Our humanitarian disarmament partners in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) are currently working hard at the United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.

In a process inspired by the Ottawa Process banning landmines, states with support from civil society and international organizations are negotiating a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons from 15 June to 7 July 2017.  

After 20 years of work on the Ottawa Treaty and other efforts to address the humanitarian impact of indiscriminate weapons, we have learned a lot and have a lot of experience we are sharing with our colleagues. In that spirit Mines Action Canada has drafted three documents for states to review during their negotiations. 

First, we submitted a new Working Paper to the negotiating conference. Our paper on The Disproportionate Impact of Nuclear Weapons Detonations on Indigenous Communities is available on the United Nations website. It follows on some themes from our Working Paper submitted with ICAN to the March session of negotiations.

Second, we have a new Frequently Asked Questions document about victim assistance in the draft treaty text. This FAQ aims to help states and civil society ensure that the provisions regarding assistance to affected persons in the final treaty support existing norms around victim assistance. 

Third, we co-published a paper on sustainable development and the draft text of the treaty with the International Disarmament Institute at Pace University. The paper is also available in French. Our work has shown that indiscriminate weapons are lethal barriers to development.

MAC staff will be attending the negotiations and speaking at a briefing event on positive obligations in the treaty on Wednesday June 21, 2017 to further outline lessons learned from previous disarmament treaties. For more on the negotiations please visit ICAN's website at www.nuclearban.org and follow the hashtag #nuclearban on social media.

This is a very exciting week for humanitarian disarmament. The United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination started on Monday March 27th. 

It is amazing to see history being made yet again. At MAC, we want to ensure that this new treaty builds on past humanitarian disarmament success.  With that goal in mind, we have released two new papers applying the lessons learned about victim rights and victim assistance in the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines and the Convention on Cluster Munitions to a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.

The Working Paper was submitted to the negotiating conference for consideration by all participating states. It will also be available on the United Nations website shortly.

We have also published a Frequently Asked Questions to help campaigners and others advocate for strong provisions on victim assistance in the treaty. 

We hope that these documents will be useful. For more on the negotiations please follow our friends the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the hashtag #nuclearban. 

This year the United Nations is holding an Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear disarmament. Mines Action Canada capitalized on our experience with the Ottawa Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions to submit a working paper to the OEWG on the need to include victim assistance in a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The working paper is available online here.

For Canadians working on nuclear disarmament, the CBC headline “Anti-nuclear weapon effort to be spearheaded by Canada's UN ambassador” appeared to give a reason to be hopeful. 

We’re at a crucial moment in the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons. Civil society is calling for a treaty banning nuclear weapons and many states agree. Over 120 states have pledged to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.” This year the international diplomatic community is starting a new Open-Ended Working Group at the United Nations “to substantively address concrete effective legal measures, legal provisions and norms that would need to be concluded to attain and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.” The Open-Ended Working Group is an opportunity for states to start talking about a new legal instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately any hope provided by the headline quickly evaporated when the reader realized that the anti-nuclear weapon effort discussed was not one of these exciting developments towards a ban on nuclear weapons. In fact, the article goes on to say:

“Another memo to Trudeau stresses that Canada views progress to a total ban on nuclear weapons — the yet unattainable Nuclear Weapons Convention — to be "not politically feasible" because some of the states that have those weapons refuse to negotiate.”

Not only is this sentence disappointing, it is also untrue and the Canadian government should know that better than anyone. To say that a ban on nuclear weapons is “not politically feasible” because some possessor states won’t negotiate overlooks our own history.  Twenty years ago, Canada led an international process to ban an indiscriminate weapon despite the fact that some of the states that had those weapons refused to negotiate. That weapon was anti-personnel landmine and the Ottawa Treaty has resulted in huge declines in annual casualties, tens of millions of stockpiled landmines being destroyed and in entire countries being cleared of these lethal barriers to development. We, at Mines Action Canada, constantly see the impact of this treaty even though a few states that have landmines remain outside it.  

Since the treaty was signed in Ottawa, states that originally refused to participate have joined and the norm against landmines has grown stronger. The vast majority of states that still remain outside the treaty abide by the norm created and the spirit of the Ottawa Treaty.  With enough states participating, the norm created by a ban treaty becomes hard to ignore and the norm against landmines started with fewer states than have currently pledged to close the legal gap for the prohibition of nuclear weapons.

Banning nuclear weapons may actually be more politically feasible than a ban on landmines was twenty years ago because the elimination of nuclear weapons is a widely accepted international goal unlike the elimination of landmines at the time and only nine states have nuclear weapons whereas at the time of the Ottawa Treaty negotiations almost all militaries had landmines in their arsenals. The majority of the world is ready to take the next step towards nuclear disarmament, why won’t Canada join them?

Canada needs to learn from its own landmine experience and take on a leadership role in banning nuclear weapons with whoever will negotiate. With nuclear armed states modernizing their arsenals rather than moving towards disarmament, it is time for responsible states to lead the way. We have done it once, it’s time to do it again

A version of this post was published in the Times Colonist on 14 August 2015, available online here.

On the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Victoria's The Times Colonist, published a decades old secret. Rudi Hoenson, a leading philanthropist in Victoria, had been a 22 year old Dutch prisoner of war in Nagasaki the day the bomb fell. You can read the whole story here. Mr. Hoenson had never shared his story publicly before. 

"Ask him why he has never talked about it before, he squirms a little, grimaces. Maybe he didn’t want to sound like he was showing off, he says. He is, in truth, reluctant to tell his story now, wants to know what good will be done by telling the tale."

