Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Abolition

What the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits Seek to Accomplish
On April 24, 2014, just over a year ago, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) brought lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and separately against the United States in US Federal District Court. The RMI argues that the five nuclear-armed parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which are the US, Russia, UK, France and China, are not meeting their obligations under Article VI of the treaty to negotiate in good faith for complete nuclear disarmament. The RMI further argues that the other four nuclear-armed countries not parties to the NPT, which are Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, have the same obligations under customary international law.

In the ICJ, cases go forward only against countries that accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, unless they consent to jurisdiction. Since only the UK, India and Pakistan accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, cases are limited to these three countries. The US, Russia, France, China, Israel and North Korean were invited to have their cases heard at the ICJ. China declined and the other countries did not respond.

In the US case in Federal District Court, the judge dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds on February 3, 2015. On April 2, 2015, the RMI filed a Notice of Appeal in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Tony de Brum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, stated, “We are in this for the long haul. We remain steadfast in our belief that nuclear weapons benefit no one and that what is right for humankind will prevail. We place great importance in and hold high respect for the American judicial process and will pursue justice in that spirit, using every available legal avenue to see that Nuclear Zero is achieved in my lifetime.”

These are important lawsuits. They have been described as a battle of David versus the nine nuclear Goliaths. In this case, however, David (the RMI) is using the nonviolent means of the courtroom and the law rather than a slingshot and a rock. It is worth considering what these lawsuits seek to accomplish.
- To challenge the status quo in which the world is composed of a small number of nuclear “haves” and a large number of nuclear “have-nots.”
- To use the courts to level the playing field and enforce playing by the same rules.
- To receive support from the courts in the form of declaratory and injunctive relief, so that the courts declare that the nuclear-armed countries are out of compliance with their obligations and order them to commence good faith negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament.
- To take a stand for all humanity, by ridding the world of the threat of nuclear catastrophes that could destroy civilization and much of life on the planet.
- To be good stewards of the Earth for present and future generations, protecting the various forms of flora and fauna dependent upon our doing so.
- To challenge the “good faith” of the nuclear-armed countries, for their failure to initiate negotiations for nuclear disarmament as required by the NPT and customary international law.
- To obtain the benefit of the bargain of the NPT, which means not only that its parties without nuclear weapons will not acquire them, but that all parties, including the nuclear-armed states, will negotiate their elimination.
- To end the complacency surrounding the threats that nuclear weapons pose to cities, countries and civilization.
- To awaken people everywhere to the magnitude of the threat posed by nuclear weapons.
- To say a loud and clear “Enough is enough,” and that it is time for action on the abolition of nuclear weapons.
- To achieve a “conversion of hearts,” recognized by Pope Francis as necessary for effective action in changing the world on this most challenging of threats.
These are high aspirations from a small but courageous country. If you would like to know more about the Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero lawsuits, and how you can help support them, visit www.nuclearzero.org.

David Krieger is a founder and President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a consultant to the Marshall Islands in the Nuclear Zero lawsuits.
May 6, 2015
Youth Statement at the 2015 NPT Review Conference

This statement was delivered by former NAPF intern Josie Parkhouse along with Sampson Oppedisano, who attended the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference as representatives of Ban All Nukes generation (BANg).

Madam President and Delegates,

Today, we stand before you as idealistic youth. We are not ashamed of this fact. We stand here because we believe the statements of the Nuclear Weapon States do not represent the majority of young people within their borders. We’re here to speak on behalf of these young people and we believe that a better world can be created: a world without nuclear weapons. I’m sure everyone in this room today can remember being young and having dreams of making the world a better place. The United Nations is built on this ideal. But some, who are present, have forgotten this idealism; you’ve lost your way along the path.

We ask you all to take a moment today to remember why you went into world affairs, remember the idealism of your youth and return to your former aspirational path. Unless we preserve the daring energy to look beyond the reality of today to a vision of a better tomorrow, we will continue to face the walls of apathy and defeatism. To stay on our current path is to give into fear and accept a less than safe world.

