The International Peace Bureau: The Ban Treaty – Next Steps:
An historical document was adopted by 122 states at the UN on July 7th: the treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.
For many years we have been working for and promoted such a treaty. As the South-African Ambassador said, we faced through the last years “an incredible amount of pressure”, we were accused of being “irrealistic” and divisive, but this treaty had to be achieved as a “moral duty”.
Now a ban treaty of nuclear weapons is in our hands, and as atomic bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow said in her moving statement on July 7th, “This is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons”. It is the result of intensive and constructive negotiations at the United Nations in New York in which civil society has played a crucial role, and will be a major driver towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.