nuclear weapons within a specified timeframe.

    Known as Abolition 2000, the initiative has been endorsed by leading U.S. medical organizations, including the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association and Physicians for Social Responsibility, as well as International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and over 1000 other nongovernmental agencies in 75 countries. Over 80 percent of Americans support the abolition of all nuclear weapons even though the U.S. government has yet to seriously question its own commitment to maintaining a nuclear arsenal, says Forrow.

    “As physicians we have an opportunity and a responsibility to make our own commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons a living example of the power of our convictions,” says Forrow. “We must do this for ourselves, our families, and the generations that will follow, for as Albert Schweitzer once said, ‘Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing.’”
    This study was supported by the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship.

  • My A-bomb Experience and the Spirit of Hiroshima

    In the past, Japan inflicted indescribable suffering and deep sorrow on China and other countries of Asia. Fundamentally, responsibility for war damage inflicted by Japan clearly lies with the Japanese government. I believe that we as individual human beings, however, should not neglect to reflect on this matter. Though I was only a youth, I believe it is essential for me, as a Japanese who was alive at the time, to fully reflect on and etch in my mind the lessons of Japan’s invasion and war and our colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.

    August 6, 1945, I was fourteen years old, in my second year of middle school. I was standing in the schoolyard 1.4 kilometers from the hypocenter with about 150 other students. Suddenly, with a tremendous roar, everything went pitch black. At length, the smoke cleared and I could see the schoolyard again. I had been blown backward about 10 meters by the blast. My classmates toohad been blown forward, backward, left or right. They were fallen and scattered all around. The school building was a low pile of rubble. The surrounding houses had also vanished. Except for a few large buildings in the distance everything had vanished. For an instant I thought, “The whole city’s gone!”

    As I came to my senses, I examined my own body. My uniform was burned to shreds. I had serious burns on the back of my head, my back, both arms, and both legs. The skin of both of my hands had peeled off and was dangling down on strips, revealing raw, red flesh underneath. Pieces of glass were protruding from my body in several places. Suddenly, I was attacked by an unfamiliar sense of horror. In a matter of minutes I was heading for the river as fast as I could go. Not long on my way, I heard someone calling my name. Looking around, I saw my classmate Tatsuya Yamamoto. We used to walk to school together every day. Now, he was seeking help, crying, “Mama, Mama…help me!” I said, “Stop crying! We just have to get out of here!” And with me alternating between scolding and encouraging, we fled together toward the river.

    I saw a line of survivors looking dazed, dragging their legs wearily and pressing toward me. Their peeled arms dangled oddly in front of them, and their clothes were in tatters. Many were virtually naked. I couldn’t even see them as human; I felt I was watching a grotesque procession of ghosts. I saw one man with hundreds of glass shards piercing his body from the waist up. The skin of another man had peeled off his entire upper body, exposing a mass of red flesh. A woman was covered in blood, one eyeball grotesquely dangling out of its socket. Next to a mother whose skin had completely peeled off lay a loudly crying baby, its entire body burnt. Corpses were scattered everywhere. A dead woman’s internal organs had burst out onto the ground around her. It was all so utterly gruesome, a living hell indescribable in words. We continued to head resolutely for the river.

    But all the streets and pathways leading to the riverbank were blocked by the wreckage of toppled houses. It often seemed impossible to get through. In a mindless state of utter desperation we crawled on all fours over and through the ruins until at last we managed to find the river. Luckily, just where we emerged on the bank we found a small wooden bridge that had miraculously withstood the blast.

    Then it happened, just as we were stepping out onto the bridge. Tongues of fire burst violently out from the collapsed houses on both sides of the street. As we stood and gaped, the whole riverside transformed into a sea of fire. Crackling loud as thunder, towering pillars of fire shot up towards the heavens, like the eruption of a volcano. Fortunately we were beyond the reach of the conflagration, but my friend Yamamoto had somehow vanished.

