The World Council of Churches has welcomed news that a UN treaty banning nuclear weapons will come into force on 22nd January.
The move comes after Honduras became the 50th state to ratify the treaty – which would establish a comprehensive ban on the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons as well as obligations for victim assistance and environmental remediation – on Saturday.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement that the Secretary-General commended the nations which have have ratified the treaty and saluted the work of civil society, “which has been instrumental in facilitating the negotiation and ratification of the Treaty”.
“The entry-into-force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons,” the spokesman said. “It represents a meaningful commitment towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons, which remains the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations.”
Peter Prove, director of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, described the 50th ratification as a “major landmark on the road towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons”.
“It has now triggered the 90-day period after which the Treaty will enter into legal force, meaning that a new normative standard in international law has been created, and that – for those States which are parties to it – the Treaty must now be implemented.”
While the treaty will not bind the states that are not a party to it – and among those opposed to the treaty are nine countries which continue to hold and develop nuclear weapons, Dr Emily Welty, vice-moderator of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, says the history of other treaties banning weapons like cluster munitions, land mines, and, chemical and biological weapons, “demonstrates how a legal ban can influence the behaviour”.
“As those weapons became increasingly delegitimised and stigmatised around the world, governments responded positively to the growing internal and external pressure they were facing to be on the right side of history, and finally committed to a complete legal ban on such weapons,” Welty said in a statement.
Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, said the move represented a “a new chapter for nuclear disarmament”.
“Decades of activism have achieved what many said was impossible: nuclear weapons are banned.”