Madam President

A nuclear attack would be devastating and as Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon reminded us, we only have to listen to the accounts of the victims of nuclear weapon use and testing to understand how no country could adequately respond. Unfortunately, keeping our heads in the sand is to continue to trust those that tell us that nuclear weapons keep us safe, that they will never be used again, and that they are a deterrent for other countries. Perhaps these convenient, unreflective and uncritical arguments veered you off the path of peace in the first place. After all, we are often told that because there has been no nuclear war for the last 70 years, we can assume that this will continue for the rest of history.

This illogical attitude can be summed up well by an analogy of a man falling from a skyscraper. Those half-way up the building heard him shout as he passed their window, ‘So far so good.’ We’re often told as NGOs we are unrealistic in fighting for a nuclear weapon free world, but in fact basing world security on the ‘so far, so good’ recipe, we see that it is the nuclear weapon states that are being unrealistic. Clearly, ‘so far so good’ is not a recipe for world security. The worst is possible.

Madam President

We live in a highly interdependent world where the actions of one can affect us all. Even if we choose only to seek our own national interest, in today’s globalized world, this cannot be achieved without cooperating beyond our borders. All of our actions have an effect and this conference can either go down in history as just another review conference, or it can down in history as the review conference which led to a ban on nuclear weapons. However to achieve this requires real action, not just empty words and promises. Action based on the shared trust and respect for our world, for each other, for the environment and for humanity.

Just as this conference can affect the whole of humanity, nuclear weapons used by anyone will have an immediate effect on everyone. Let’s take a long term view and by doing so, realize the importance of acting in this moment, at this conference.

Madam President

Today we find ourselves defending our peace and security more frequently from unpredictable threats. Be it the outbreak of Ebola or the rise of terrorist groups such as ISIS, our commitment to achieving lasting peace and security is increasingly tested.

And yet, despite constantly reaffirming this commitment to pursuing a more safe and peaceful world, many leaders continue to ignore a threat that is within our power to end.

To the nuclear weapons states we ask, what contributions to global peace and security are your nuclear stock piles making? Your continued investment and modernization of such useless weapons is not only a threat to all, but divests valuable resources away from services in education, healthcare, and development; prerequisites for the secure world you all claim to strive for.

Quite frankly it’s ironic that we’ve reached a point where the youth at this conference are acting more responsibly in regards to disarmament than many of the adults changed with handling the task in the first place.

Your inability to take action is appalling and resembles that of a child who procrastinates their homework until the last minute. The big difference here is that waiting until the last minute won’t lead to a bad report card, but rather to the potential destruction of humanity.

You see it’s simple; A world where nuclear weapons exist is not a secure world. It is not a world where peace and trust between nations can begin to grow, and it is not a world that, we the youth, plan to inherit.

Madam President

Today, we find ourselves at a crossroad, and the path we choose will decide our future.

The first path leads us to a future where continued empty promises only prevent progress from being made. To continue down this path is to give into fear; a groundless fear that nuclear deterrence is the only means to a secure and peaceful world.

However, the second path is one many of you have fallen off of. This path leads us back to the idealism and pragmatic energy needed for a better tomorrow. Here we confront our fears through diplomacy and understanding and once again pursue the future we all deserve.

In closing, Madam President and Delegates

During a time where tensions amongst nations are on the rise, we understand that the task before us is not an easy one. But know this; A star shines brightest when surrounded by darkness. It is during our most trying times that we’ve proven that we can rise to the occasion.

We the youth are ready to do our part, the question is, are you all? Will you all continue down the path of fear, Or, will you all remember why you’ve dedicated your lives to making the world a better place, and return to the path of idealism.

A wise person is one who plants a tree whose shade they will never sit beneath. You can either continue to sit back and hope that we don’t destroy ourselves, or you can finally do your jobs and begin building a future that is peaceful and secure for all.

So, what will it be? Thank you.

