By Jonathan Frerichs
Like
an annual check-up where the patient disputes the diagnosis and refuses
treatment, nearly 200 governments met at the United Nations, New York,
from 28 April to 9 May to assess progress in curbing and eliminating
nuclear weapons. The “illness” in question is the chronic insistence by
five states to hang onto something that the international community has
long agreed is unhealthy and catastrophic – their nuclear arsenals.
An
ecumenical delegation was present to advocate for a strong humanitarian
remedy, one that has wide international support and that World Council
of Churches (WCC) member churches on five continents brought to
governments in advance of this 2014 meeting of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT).
The nuclear powers could not block the careful
diagnoses of the global nuclear malaise offered by the conference chair
Ambassador Roman-Morey of Peru and by many of the 184 countries without
nuclear weapons. Yet representatives of nuclear powers and their allies
were at pains to show that the real problem does not lie with them. The
real problem, they said, is with states that do not have nuclear weapons
and might acquire them. To continue the medical analogy, this is
similar to someone with an infectious disease refusing treatment while
insisting that everyone else must be quarantined. NPT resolutions have
foundered repeatedly on the same argument.
Alternative,
energizing approaches were rife in the conference chamber and in dozens
of side events. Chief among them is the need to deal with “the
devastation that would be visited upon all humankind by any use of
nuclear weapons and since there is no competent international capacity
to address the resulting catastrophic humanitarian consequences,” as the
chair’s final recommendations put it.
Ecumenical delegates met
with representatives of governments on all sides of the issue—some with
nuclear weapons, some without, and some dependent on the US nuclear
arsenal. The meetings discussed national action called for by the recent
WCC Assembly; namely, for all states to address conclusively the
humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Assembly
policy and church actions for peace on the Korean peninsula were
explained in a panel proposing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Northeast
Asia. The WCC took part in a meeting of Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and
Jewish leaders exploring new multi-religious initiatives for nuclear
abolition. Dr Emily Welty, a Pace University professor from the
Presbyterian Church (USA) and former international affairs commissioner
of the WCC, and Mr Steve Hucklesby, policy advisor to the Methodist,
United Reformed and Baptist churches in the United Kingdom, were
ecumenical delegates at the NPT.
Nuclear testing in the Pacific
made unexpected headlines at the conference. The Marshall Islands
announced at the outset that it was taking each of the nine
nuclear-armed states to the International Court of Justice for their
failure to comply with the disarmament obligations in the NPT. Radiation
from tests carried out in the 1950s and 60s still affect Pacific
islanders’, including member churches there.
“It is hardly
possible to have a smaller David and a bigger Goliath,” one ambassador
said of the Marshall Islands’ lawsuit against the USA, Russia, China,
France, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. The
only recourse being sought by the small island nation is that nuclear
disarmament be completed within a short, specified timeframe.
“The
real question is this: Can the current dynamics of the global nuclear
disarmament and non-proliferation regime deliver on the promise of
nuclear abolition?” a representative of Project Ploughshares of the
Canadian Conference of Churches said of the conference. “With poor
prospects for a ‘yes,’ an increasing number of non-nuclear-weapons
states are openly challenging the status quo.”
(*) Jonathan
Frerichs, WCC programme executive for peace building and disarmament, is
a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
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