    Finally I escaped to the other side of the river where there wasn’t any fire. Having reached relative safety, the intensity of my flight subsided somewhat, and I was suddenly aware that my whole body was burning hot. To ease the pain I went down to the river, dipping myself three times. The cool water of the river was to my scorched body an exquisite, priceless balm. “Ah, I’m saved!” And with that thought, for the first time, my tears flowed and would not stop. I came up from the river and was guided to a temporary relief station hastily set up in a bamboo grove. There I received some minimal first aid and rested a while. As I sat there it started to rain, the first black rain I had ever seen. Huge drops that made a big noise when they fell. I just watched, bewildered, thinking, “Is there really such a thing as black rain?” I waited for it to stop, then started walking home.

    After a while, again I heard someone calling my name. I turned and saw Tokujiro Hatta, another friend who used to walk to school with Yamamoto and me. “Takahashi, help me! Take me home with you!” he begged, groaning. For some reason, the soles of his feet were burned so badly that the skin had peeled, revealing the red flesh beneath. He certainly couldn’t walk. Though I myself was seriously burned, I was not the sort to abandon a friend and continue on my way alone. I decided immediately to take Hatta along with me. But how? Luckily, though his feet were burned, the rest of his body had escaped serious burns or cuts. After considering the possibilities for a while, I decided there were two ways to get him home without having his feet touch the ground: one was to have him crawl on his hands and knees; the other was to lean him back on his heels while I supported him. Thus we began our trek, alternating between these two methods. Plodding along slower than cows, step after agonizing step, somehow we managed to help each other along. At one point, overcome by fatigue, we were forced to sit by the road and rest. For no particular reason I looked back over my shoulder. “Hey! Isn’t that my great aunt and uncle? They’re coming this way!” I used every ounce of strength I could muster to shout to them, and they stopped. They were on their way home from a memorial service in the country. Our meeting was a complete coincidence. With their help we made it home.

    Once home, I collapsed in a coma and remained unconscious for three weeks. Later, I was treated by a doctor–an ear, nose, and throat specialist–who came to our house morning and night to see me. Ordinarily, severe burns would not be treated by an otolaryngologist, but with nearly all the doctors and nurses in the city either dead or incapacitated, I was extremely fortunate to receive treatment from any sort of doctor at all. I battled my burns and disease for a year and a half, hovering between life and death. A Japanese saying goes, “Nine deaths for one life, ” and that was precisely my experience. My friends passed from this world with acute radiation sickness: Tokujiro Hatta two days later, and Tatsuya Yamamoto after one month-and-a-half.

    I have survived these many years, but my right elbow and the fingers of my right hand except for my thumb are bent and immobile. Keloid scars remain on my back, arms and legs. The cartilage in my ears deteriorated from the blood and pus that collected there, leaving my ears deformed. I continue to grow a “black nail” from the first finger of my right hand. (You may have seen two samples of this “black nail” that fell off and are on display at the Peace Memorial Museum.) Further, I am afflicted with chronic hepatitis, a liver infection that is a nationally recognized aftereffect of the bomb. I have been hospitalized ten times since 1971. Besides my liver problem, I am afflicted with numerous other ailments and cannot help but constantly worry about my health.

    While struggling with this frail and damaged body, I have often wondered in despair, “Do I really need to live with all this pain?” But each time I have answered, “But you’ve already come so far.” And that thought has kept me going. Of my sixty classmates that day, fifty were cruelly slaughtered by the atomic bomb. To date, I have confirmed the survival of only thirteen of us; I am one of the very few still alive.

    “I cannot let the deaths of my classmates be in vain. I must be the voice conveying their silent cries to the generations to come. As a survivor, this is my mission and my duty.” These ideas are engraved on my heart, and I have lived to this day repeating such words to myself continually. My friends were helplessly sacrificed to the atomic bomb without ever reaching adulthood. They died writhing in agony. Their short, young lives abruptly ended. Such enormous sorrow. Such horrible frustration.