May 6, 2015
Statement of Marshall Islands to the 2015 NPT Review Conference

PERMANENT MISSION OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE MARSHALL ISLANDS
TO THE UNITED NATIONS

New York

Hon. Mr. Tony deBrum
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Republic of the Marshall Islands
9^th Review Conference of the States Parties to the
Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
General Debate
27 April 2015

check against delivery

Mr. Secretary-General, Madame President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen –

For far too many years, these circular negotiations on nuclear non-proliferation have failed to listen closely to those voices who know better. There are several nations and peoples in the world who have experienced nuclear weapons directly — and the Marshall Islands stands among them in close solidarity. In particular, many Hibakusha have traveled from Japan to this meeting to ensure global decision-makers hear their powerful message.

How many in this room have personally witnessed nuclear weapon detonations?

I have — as a young boy at Likiep atoll in the northern Marshall Islands, during the time in which 67 nuclear weapons were tested between 1946 and 1958 — at an explosive scale equivalent to1.6 Hiroshima Shots every single day, for 12 years.

When I was nine years old, I remember well the 1954 Bravo shot at Bikini atoll – the largest detonation the world had ever seen, 1000 times the power of the Hiroshima blast. It was the morning, and I was fishing with my grandfather. He was throwing the net and suddenly the silent bright flash — and then a force, the shock wave. Everything turned red — the ocean, the fish, the sky, and my grandfather’s net. And we were 200 miles away from ground zero. A memory that can never be erased.

These nuclear tests were conducted during the Marshall Islands time as a United Nations Trust Territory — and many of these actions were taken, despite Marshallese objections, under UN Trusteeship Resolutions 1082 and 1493, adopted in 1954 and 1956. Those resolutions remain the only specific instances in which the United Nations has ever explicitly authorized the use of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons tests have created lasting impacts in the Marshall Islands — not only a historical reality but a contemporary struggle for our basic human rights — but I have not traveled to the NPT meeting to air out any differences with our former administering authority, the United States. The facts speak for themselves. Instead, I bring with me this moral lesson for all nations – because no one ever considered the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, the Marshallese people still carry a burden which no other people or nation should ever have to bear. And this is a burden we will carry for generations to come.

The serious shortfalls in the NPT’s implementation are not only legal gaps, but also a failure to address the incontrovertible human rights clarified by the recent outcomes of the Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Norway, Mexico and Austria. Over 150 nations, including the Republic of the Marshall Islands, have joined the Statement on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons at the UN General Assembly’s First Committee. An overwhelming global majority agrees that the humanitarian dimension of disarmament must be the strongest centerpiece of multilateral assurance.

It should be our collective goal to not only stop the spread of nuclear weapons, but also to truly achieve the peace and security of a world without them, and thus end the cycle of broken promises. This is why the Marshall Islands serves a co-agent in action presently before the International Court of Justice, which has brought this matter to the direct attention of the world’s nuclear powers. After decades of diplomacy, the NPT’s defining purpose remains unfulfilled, and those who are unwilling to negotiate in good faith will be held to wider account.

Still, there is hope – the Republic of the Marshall Islands lends it’s support to the recent outcomes, driven by the United States and the “P5 plus 1,” that opens doors towards a framework approach which will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons . These negotiations are far from final — but if they are completed, the international community will have proven that multilateral negotiation can still yield positive steps towards averting nuclear danger.

If only such resolve was carried into the NPT. It is true that the world has slowly reduced the number of nuclear weapons. But no one can keep a straight face and argue that sixteen thousand nuclear weapons are an appropriate threshold for global safety. We are seeing nuclear nations modernize and rebuild when they could use the opportunity to reduce. There is no right to “indefinite possession” to continue to retain nuclear weapons on security grounds.

At this year’s meeting, we need to address legal approaches capable of achieving “effective measures” on disarmament — and if that means a new legal framework towards the time bound elimination of weapons and risks, with good-faith parameters rather than loopholes, and with meaningful participation from all necessary nuclear actors — then the Marshall Islands is all for it.