As someone born and raised in Victoria, I was incredibly surprised to read this article; I never considered that the Government House Team Room's elderly Dutch namesake could be a hibakusha. As a disarmament campaigner, I was saddened to read that Mr. Hoenson questioned what good sharing his story would do. Working on campaigns to ban landmines, cluster munitions and nuclear weapons has shown me quite clearly that there is incredible power in survivors of indiscriminate weapons sharing their stories. 

So to answer the question about what good telling your story now will do, Mr. Hoenson, your story has the power to change policy and sharing it this year is incredibly important.

Every year since 1945, the world has said “never again” and every year since 1945 nuclear weapons continue to threaten all life on earth. Generations of school children have folded paper cranes while the survivors have shared their painful memories of the horror inflicted upon them and their cities. In response, leaders read statements of sorrow and vowed to pursue disarmament. Mere days later, the memories of the memorial event fade and the vows are forgotten until the next year when it is time to say “never again” again. In the meantime, 16000 nuclear weapons continue to threaten all of us and risk catastrophic climate change. With that state of affairs, anyone could be forgiven for wondering what good another survivor story could do.

But things are changing.

For the first time in decades, a world wide effort to ban nuclear weapons is gathering momentum. There have been three highly successful conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons where states gathered with academics, civil society organizations, the Red Cross and UN agencies to examine the risks and probable results of another nuclear weapon detonation either by design or by accident.

These conferences have challenged the sanitized and passive understanding of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki that has taken hold. The actual horror of these weapons has been put aside for too many years. Testimony from survivors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and nuclear weapons tests have been crucial to challenging that sterile discussion of nuclear weapons. Mr. Hoenson’s story provides evidence to back up the consensus among experts that the humanitarian consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation would be catastrophic and no state or humanitarian organization is capable of providing assistance to the victims. Survivor testimony and expert analysis has led many to the conclusion that nuclear weapons must be prohibited and eliminated.

Based on these findings, the Government of Austria issued the Humanitarian Pledge calling on states to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons” in December 2014 (remember nuclear weapons are the only weapon of mass destruction not yet banned). The Humanitarian Pledge has been endorsed by 113 states and that number is growing.  These states are supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross’ call to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons and the actions of the over 300 organizations making up the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. We, as a global community, now have the opportunity to take concrete action and turn our annual vows of “never again” into permanent reality.

Shamefully, Canada is not on board with this world-wide effort to ban nuclear weapons. At the United Nations, our government objects to language in statements that says “It is in the interest of the very survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are never used again, under any circumstances.” Furthermore, our government has not endorsed the Humanitarian Pledge despite treaty obligations to pursue nuclear disarmament and a unanimous parliamentary motion calling for Canada to take a leadership role these efforts. Our government is squandering this opportunity to take concrete action towards nuclear disarmament. 

Maybe Canadians have been quiet on this issue because Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened long ago to unknown people far away. But upon reading Mr. Hoenson’s story of horror and of survival, we know exactly what that nuclear bomb did to one of our own.  Now that we know, how can we sit by while 16,000 nuclear weapons remain around the world? Now that we know, how can we not ask our government to be a leader? Now that we know, how can we not act? 

Erin Hunt is the Program Coordinator at Mines Action Canada.

Mines Action Canada’s 70 quotes in 70 days counted down to the 70^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6^th.  These 70 quotes came from around the world and all highlighted the need for nuclear disarmament. You can see all the quotes online here. 

The final quote on August 6^th came from a member of the crew who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.  This quote was chosen to be the final quote for a very specific reason.  Over the past 70 years a very sanitized and passive understanding of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki has taken hold. “Hiroshima was destroyed.” “Nagasaki was bombed.” “Thousands of people were killed.”  It almost sounds as though the bombings were an unavoidable or freak occurrence akin to a tornado or an earthquake not a conscious decision made by humans.  

So let us be clear, humans chose to use nuclear weapons on the men, women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a human decision.

Once we recognize that the use of nuclear weapons was a human decision, we realize that as long as nuclear weapons continue to exist the decision to use them could easily be made again.  Even more frightening is the possibility of unintentional use; human error or technical malfunction could result in catastrophe.  The only way to ensure that no human ever makes the decision to use nuclear weapons again and no error results in their use is to negotiate a new treaty prohibiting the use, production, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons and then eliminate them.  Nuclear weapons are a human invention, their use 70 years ago was a human decision and human action can ban them now. 70 years is enough.

The Humanitarian Initiative on nuclear disarmament has shaken the status quo to its core. Like landmines and cluster munitions, discussing the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons has opened new areas of discussion, new space for action and new possible avenues towards abolition.  One of the new areas of discussion is victim rights and victim assistance.

While there is a long history of supporting victim assistance in other humanitarian disarmament forums, the discussion of victim rights and assistance in regards to nuclear weapons has just begun.  The concepts surrounding victim assistance are not well known in the nuclear disarmament community and wider public. Victim assistance puts the humanitarian front and centre in the humanitarian approach to nuclear weapons and yet there has been some confusion and debate about what victim rights mean and what their inclusion in nuclear disarmament could offer to abolition efforts. 

Based on experience with victim assistance under the Ottawa Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions, we are launching a series of memos exploring the idea of victim assistance in disarmament and what this topic can offer to nuclear disarmament. Memo #1 - A Humanitarian Approach to Nuclear Disarmament: Victim Rights and Assistance provides a brief overview of the victim assistance and victim rights to set a foundation for the upcoming memos.

Download the memo here and stay tuned for memo #2.