    Among humankind’s abilities, it is said imagination is the weakest and forgetfulness the strongest. We cannot by any means, however, forget Hiroshima, and we cannot lose the ability to abolish war, abolish nuclear weapons, and imagine a world of peace. Hiroshima is not just a historical fact. It is a warning and lesson for the future. We must overcome the pain, sorrow, and hatred of the past, we must conquer the argument that the damage inflicted and the damage incurred in the name of war were justifiable, we must conquer the logic that the dropping of the atomic bomb was justifiable. We must convey the Spirit of Hiroshima– the denial of war and hope for the abolition of nuclear weapons–throughout Japan and throughout the world. I sincerely hope you have understood the Spirit of Hiroshima. I will always be praying for your steadfast efforts and progress toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

  • Canadian Church Leaders Seek End to Nuclear Weaponry: The Salvation Army War Cry

    On Thursday, February 26, 1998, a representative group of church leaders went before the standing Committee of the House of Commons to talk about the moral urgency of a global drive to abolish nuclear weapons. This is one of the many social justice issues which The Salvation Army in this territory, in partnership with other churches and agencies, is seeking to address and resolve. The following letter addressed to Prime Minister Chretien from church leaders in Canada, was signed by Commissioner Donald V. Kerr, territorial commander.

    Salvationists need to be involved actively where we are, in social services, but also in collaboration with others to seek to advocate action on the many and varied social justice issues which threaten to damage and destroy families, and our world.

    Dear Prime Minister Chretien,
    We write in deep appreciation of your government’s persistent and courageous leadership in the ongoing effort to rid the world of the scourge of anti-personnel landmines, and to challenge you to bring that same visionary dedication to bear on efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

    Our church communities rejoiced with all Canadians, and especially with people in mine-affected countries, in that proud moment in Ottawa last December when Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy signed the land mines treaty on behalf of Canada and when you handed to the UN Secretary-General a copy of the legislation confirming Canada as the first country to ratify the treaty. It was truly a milestone event, showing the world what can be achieved when governments and movements work together, and particularly, when leaders step forward to challenge and encourage others.

    We are grateful for your personal commitment to the effort to ban land mines and for the key role played by Mr. Axworthy and many officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Our gratitude and congratulations to you and your colleagues also extend to the many thousands of Canadians, individuals and organizations, who provided energy and expertise to make this achievement possible.

    Canadian church communities, responding to God’s call to all people to be agents of love and healing in a world that still knows great pain, participated in the movement to ban land mines. As church leaders, we believe that obedience to that same call of God requires us now to raise our voices in urgent appeal to our own communities, to all Canadians, and to you and your government, to bring a new commitment to what we believe to be one of the most profound spiritual challenges of our era — the challenge to rid the world of the plans and the means to nuclear annihilation.

    The willingness, indeed the intent, to launch a nuclear attack in certain circumstances bespeaks spiritual and moral bankruptcy. We believe it to be an extraordinary affront to humanity for nuclear weapon states and their allies, including Canada, to persist in claiming that nuclear weapons are required for their security. Nuclear weapons do not, cannot, deliver security — they deliver only insecurity and peril through their promise to annihilate that which is most precious, life itself and the global ecosystem upon which all life depends. Nuclear weapons have no moral legitimacy, they lack military utility, and, in light of the recent judgement of the World Court, their legality is in serious question. The spiritual, human and ecological holocaust of a nuclear attack can be prevented only by the abolition of nuclear weapons — it is our common duty to pursue that goal as an urgent priority.

    The Canadian churches have long worked for the elimination of nuclear weapons. In 1982, we leaders wrote to, and met with, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to affirm “nuclear weapons in any form and in any number cannot ultimately be accepted as legitimate components of national armed forces.” In 1988, we sent the same message to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, stating that ” nuclear weapons have no place in national defence policies.”

    Since then we have welcomed the substantial progress that has been made to end the nuclear arms race and reduce the size of the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals, But these steps, important as they are, are not nearly enough. The end of the Cold War has created an unprecedented opportunity to start the process toward the final elimination of nuclear weapons and the World Court has confirmed that it is a legal obligation.