The 2010 NPT action plan is an important benchmark but it reveals serious shortcomings in implementation — which cannot merely be “rolled over” without consequence. The valid right of NPT Parties to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes only exists with the highest standards of safety and security — and NPT States must be held to full account for violations or abusing withdrawal provisions.

We should further affirm that the Test Ban Treaty is vital to the NPT, recognizing that it’s entry into force is essential. The Marshall Islands’ own direct experience should be lesson enough for the world to firmly commit to ending nuclear testing.

Further, all relevant States Parties should take necessary measures to bring about entry into force of agreements establishing nuclear-free weapons zones. In particular, the support of the Republic of the Marshall Islands for a nuclear-free Pacific has long been clouded by other agreements, and we are encouraged that the United States has provided a new perspective on the Rarotonga Treaty’s Protocols. We express again our aspirations to join with our Pacific neighbors.

Madame President,

There may be different avenues towards on achieving a world without nuclear weapons — but our worst fear is merely continuing the status quo – seeing no meaningful answer at all. Perpetuating the status quo, patting ourselves on the back and expecting accolades for making zero progress at this NPT Review Conference is totally unacceptable to all peoples and all nations. Surely we can, and must do better.

April 27, 2015
A Letter to The New York Times

Below is a letter that I sent to The New York Times about an editorial by their Editorial Board that appeared on April 6, 2015. Regretfully, they did not publish the letter because it makes a point that is too often overlooked in US nuclear policy: that the US cannot always be attempting to put out nuclear fires while, at the same time, helping to start and fan those fires by its own nuclear policies. Nuclear dangers need to be dealt with systemically through negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. That is what the Non-Proliferation Treaty requires and what the Marshall Islands is trying to achieve through its lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries. Here is the letter:

Editor:

Concerns expressed in your editorial, “Nuclear Fears in South Asia,” are well warranted. What seems obvious, but is unstated, is that India and Pakistan are modelling behavior long demonstrated by the US, Russia and other nuclear powers, all of which have policies of nuclear deterrence and are modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

We’ve already missed the non-proliferation train in South Asia. Now, the only sensible goal is nuclear disarmament, as required by Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and by customary international law for countries not parties to the NPT, such as India and Pakistan. This is the basis for the lawsuits brought by the Marshall Islands against all nine nuclear-armed countries at the International Court of Justice and separately against the US in US Federal Court. Rather than continuing to evade its obligations for nuclear disarmament, the US should take the lead in convening negotiations for nuclear zero. We owe it to ourselves and to the future of humanity.

April 21, 2015
Taxes and the End of the Nuclear Age

This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

Following the arrival of spring each year, on Tax Day, April 15, our nation renews its commitment to our priorities from education to health care to infrastructure to national defense.

Included among these expenditures are billions of dollars for nuclear weapons programs—for weapons that must not ever be used. The funding for these programs, while more transparent than in the past, is still quite secretive. From the beginnings of our nuclear program in 1940, we have spent in excess of $6 trillion on them. This Tax Day, we are slated to spend $56.3 billion more on these same programs. From Ventura County, California at $177 million, to Los Angeles County’s expenditure of $1.785 billion, to our nation’s capital at $107 million, these are monies that we can ill afford to spend. The squandering of these dollars, while continuing to inadequately fund national programs on infrastructure, education, health care and the environment, speaks to who we are as a nation. No logical person would argue against spending the entirety of these monies to secure, dismantle and clean up the existing environmental legacy of these weapons. Thereafter, these monies could be more appropriately allocated to programs that benefit all.

This year’s expenditures come at a critical time. Just when international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons through the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the remarkable and long-sought controls over Iran’s capability to acquire a nuclear weapon are coming to fruition, some of our leaders propose these massive expenditures. Is this the best we can do to lead by example?

