nuclear-news

One empty seat. UK fails again to send representation to UN nuke conference

 NFLA 5th March 2025,
https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/one-empty-seat-uk-fails-again-to-send-representation-to-un-nuke-conference/

The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities laments that a joint appeal made to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to send a British representative to an important nuclear disarmament conference being held at the United Nations this week has fallen on deaf ears.

Alongside academics and other peace campaigners, NFLA Chair Councillor Lawrence O’Neill and NFLA Secretary Richard Outram were two of the co-signatories to a letter drafted by the United Nations Association UK (UNA-UK) that was sent to the two senior British politicians asking the UK Government to send an observer to the 3rd Meeting of States Parties (3MSP) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which is being held in New York until 7 March.

The invitation was not taken up as the meeting has been boycotted by Britain and the other eight nuclear weapons states, which continue to refuse to engage with the treaty despite around half of the UN’s membership – 94 states – having become signatories to it, with 73 also having completed formal ratification.

The NFLAs will be especially interested to see the progress made in establishing an international trust fund to support the victims, usually Indigenous Peoples, of the use and testing of nuclear weapons and the remediation of their natural environment. This represents a clear commitment of the signatories to help satisfy their undertakings under Article 6 and 7 of the TPNW. Establishing such a fund was seen as a key priority at the preceding MSP2.

NFLA Secretary Richard Outram, in speaking recently on a webinar to mark the sixty fifth anniversary of the first French nuclear weapon test in Algeria, referenced the fact that the UK should contribute on a voluntary basis to such a fund despite not being a formal party to the treaty.

Britain tested forty five atomic and nuclear weapons in Australia, the Pacific, and latterly in the USA in a period from 1952 to 1991, and has a responsibility for the damage caused to the health and environment of Indigenous People in these places, as well as to the British atomic and nuclear test veterans community and their family members who continue to suffer as a direct result of exposure to radiation in the tests.

The NFLAs will continue to campaign for justice and financial compensation for both the civilian and military victims of nuclear weapons use and testing, and, as a member of the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and a partner of Mayors for Peace, for the universal adoption of the TPNW and the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

March 8, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, UK