    We are therefore especially disturbed by the refusal of nuclear weapons states to even begin negotiations on the abolition of nuclear weapons and to set clear time frames and objectives – and we are profoundly disappointed that Canada has to date chosen to publicly accept that refusal. Indeed, nuclear weapon states continue to take steps to maintain and improve or modernize” their nuclear arsenals for the indefinite future.

    It is our sincere belief that Canada has much to contribute to the effort to make nuclear abolition a reality In this regard, we are heartened by your pledge in Securing Our Future Together (the second “Red Book”) that “a re-elected Liberal government will… work vigorously to eliminate nuclear and chemical weapons and antipersonnel mines from the planet.” We are compelled to note, however, that Canada continues to support, and to seek the illusory protection of, nuclear weapons in a number of ways (see the Appendix, pp. 3-4). Canada’s position as an advocate of nuclear disarmament in the UN General Assembly, the Conference on Disarmament, and other forums is compromised by this fact.

    The time has come for Canada to take a strong, principled stand against the continued possession of nuclear weapons by any state, affirming abolition as the central goal of Canadian nuclear weapons policy and adding Canada’s voice to the call to immediately begin negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

    In support of this goal, Canada should immediately take the following actions:

    Urge all states to negotiate by the year 2000 an agreement for the elimination of nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework;

    Urge all nuclear weapons states, as interim measures and as a sign of good faith in such negotiations, to take all their nuclear forces off alert status and to commit themselves to no-first-use of nuclear weapons;

    Renounce any role for nuclear weapons in Canadian defence policy, and call on other countries, including Russia and Canada’s NATO allies, to do likewise;

    Review the legality of all of Canada’s nuclear-weapons related activities in the light of the International Court of Justice ruling of July 8, 1996, and move quickly upon the completion of this review to end all activities determined to be of questionable legality; and,

    Embrace publicly the conclusions of the Canberra Commission report of August 14,1996, including in particular its recommendations that the nuclear weapons states “commit themselves unequivocally to the elimination of nuclear weapons and agree to start work immediately on the practical steps and negotiations required for its achievement” and that the non-nuclear states support this commitment and join in co-operative international action to implement it.

    As it approaches the dawn of a new Millennium, Canada could offer no finer demonstration of its commitment to being a constructive and healing presence in the international community than to deploy some of its considerable diplomatic skill and political capital to ensure that the world enters the next Millennium with a formal treaty commitment to rid the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons.

    The Canadian churches which we represent are committed to continuing their work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, in co-operation with other Canadian and international nuclear abolition efforts. In this spirit of co-operation and common cause, we respectfully request the opportunity to meet with you at the earliest possible date to explore ways in which Canadian churches can further support the government in taking bold new steps to make nuclear weapons abolition an urgent priority.

    We look forward to your early response. Please know that you and your colleagues in the Government of Canada are supported by the prayers and good wishes of Canadians.

    His Eminence Metropolitan Archbishop Sotiros, Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Toronto (Canada); Fr. Anthony Nikolie, Polish National Catholic Church of Canada; Mr. M. L. Bailey, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Canada; Jim Moerman, Reformed Church in America; Fr. Marcos Marcos, St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church; The Very Rev. Bill Phipps, United Church of Canada; Bishop Telmor Sartison, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada; Archbishop H. Derderian, Primate, Canadian Diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church; Marvin Frey, Executive Director, Mennonite Central Committee Canada; The Rev. Dr. Kenneth W Bellous, Executive Minister, Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec; Rt. Rev. Dr. Daniel D. Rupwate, General Superintendent, British Methodist Episcopal Church; The Right Rev. Seraphim, Bishop of Ottawa and Canada, Orthodox Church in America; The Most Rev. Michael G. Peers, Primate, The Anglican Church of Canada; The Rev. Messale Engeda, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; Donald V. Kerr Commissioner, The Salvation Army; John Congram, Moderator, Presbyterian Church in Canada; Bishop Francois Thibodeau, c.j.m., President, The Episcopal Commission on Social Affairs, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops; Gale Wills, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Canada.