This month’s preliminary accord between the P5+1 and Iran, for Iran to remove its capability to build a nuclear weapon, would significantly enhance security of the region and the world. It needs the support of anyone who wishes to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war. Yet this, too, is being held in abeyance by political hardliners in Iran and in the U.S. Congress.

Seventy years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we continue to maintain and modernize our nuclear arsenals as though locked in a Cold War time warp. Our president, held hostage by Congressional leadership, proposes to spend an additional $1 trillion over the next 30 years just on the modernization of our arsenals. This is in spite of being bound, along with the other nuclear states, by Article VI of the NPT to work in good faith toward complete disarmament. The NPT Review Conference will begin this month in New York City at the U.N. This year’s conference comes at a critical time as the non-nuclear states have grown impatient with the lack of progress of the nuclear states in meeting their legal obligations. Failure to make real progress threatens the entire treaty and will likely shift the focus to a nuclear weapons ban convention similar to conventions on other weapons of mass destruction, like chemical and biological weapons.

The world must come together this 70th year of the Nuclear Age and speak with one voice for humanity and the future of our children. Now is the time to end the insanity that hangs over us, the threat of nuclear annihilation. We must move forward with a shared sense of tomorrow. Our children deserve this.

Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full-time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angles, serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level, where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice.

April 15, 2015
The Marshall Islands Will Not Back Down

Contact:
Sandy Jones or Rick Wayman
(805) 965-3443 / (805) 696-5159
sjones@napf.org / rwayman@napf.org

The Marshall Islands Will Not Back Down
The Marshall Islands appeals dismissal of lawsuit against United States

April 2, 2015 – The lawsuit brought by the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) against the United States is not going away anytime soon. While the case was dismissed on February 3, 2015 by the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, this small island nation today took the important step of formally filing its Notice of Appeal.

The lawsuit, referred to as the Nuclear Zero lawsuit, claims the U.S. is in breach of its legal obligations under Article VI of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. This is especially important as there is a growing awareness in the world that the continued possession and modernization of nuclear arsenals constitutes a clear and continuing threat to our planet. This threat is now magnified by the deteriorating relationships between Russia and the U.S., which between them control over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Earlier this year, U.S. Federal District Court dismissed the case on the jurisdictional grounds of standing and political question doctrine without getting to the merits of the case. Laurie Ashton, lead attorney for the RMI in the U.S. case, expressed strong disagreement with the court’s ruling, saying, “We believe the District Court erred in dismissing the case. The Marshall Islands, like every party to the NPT, is entitled to the United States’ fulfillment of its NPT promise – negotiations for nuclear disarmament. Further, the U.S. President does not enjoy exclusive purview to determine the U.S. breach of its treaty obligations. Instead, the judiciary has an obligation to rule in this treaty dispute.”

Marshall Islanders suffered catastrophic and irreparable damages to their people and homeland when the U.S. conducted 67 nuclear tests on their territory between 1946 and 1958. These tests had the equivalent power of exploding 1.6 Hiroshima bombs daily for 12 years. The devastating impact of these nuclear detonations to health and well-being of the Marshall Islanders and to their land continues to this day.

David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and consultant to the RMI in the case, made the following statement. “Knowing how high the stakes are, the Marshall Islands will not give up. They are a resilient and heroic people who have taken bold action against the nuclear giants of the world. They will continue to struggle on behalf of all humanity until the nuclear-armed nations have fulfilled their obligations to abolish every last one of their nuclear weapons.”

RMI Foreign Minister Tony de Brum said of the appeal, “We are in this for the long haul. We remain steadfast in our belief that nuclear weapons benefit no one and that what is right for humankind will prevail. We place great importance in and hold high respect for the American judicial process and will pursue justice in that spirit, using every available legal avenue to see that Nuclear Zero is achieved in my lifetime.”

For more information about the Nuclear Zero lawsuits, visit nuclearzero.org. To read the Notice of Appeal, click here.

