Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
The 50th Country Just Ratified the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – What Now?
Knowing that leading world powers would not adequately step up to the challenge of maintaining a habitable Earth, on July 7th 2017 a UN conference adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). On October 24, the 50th country ratified the TPNW and the treaty will begin to take effect in 90 days (January 22nd, 2020), a momentous step in the global denuclearization effort. This historic treaty was led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for their work.
Now we must take action to urge the United States to follow the leadership of the 50 countries who are party to the TNPW! How can you help?
Sign and share this petition!
Make this visible: take a picture of yourself with this graphic and post to social media using the #nuclearban, and tag your member of Congress using these sample social media posts
Post this graphic in your window, on your car window or in your workplace to activate others to take action
Organize with your friends to create a freeway banner with a message, following these guidelines
Call or email your member of Congress to urge them to take action now to comply with the treaty
Publish an opinion editorial in your local newspaper using these tips
The TPNW specifically “prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory…[as well as] assisting, encouraging or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities.”
Even if the importance of this unprecedented treaty’s ratification is not something that can be overstated, there are still aspects of the anti-nuclear struggle that need to be urgently addressed. All of the nuclear-weapons states must join the rest of the world in the effort to ban the bomb. The United States has not ratified the treaty. Instead, the US Congress is investing 1.7 trillion over the next 30 years to rebuild and expand the US nuclear arsenal.
No one knows the stakes better than nuclear frontline communities. Here in WA, there are communities that have/are at high risk of experiencing nuclear violence that we must prioritize political and social support for going forward. These include the Marshallese and other Pacific Islander Compact of Free Association (COFA) communities whose homelands were used for nuclear weapons testing, people living in area around Washington State’s Hanford Site, Spokane tribal members whose land was used to run the “Midnite” uranium mine, and those inside the “nuclear sponge” regions of the American heartland.
With this victory comes the urgency to continue pushing our members of Congress to take action to align the United States with the international norm: that nuclear weapons are inhumane, immoral, and now also illegal.