    The Salvation Army’s Positional Statement on World Peace (1990)
    The Salvation Army as part of the Universal Christian Church, seeks the establishment of peace as proclaimed by Jesus Christ. The Army recognizes that the world’s problems cannot be solved by force, and that greed and pride, coupled with the widespread desire for domination, poison the souls of men and sow seeds of conflict.

    Since there exists in thermonuclear weapons a destructive power of vast proportions almost too frightful to contemplate, The Salvation Army believes that nuclear disarmament by all nations is a necessary element of world peace. However, a nation has the right to defend itself against the aggression of another nation.

    The Salvation Army continues to be deeply concerned with the investment of huge financial resources to aid the escalating production of terrifying weapons of mass destruction, rather than the diversion of these funds to socioeconomic growth throughout the world. Disarmament, peace and development are inextricably linked.

    The Salvation Army pledges its members to pray and work for peace and to seek to realize the Church’s unique witness to the source of true peace, God himself.

  • Countless Voices of Hope

    It is with profound appreciation and gratitude that I return to this city of peace, this sacred city of Hiroshima. This city was made sacred not by the tragedy which befell it, but by the rebirth of hope which emerged from that tragedy. From the ashes of Hiroshima, flowers of hope have blossomed, bringing forth a renewed spirit of possibility, of peace, to a world in which hope has been too often crushed for too many.

    The massive destruction that was visited upon this city on August 6, 1945 gave birth to the Nuclear Age, an age in which our species would move from the too often practiced power of genocide to the potential of omnicide, the destruction of all humanity and perhaps all life. The devastating power of nuclear weapons, as manifested first at Hiroshima and then at Nagasaki, has made peace not only desirable but imperative.

    Through the memories of the survivors, the hibakusha, we may learn of the horror they experienced so that we may act to prevent that horror from ever recurring anywhere again. The scenes etched in their memories can pierce us to the marrow of our bones. Sumie Mizukawa, a young girl at the time of the bombing, remembered the sight of a blinded young mother. She wrote:

    Her eyes blinded

    her dead infant in her arms

    with tears streaming

    from those sightless eyes

    that would never see again.

    I saw this in my childhood

    as my mother led me by the hand.

    That image will never leave

    my memories of that dreadful time.

    Kosaku Okabe described a scene of misery with “countless bodies of men, women, and children” floating in the river. “It was then,” he wrote, “that I first began to understand the brutality of war.” He continued, “Burned into my memory is the sight of a young mother, probably in her twenties, a baby on her back and a three- or four-year-old child clasped tightly in her arms. Caught against a girder on a bridge her body bobbed idly in the gentle current.”

    How could these images not be seared into memory? And how vitally important it is that such images be shared with others throughout the world so that this pain will not again be inflicted on young mothers and their children in other cities at other times. As Akihiro Takahashi, a former director of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Center, wrote, “‘Hiroshima’ is not merely a historic fact in the past. It is an alarm bell for the future of humankind.”

    I have had the great privilege of knowing Miyoko Matsubara, who was a twelve year old child when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. Miyoko struggled to learn English so that she could tell the story of what she witnessed and experienced — including her own injury, pain and disfigurement — to young people throughout the world. She was only a child, but she has carried the pain throughout her life. She also carries hope, and her courage gives hope to others.

    Miyoko’s message is the message of Hiroshima: “Never again! We shall not repeat the evil.” This message is a clarion call to sanity. It is a cry to the human species to remember our humanity. If we fail to do so, the consequences will be severe. We run the risk of destroying ourselves and much of life. Our capacity for destruction tests our wisdom. The most important issue of our time, although not widely viewed as such, is that of assuring that the evil is not repeated.

    I would like you to know that the message of your city awakened me. I first visited Hiroshima when I was 21 years old. At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I learned of the human cost of nuclear destruction, of the tragedy and suffering caused by that single bomb. The spirit of Hiroshima entered my soul. I had no choice but to find a way to work for peace and an end to the threat of future nuclear holocausts.