# # #

Note to editor: to arrange interviews with David Krieger (President of NAPF) or Laurie Ashton (head of RMI legal team for U.S. case), please call Sandy Jones or Rick Wayman at (805) 965-3443 or (805) 696-5159.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was founded in 1982. Its mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders. The Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations and is comprised of individuals and groups worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age.

April 2, 2015
Marshallese Can Rightfully Claim a Victory

This article was originally published by Embassy.

The radioactive fallout came down like snow on the island of Rongelap in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

It was March 1, 1954, and Castle Bravo—a nuclear device one thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima—had just been detonated less than 100 miles away. “We kids were playing in the powder, having fun, but later everyone was sick and we couldn’t do anything” said Lijon Eknilang, a survivor who was eight at the time. After two and a half days, the United States military evacuated the residents of Rongelap to another Marshallese island.

Six decades later, on April 24, 2014, the RMI filed landmark lawsuits at the International Court of Justice in The Hague against all nine nuclear-armed states for the blatant, continued breach of their nuclear disarmament obligations. Cited were states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—the United States, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom—plus India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

The allegation in the lawsuits? Breach of Article VI of the NPT, which mandates states to “pursue negotiations in good faith” toward nuclear disarmament. Even the four states outside the NPT framework are under the obligation to disarm, says the plaintiff, as the norm against the possession of nuclear weapons has become entrenched in customary international law.

The continued possession and modernization of nuclear arsenals constitutes a clear and constant threat to life on Earth. Awareness is growing that the risk posed by the current 16,300 nuclear weapons is exacerbated by deteriorating relations between the top nuclear powers―the United States and Russia―which together account for roughly 95 per cent of existing weapons.

In each of the ICJ lawsuits, the RMI contends that “the long delay in fulfilling the obligations enshrined in Article VI of the NPT and customary international law constitutes a flagrant denial of human justice.” The RMI seeks no compensation, only prompt, tangible progress toward nuclear abolition.

A second lawsuit was filed in US Federal District Court in San Francisco against the United States. It related to the 12 years between 1946 and 1958 when the United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the RMI. All nuclear detonations were conducted while the United States administered the RMI as a United Nations Trust Territory, with a clear mandate to act in the best interests of the inhabitants and of international peace and security.

According to a 2012 report from Calin Georgescu, special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council, the “devastating adverse impact” of those nuclear detonations on the health and ecosystem of the RMI continues to this day.

Last month the US Federal Court lawsuit was dismissed. On Feb. 3, Judge Jeffrey White determined that allegations that the United States failed to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty had no legal merit. At the same time, the path for the nine lawsuits before the ICJ is cluttered with legal technicalities and procedural hurdles—such as which countries might recognize the jurisdiction of the court.

This is the first time the ICJ has been asked to address issues relating to nuclear weapons since its 1996 advisory opinion that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament.” However the court rules, the effort by the RMI to hold nuclear armed states accountable is worthy of support in Canada and beyond.
Canada recognizes the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction and has historically aligned with the rule of law. Moreover, thousands of Canadians supported the World Court Project that led to the ICJ 1996 advisory opinion.

The RMI’s initiative has been likened to David and Goliath, the “mouse that roared” and a “near-quixotic venture.” However it is seen, it contributes to nuclear disarmament efforts. The lawsuits serve to return focus to the legal obligations relating to nuclear disarmament and to ensure that the ICJ’s 1996 opinion is not allowed to lie dormant and ignored.

In the end, the Marshallese can rightfully claim a victory on the day they filed lawsuits against nuclear-armed states. They have taken concrete, creative action to pressure these states to move decisively toward the universal goal of nuclear abolition. They know that they are in the right, whatever the courts may decide.

While the lawsuits alone will not bring about a world without nuclear weapons, they are clearly helping to pave the way there.

Cesar Jaramillo is program officer at Project Ploughshares, a member organization of the Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Debbie Grisdale sits on Project Ploughshares’ governing committee representing the Anglican Church of Canada. More information can be found at nuclearzero.org.

