Suechi Kido was five years old when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Since then, he has tirelessly fought for the abolition of nuclear weapons, inscribed in a new treaty whose protagonists meet this week in Vienna.
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For the first time since its entry into force at the beginning of 2021, diplomats, activists and experts meet from Tuesday to Thursday, in the midst of the Russian threat, to give life to this text ratified so far by 65 States (of 86 signatories).
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“Never since the Cold War has the risk of a nuclear escalation been so present,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg declared at the opening of the meeting, evoking a “drawing sword of Damocles.”
In this warlike context, “doing nothing is running towards catastrophe. We cannot simply rely on the belief that this will never happen,” Jean-Marie Collin, spokesman in France for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, told AFP. (YO PUEDO).
A nuclear weapon can destroy an entire city, cause the death of millions of people, and endanger the natural environment and the lives of future generations.
Its existence is one of the oldest concerns of the United Nations, which has ensured global nuclear disarmament since 1946, when it established a commission to deal with problems related to the discovery of atomic energy.
Since then, it has created a series of multilateral treaties such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (PTPT), and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). ), achieving the significant reduction of this type of arsenal in the world.
Colombia is no stranger to these international conventions.
On March 1, the vice president and chancellor, Marta Lucía Ramírez, assured in her speech before the UN Extraordinary General Assembly that, given the offenses against international law in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine:
“We must consider putting in place all existing mechanisms to verify compliance with the disarmament commitments of the States that possess nuclear weapons.”
However, EL TIEMPO learned that, although in the presidency of Juan Manuel Santos in 2018, Colombia signed the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPAN), a multilateral agreement applicable on a global scale that prohibits developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, acquire, possess or store nuclear warheadshas not yet done the paperwork before the National Congress to ratify said project.
“Colombia is a country that is currently condemning the invasion of Ukraine, but it is not an example to other countries on the nuclear issue,” said Camilo Serna, a member of ICAN, calling for consistency.
The TPNW began its negotiations at the UN in March 2017 and entered into force in the international community on January 22, 2021, after the ratification of Honduras, the fifty country to join.
The document is intended to be “complementary” to the half-century-old Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and set a deadline for the powers
nukes stick to it. But none of the nine nuclear-armed countries — the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — have agreed to sign it, or even attend the meeting as observers.
However, this is a crucial moment for the rest of the world to continue to join the agreement, according to the expert.
“The more countries that join it becomes stronger, and it becomes an international law that has to be respected, even by those who have nuclear weapons (…) it is very difficult for us to do more than persuasion. However, a very strong tool is to surround this weaponry, as happened with anti-personnel mines. The Ottawa convention stopped the world from producing mines. Today not even the countries that are not part of the treaty, like the United States, use them because they know that they would violate the concept of the international norm.”
In addition, he stated that In Colombia, the necessary steps for its ratification have not been advanced due to the negligence of the National Government.
“We have insisted, spoken with the Foreign Ministry, sent letters to the President of the Republic, and they have not lifted a finger to bring the Treaty to the Government, and until it arrives, Congress cannot take any steps.”
Regarding this, spokesmen for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that, from the moment of its signing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has held consultations with the Ministry of National Defense with the aim of defining the political feasibility of initiating the internal process leading to its ratification. .
“From the perspective of the Foreign Ministry, we believe that this instrument reflects a valuable political effort by a group of non-nuclear weapon States aimed at establishing a legal architecture conducive to the complete, transparent and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. . However, to the extent that the possessor States remain outside this system, the real usefulness of the treaty will necessarily be very limited”.
In addition, they clarified that Colombia has been a party to the non-proliferation treaty since April 30, 1986, which regulates the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and disarmament, establishing that States that do not possess nuclear weapons undertake not to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons, while possessor states undertake not to aid or induce any non-nuclear state to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.
After 35 years of decline in the world’s atomic arsenal, the current context pushes “many powers to rethink their own atomic strategies,” according to a recent Sipri report.
“There is a danger of a return to the situation of the 1950-60s, with more actors,” says Austrian diplomat Alexander Kmentt, who is chairing the conference.
Kmentt sees the conflict as a “wake-up call to move away from the paradigm of nuclear deterrence, which is precarious and risky.”
The explicit references by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the use of the atomic bomb “demonstrate the fragility of this system,” this disarmament specialist, one of the architects of the TPAN, estimated in an interview with AFP.
NATO countries boast of the protective virtues of their arsenal, but “in reality, their weapons have proven useless in preventing Russian aggression against Ukraine,” agrees Daryl Kimball, director of the NATO Control Association.
Armas, who spoke on Monday at a conference of experts in Vienna.
While Russia, with its atomic power, is leading a potentially “much more dangerous” offensive, he warned.
According to simulations by Princeton University (USA), a nuclear escalation between NATO and Russia could currently “leave almost 100 million victims in the first hours alone” of the conflict.
CLARA INES GONZALEZ
EL TIEMPO SCHOOL OF MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP
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