    A second experience solidified my commitment to peace. Returning from Japan in 1964, I found that I had been called into the army. Not realizing the full range of my options, I joined a reserve unit rather than serve on active duty. However, four years later this reserve unit was called to active duty, and I received orders to go to Vietnam as an infantry officer. At that time I believed, and continue to believe today, that this was a war both immoral and illegal. I knew that if I went to Vietnam I would be forced to kill and order others to do so. I, therefore, as a conscientious objector, refused the order to go to Vietnam, and ended up fighting the army in federal court.

    It was a great awakening for me to realize that my power as an individual was greater than that of the United States Army. The army had the power to give me an order, but I had the power to say No to their order. I might have gone to jail for doing so, but that was my choice. I had a choice, as we all do, to do what I believed was right. To exercise that choice is tremendously empowering. It is the power of conscience, which is a defining human characteristic, one that separates us from all other forms of life.

    Above all else, I consider myself to be a citizen of Earth. I believe that the bonds of our common humanity uniting us are far stronger than the artificial boundaries that divide us. I am also a citizen of the United States, having been born in Los Angeles three years before the Nuclear Age began. Speaking as a single individual, but I’m sure representing millions of others throughout the world, I deeply regret the crime against humanity that occurred here. As an American, I apologize to you, although I know from Miyoko and other hibakusha that your forgiveness came long ago.

    I apologize because my government has not yet done so. I apologize because my government has not yet heard the message of Hiroshima, nor learned its foremost lesson — “Never again!” I apologize because my government still bases its national security on the threat to use nuclear weapons. I apologize because your pain and your suffering should not be borne by you alone.

    What happened here affects us all. If we can find it in ourselves to share in your tragedy — a tragedy that for most people on Earth today is only of historical memory — we may be capable of sharing in your hope. And, if we can do that, we may be capable of bringing forth a new world in which the ever present threat of nuclear holocaust is ended for all time.

    Just over 40 years ago, Josei Toda, your second president, called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons, and called upon the youth of Soka Gakkai to help lead the way. Five months ago I was in Tokyo and Yokohama for the commemoration of that fortieth anniversary. In the short time since that fortieth anniversary, the youth of Soka Gakkai, beginning here in Hiroshima, have gathered over 13 million signatures for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I am in awe of your effort and your accomplishment. I know that President Ikeda is as well. I can only imagine how proud Josei Toda would have been to know of your effort. Your effort inspires and motivates. It is a source of hope.

    In your effort to gather signatures you have become educators and activists. You have brought this critical issue of nuclear weapons abolition to the attention of over 13 million people, and have obtained their affirmation of the need to end this nuclear weapons era which threatens the future of humanity and, indeed, all life.

    The petition on which you gathered signatures was prepared by Abolition 2000, which is a global network of over 1000 citizens organizations in some 75 countries working for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Abolition 2000 draws its strength from the grassroots, from the people. In this respect, it is similar to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. When the landmines campaign succeeded in having a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines signed in Ottawa, Jody Williams, the coordinator of the campaign, said, “Together we are a superpower. It’s a new definition of superpower. It’s not one of us; it’s all of us.” In Abolition 2000, as in the landmines campaign, we are not alone, and together we can become the most powerful grassroots movement in the history of humankind.

    The Abolition 2000 International Petition asks for three actions. First, end the nuclear threat by such reasonable steps as withdrawing all nuclear weapons from foreign soil and international waters, separating warheads from delivery vehicles, and committing to unconditional no-first-use of nuclear weapons. Second, sign an international treaty — a Nuclear Weapons Convention — by the year 2000, agreeing to eliminate all nuclear weapons within a fixed period of time. Third, reallocate resources from military purposes to assuring a sustainable global future.

    Each signature you have gathered represents a voice of hope. Together they represent a chorus of hope that can move the world. We don’t know with certainty what forces you have set in motion by your effort, but we do know that you have touched many lives and that they in turn will touch more lives. If other concerned citizens throughout the world will follow your lead, we can achieve our goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

    You have concluded your petition campaign, but please don’t consider your task finished until the last nuclear weapon is removed from the world. This will not happen overnight. It will take sustained effort and commitment. It will require the often under-appreciated virtue of perseverance. All that is truly worth achieving requires perseverance — loving relationships, healthy communities, and a decent world.