March 30, 2015
New Video: Helen Caldicott “Preserving the Future”

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has published a video of Dr. Helen Caldicott’s recent lecture “Preserving the Future.” Dr. Caldicott delivered this lecture for NAPF’s 14th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future on March 5, 2015 in Santa Barbara, California.

You can watch the video on YouTube at this link, or click on the embedded video below.

Thanks to the sponsors of the event:

The Santa Barbara Foundation
Terry and Mary Kelly
Richelle and Orman Gaspar
Dr. Jimmy and Diane Hara
Steve Daniels and Kitty Glanz
Glenn Griffith and Carrie Cooper
Lessie Nixon Schontzler and Gordon Schontzler
Rick Carter Photography

March 25, 2015
2015 Kelly Lecture Introduction

Welcome to the 14^th annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future, a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

I want to thank our sponsors for tonight’s event and make special mention of our principal sponsors: The Santa Barbara Foundation and the Terry and Mary Kelly Foundation. I also want to thank all of you for being here tonight and for caring about humanity’s future.

The Kelly Lecture Series honors the vision and compassion of Frank K. Kelly, a founder and long-time senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Frank believed deeply that everyone deserves a seat at humanity’s table. He gave the first lecture in the series in 2002 on the subject, “Glorious Beings: What We Are and What We May Become.” Just the title of his talk gives you an idea of his unbounded optimism.

For this Lecture series, the Foundation invites a distinguished speaker each year. Recent Kelly Lecturers have included Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich and Daniel Ellsberg. Other lecturers in the series include Dame Anita Roddick, Frances Moore Lappe and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. You can find a complete list of the lecturers and their lectures on-line, as well as other information on the Foundation, at www.wagingpeace.org.

The Kelly Lecture is one of many projects of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Other major projects include consulting with the Marshall Islands on their Nuclear Zero lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries. These David versus Goliath lawsuits seek no compensation, but rather ask the Courts to order the nuclear-armed countries to fulfill their obligations under international law to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.

Another important Foundation project is our Peace Leadership Program, headed by Paul Chappell, who travels the world training people to become peace leaders and training peace leaders to be more effective in their efforts. Right now Paul is in Washington, DC, where there is a definite need for an infusion of peace Leadership.

Another of our projects is exploring the moral reasons to abolish nuclear weapons, and to break the bonds of complacency that have led in the Nuclear Age to putting the future of humanity into the hands of so-called nuclear “experts” and policy makers, a most dangerous nuclear “priesthood.”

The most important of these moral reasons is that we are putting all of Creation at risk of extinction. Could there be a greater crime or moral shortcoming? It is the multiplication of homicide by more than seven billion. It is moving beyond homicide and genocide to omnicide, the death of all.

Let me share with you a quote from humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm: “For the first time in history, the physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change of the human heart.”

Our lecturer tonight has worked for over four decades to create this radical change in the human heart. She is a passionate and committed advocate of a nuclear weapons-free world. She is a medical doctor, a pediatrician, from Australia who works to save the world’s children and, with them, the rest of us. She has diagnosed the severe societal disease of “nuclearism” and has advocated its cure through nuclear abolition.

Dr. Caldicott is a recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, and has served as a member of our Advisory Council since 1994. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by two-time Nobel recipient Linus Pauling. The Smithsonian has named her one of the most influential women of the 20^th century.

She has just organized and held a vitally important symposium in New York on “The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction.” I was privileged to be one of the speakers at the symposium, which took place this past weekend at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Tonight Dr. Caldicott will be speaking on “Preserving Humanity’s Future.” It is my pleasure to introduce our 2015 Kelly Lecturer, Dr. Helen Caldicott.

(The video of Dr. Caldicott’s lecture will be at this link. DVD copies will also be available to use for public screenings. For further information, contact Rick Wayman at rwayman@napf.org.)

March 5, 2015
Nuclear Nations in the Dock

This article was originally published by ON LINE Opinion (Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate).

