UN panel releases draft treaty banning possession and use of nuclear weapons

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian


States would have to destroy any nuclear weapons they have and would be forbidden from transferring them

Ben Doherty and agencies
@bendohertycorro
Monday 22 May 2017 19.42 EDT


A United Nations-backed panel has publicly released a draft treaty banning the possession and use of all nuclear weapons.

The draft treaty is the culmination of a sustained campaign, supported by more than 130 non-nuclear states frustrated with the sclerotic pace of disarmament, to prohibit nuclear weapons and persuade nuclear-armed states to disarm.

Nine countries are known or believed to possess nuclear weapons: the US, UK, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. None has supported the draft plan.

The draft treaty obliges state parties to “never under any circumstances … develop, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices … use nuclear weapons … [or] carry out any nuclear weapon test”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/23/un-panel-releases-draft-treaty-banning-possession-and-use-of-nuclear-weapons

[7962]

1. Oh yeah, all these countries can certainly be trusted to destroy ALL of them! nt

[FreepFryer]

2. Which is safer:

- A world with monitored nuclear weapons stockpiles, effecting deterrence, or
- A world without nuclear weapons, in which any nation seeing itself in mortal peril initiates a new arms race as it and its opponents all rush to complete their bomb first, to stave off such existential peril?

(Note this excludes the very real danger of nuclear accident)

[L. Coyote]

3. Someday when humans mature as a species, this will happen.