    I will take the message of your achievement to the leaders of the United Nations, to the delegates preparing for the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, to non-governmental organizations working for nuclear weapons abolition throughout the world, and to the leaders of my own country and other nuclear weapons states.

    I urge you to take the message of these 13 million voices to your own government, which has not been true to the people of Japan in its nuclear policies. Your government has not only been content to rely upon the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but — by its accumulation of reprocessed plutonium — has become a virtual nuclear weapons power capable of assembling hundreds of nuclear weapons in days or weeks. If we are to have a world free of nuclear weapons, we must convince our respective governments to change their policies. You must help to convince your government and I must help to convince mine that reliance upon nuclear weapons for defense is an act of folly that endangers our future and undermines our decency as well as our security.

    Sometimes we cannot see the full fruits of our efforts during our lifetimes. This has been true of many great peace leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also true of Josei Toda whose vision forms the foundation for your effort. It is true for all of us — if our vision is great enough. I believe, however, that a world free of nuclear weapons can and will be achieved within our lifetimes.

    I urge you to dream of what can be, and to always hold fast to your dreams. I beseech you never to lose the dream of a world free from the threat of nuclear holocaust. I implore you to listen to your conscience, and to act courageously upon it. I encourage you to walk the path of peace, which is also the path of justice. I call upon you to follow President Ikeda’s sage advice, “Continue to advance, step-by-step! Never, ever, give up hope.”

    If we follow our dreams, if we listen to our consciences, if we act courageously, if we walk the path of peace, if we never give up hope, we will rise to our full stature as human beings. We will live lives that are rich and full. We will make a difference and, by our examples, we will influence others to live such lives. I promise you that I will do my utmost to join you in living such a life and will encourage others to join us as well.

    I would like to conclude by sharing with you a poem of hope written by Sadako Kurihara just after the bombing of Hiroshima.

    WE SHALL BRING FORTH NEW LIFE

    It was night in the basement of a broken building.

    Victims of the atomic bombing

    Crowding into the candleless darkness,

    Filling the room to overflowing —

    The smell of fresh blood, the stench of death,

    The stuffiness of human sweat, the writhing moans —

    When, out of the darkness, came a wondrous voice

    “Oh! The baby’s coming!” it said.

    In the basement turned to living hell

    A young woman had gone into labor!

    The others forgot their own pain in their concern;

    What could they do for her, having not even a match

    To bring light to the darkness?

    Then came another voice: “I am a midwife.

    I can help her with the baby.”

    It was a woman who had been moaning in pain only moments before.

    And so a new life was born

    In the darkness of that living hell.

    And so, the midwife died before the dawn,

    Still soaked in the blood of her own wounds.

    We shall give forth new life!

    We shall bring forth new life!

    Even to our death.

    To find such hope in the darkness of that awful night is a triumph of the human spirit. In remembering Hiroshima, let us dedicate ourselves to bringing forth new life. Let us dedicate ourselves to building a world in which even the threat of nuclear devastation is not a possibility. Let us dedicate ourselves to bringing forth a new world in which no child ever again must suffer the pain of war or hunger or abandonment. Let us dedicate ourselves to building a world in which there is liberty, justice and dignity for all who share this extraordinary planet that gave birth to life. Let us walk the path of peace, and be active participants in the pursuit of peace!

     

  • Nuclear Weapons: A Call for Public Protest

    Nuclear weapons, which are instruments of genocide, incinerate human beings. The Peace Memorial Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki display gruesome evidence of the atomic bombings of those cities; one can see walls where human shadows remain after the humans who cast those shadows were incinerated into elemental particles.

    During World War II the Nazis put their victims into gas chambers and then incinerated them in ovens. While the Nazis took their victims to the incinerators, those who possess and threaten to use nuclear weapons plan to take these weapons, that are really portable incinerators, to the victims. Nuclear weapons eliminate the need for gas chambers. They provide a one-step incineration process — for those fortunate enough to die immediately.