A little known court case initiated by an inconspicuous Pacific Island state might not seem very newsworthy, but when there’s a David and Goliath element involving some of the world’s most powerful nations, with implications for Australia, we should take notice.

The small nation state of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, with a population of just over 50,000 people, is taking the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). What do this motley lot have in common? Between them, they possess the world’s 16,300 most destructive, horrific and indiscriminate weapons, nuclear weapons.

No nation has a stronger moral claim to call the nuclear armed states to account than the Marshall Islands. From 1946 to 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests there, all the while reassuring the local people that the tests would “with God’s blessing, result in kindness and benefit to all mankind”. Instead they resulted in dispossession, destruction of atolls and long term radioactive contamination.

However Marshall Islands’ Foreign Minister Tony de Brum says that the lawsuit is not about compensation for past wrongs, but is an attempt to draw attention to the nuclear sword of Damocles still poised over all of humanity. He reflects the grave concern of many nations. A recent series of government conferences – in Norway in 2013, Mexico in early 2014 and Austria in December, the latter attracting 159 governments – has examined the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, with the unequivocal conclusion that any use of these weapons would cause human suffering on an unimaginable scale, far beyond any capacity for humanitarian response. The impacts on health, the environment, agriculture, food security, and the economy would be catastrophic, widespread and long term. There would be no winners.

The Marshall Islands claims that all nine nuclear armed states violate their legal duty to get rid of their weapons. The claim rests in part on the 1996 advisory opinion of the ICJ on the legal status of nuclear weapons, which included the judges’ unanimous declaration that “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects…….”. This judgement in turn drew on the disarmament obligation enshrined in article 6 of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). After nearly 45 years, and endless platitudes, it remains unfulfilled. The 5-yearly NPT review conference will be held in New York in April; signs that article 6 will be given the pre-eminent focus it deserves are not strong.

For Australia, this is anything but a quaint and esoteric legal exercise, and we are anything but an innocent bystander. Successive Australian governments pay lip service to the goal of a nuclear weapons free world, while simultaneously giving support to US nuclear weapons, under the extraordinarily foolish notion that they protect us. Goliath, with his genocidal weapons, has our unbridled loyalty and complicity. We are in fact part of the problem.

The Marshall Islands’ case faces big hurdles in The Hague, including acceptance of the jurisdiction of the ICJ. However, in the court of public opinion there is no doubt. Nuclear armed states have escaped accountability for far too long.

De Brum, along with many other governments, leaders and a large civil society movement, are urging a new approach – a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, just as chemical and biological weapons are banned by treaty. Such an achievement would not be a panacea (for we have none), but it would be a powerful tool, probably the best available, to delegitimise the weapons and stigmatise any nation with the deluded belief that it has a right to retain the worst of all weapons of mass destruction.

There is a sense of urgency about this, which is hardly surprising. In January the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock to three minutes to midnight, the closest they’ve been to nuclear catastrophe since 1984. Meanwhile, the major nuclear armed states, meeting in London on 6 February ahead of the NPT review in April, noted their progress on a glossary of key nuclear terms. Deck chairs on the Titanic come to mind.

This year marks the 70^th anniversaries, in August, of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an appropriate if somewhat belated time to act. Decades after their own nuclear nightmares, the people of the Marshall Islands are to be applauded and supported as they attempt to hold the nuclear armed Goliaths accountable for their flagrant violation of the global norm against weapons of mass destruction. The message should be heeded by countries such as Australia, for whom a nuclear alliance blinds us to the possibility of real progress.

Dr Sue Wareham is a Canberra GP who joined the Medical Association for Prevention of War out of a “horror at the destructive capacity of a single nuclear weapon”. She has many interests and fields of expertise, including the contribution of peace to global sustainability. Sue believes that her work with MAPW is fundamental to her commitment to the protection of human life and the improvement of human well-being. She is immediate past President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia); and on the Australian Management Committee of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

February 23, 2015