Nuclear weapons should be banned. That was the view expressed by 44 of the 158 states attending the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in December.
The host nation, Austria, took this one stage further at the end of the conference by publicly pledging to seek a treaty to ban the Bomb. Austria called on all parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to ‘identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.’
The Vienna Conference followed conferences in Norway in March 2013 and Mexico in February 2014, also on the theme of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.
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Immediately before the Vienna Conference, there was a two-day civil society forum called by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), attended by 600 people.
The forum heard from ICAN campaigners from around the world including Ashraf Ayadi (Tunisian Institute for Human Rights, Tunisia), Loreta Castro and Jasmin Galace (Center for Peace Education, Philippines) and Linnet Ngayu (African Council for Religious Leaders – Religions for Peace, Kenya).
Topics: Nuclear weapons