    The behavior of the Nazis leading up to and during World War II is universally condemned. The German people are often criticized for failing to oppose the atrocities of the Nazi regime. How much more culpable would be the citizens of the states that now possess nuclear weapons should these instruments of genocide be used again!

    The German people lived in fear of the Nazis. The same cannot be said for the citizens of the nuclear weapons states, particularly the Western nuclear weapons states. Their silence in the face of their governments’ reliance upon these portable incinerators makes them virtual accomplices in planned crimes against humanity.

    It is no excuse to say that these instruments of genocide exist only to deter an enemy. In the first place, there are no enemies among nuclear weapons states in the aftermath of the Cold War. More important, there is no justification for threatening to murder hundreds of millions of people in the name of national security. Deterrence is only a theory, and on many occasions, most famously the Cuban Missile Crisis, it has come close to breaking down.

    The International Court of Justice has found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal, and that it would be virtually impossible to use nuclear weapons without violating the laws of armed conflict and particularly international humanitarian law. The Court in 1996 reaffirmed that all nuclear weapons states have an obligation under international law to achieve nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects.”

    Given the immorality and illegality of using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, where is the public outrage at the continued reliance upon these weapons by the governments of nuclear weapons states in the aftermath of the Cold War? Many people seem to believe that the threat of nuclear holocaust ended with the end of the Cold War, but this is far from the actual situation. Despite some bilateral phased reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, there are still some 36,000 nuclear weapons in the possession of the nuclear weapons states, with the largest number still stockpiled by the former Cold War enemies, the U.S. and Russia.

    Worse yet, our nation’s foreign policy is still wedded to the threatened use of these weapons. In late 1997 President Clinton signed a Presidential Decision Directive reserving the right for the United States to be the first to use nuclear weapons, and giving the Pentagon increased flexibility to retaliate against smaller states that might use chemical or biological weapons against the U.S. or its allies. This Presidential Decision Directive was prepared in secret with no public discussion, and came to public light only because it was leaked to the press.

    Another secret study that has recently come to light reveals a frightening approach to nuclear arsenals within the U.S. military command. The study, “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,” was prepared by the U.S. Strategic Command, and was released only after a freedom of information request by a non-governmental organization concerned with security issues.

    The study states, “Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the U.S. may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed.” It continues, “The fact that some elements (of the U.S. government) may appear to be potentially `out of control’ can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary’s decision makers. That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be part of the national persona we project to all adversaries.”

    In effect, this study by the U.S. Strategic Command says that the U.S. should not only continue to base its national security on threatening to retaliate with nuclear weapons, but its decision makers should also act as though they are crazy enough to use them. One is left with the eerie feeling that these supposedly rational planners advocating irrationality may be just crazy enough to actually use these weapons if an opponent was crazy enough to call their bluff or appeared to them to do so.

    Military leaders in the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states are not giving up their reliance upon their nuclear arsenals. There is little reassurance in their secret studies that argue for portraying themselves as “irrational and vindictive.”

    A former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, has made many strong public pleas for nuclear weapons abolition since his retirement from the Air Force in 1994. He recently stated, “I think that the vast majority of people on the face of this earth will endorse the proposition that such weapons have no place among us. There is no security to be found in nuclear weapons. It’s a fool’s game.”

    General Butler was also a member of a prestigious international commission organized by the Australian government, the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This commission issued a report in 1996 stating, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    If the American people and the citizens of other nuclear weapons states want to end their role as unwilling accomplices to threatened mass murder of whole nations, they must make their voices heard. They must demand that their governments proceed with nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects,” as called for by the International Court of Justice.

    If we fail to protest our reliance upon these instruments of genocide, and if these weapons are ever used, it will be “We, the People” who will stand culpable before history of even greater crimes than those committed by the Nazis. We will not have the excuse that we, like most Germans in the Nazi era, did not protest because we feared for our lives. It will be our indifference when we could have made a difference that will be the mark of our crime against humanity.