Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors:
Despite a month free of RCW E-News, we can assure you we are still working hard for a world free of nuclear weapons. Reaching Critical Will staff have been busy this summer. In Geneva, the Conference on Disarmament held the second part of its 2010 session and has just begun its third part. While progress is still nowhere to be found, RCW has continued pressing for work to begin on nuclear disarmament negotiations. In New York, we covered the fourth Biennial Meeting on Small Arms and the first Preparatory Committee for an Arms Trade Treaty. In late July and early August, RCW also participated in the Mayors for Peace conference, New Japan Women’s Foundation forum, and commemoration ceremonies in Hiroshima, Japan.
The month of August provided many opportunities for citizens around the world to raise their voices for the abolition of nuclear weapons. NGOs and civil society organizations held Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day events on 6 and 9 August; Mayors for Peace held a conference in late July that resulted in an appeal to governments and civil society; the US national youth network Think Outside the Bomb held a disarmament summer camp in New Mexico, birthplace of the US atomic bomb; the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) launched its new video petition Million Pleas campaign; the Los Alamos Study Group filed a complaint in federal District Court to halt further investment in a massive underground plutonium facility proposed at Los Alamos National Laboratory; and much more.
And more is coming. The CD will hold a high-level meeting in New York on 24 September. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) will hold its annual general debate starting on 23 September. The UNGA First Committee on Disarmament and International Security will begin on 4 October. Furthermore, RCW is cooking up projects and materials to provide you with the latest information and analysis, while at the same time learning from our colleagues working for concrete nuclear disarmament around the world.
Stay tuned for more,
Ray Acheson, Project Director
1) Group files suit to halt construction of a new nuclear weapon facility
On Monday, 16 August, the Los Alamos Study Group filed for an injunction against the construction of a $4 billion plutonium processing facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory until its environmental paperwork more clearly resembles its expanded dimensions.
Excerpts from Roger Snodgrass, “Group files suit to halt LANL nuke facility,” Santa Fe New Mexican, 16 August 2010:
The environmental impact statement for an earlier version of the facility was written in 2003, according to the study group. “At that time, the facility was to cost one-tenth as much, use one-fiftieth as much concrete, take one-fourth the time to build and entail far fewer environmental impacts,” it announced as the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.
After two decades and four presidents since the idea was first proposed, $289 million has already been invested in building the Chemistry and Metallurgy Replacement Research-Nuclear Facility, Los Alamos National Laboratory's biggest project since World War II. The CMRR has been endorsed by the Obama administration and key members of Congress. The CMRR also was recommended under the Nuclear Posture Review, the nation's central statement of its nuclear weapon policy.
Under the Nuclear Policy Review, 50-80 pits per year could be made at Los Alamos, but another concern for the study group is that the evolving design plans have embraced a "hotel concept" which would enable plans to change to encompass unknown future capabilities. "In a nutshell, NNSA changed the project to which it had committed without telling anyone, and without environmental analysis of alternatives, either to the project, to its design, or to its construction methods," said Greg Mello, executive director of the study group. Meanwhile the record of LANL presentations on the CMRR makes clear that firm costs have yet to be established, but estimates have mushroomed from a few hundred million to $4.2 billion.
See also:Study Group press release, 10 August 2010 Background information on the CMRR
2) UN Secretary-General visits Japan for anniverary of US atomic bombings
Calling for governments to work together to create a world free of nuclear weapons, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon became the first UNSG to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki in commemoration of the US atomic bombings that took place 65 years ago. In Nagasaki, Bansaid, “My visit here has strengthened my conviction that these weapons must be outlawed, either by a nuclear weapons convention or by a framework of separate mutually reinforcing instruments.” In Hiroshima, at the official Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, Ban arguedthat a world free of weapons of mass destruction “is the only sane path to a safer world.”
The UN’s High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Ambassador Sergio Duarte, also spoke at commemoration events in Hiroshima. Delivering a presentation to the 2010 World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, he declared:
We must recognize that any use of nuclear weapons would violate international humanitarian law. We must admit that if use is illegal, what can possibly justify the possession and threat of use of such weapons? If it is legally and morally acceptable for some states to have-and even to use such weapons-on what grounds can such states deny the right of others to acquire them? And if this happens, would the world be safer as a result? Clearly, our goal must not be fewer nuclear wars, or merely to reduce the risk that such weapons will be used, or just to keep additional states from acquiring them. No, we must instead eliminate double standards and pursue a universal goal of elimination. This is the only truly sustainable course to pursue, the only one that stands genuine peace and security for all.
Media and remarks
“UN chief in Nagasaki calls for nuclear disarmament,” Associated Press, 4 August 2010.
Secretary-General’s remarks at dialogue with Waseda University students, 4 August 2010.
Secretary-General’s remarks at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, 6 August 2010.
Secretary-General’s remarks at the Welcome Ceremony in Hiroshima, 6 August 2010.
High Representative’s remarks to the 2010 World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 6 August 2010.
Hiroshima Peace Declaration, presented by Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, 6 August 2010.
Nagasaki Peace Declaration, presented by Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue, 9 August 2010.
“Nagasaki marks A-bomb anniversary,” AlJazeera.net, 9 August 2010.
3) Conference on Disarmament begins third part of its 2010 session
The third and final part of the Conference on Disarmament (CD)’s 2010 session opened on Tuesday, 10 August. Ambassador Gancho Ganev of Bulgaria, current president of the CD, explained that despite his consultations with delegations during the intercessional period, consensus has still not been reached on a programme of work. Japan’s ambassador argued that the consensus rule should be re-examined in order to find a way out of the CD’s deadlock. On the other hand, Cuba and Algeria’s ambassadors argued that consensus is not the problem but rather the selective and discriminatory manner in which items are determined to be “ripe” for negotiation in the CD. Both delegations urged a more comprehensive approach that moves forward simultaneously on disarmament and non-proliferation.
Ambassador Suda of Japan expressed regret over the continued stagnation of the CD, noting that it is “betraying the great expectations of the people of the world including those who gathered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki” to mark the 65th anniversary of the US atomic bombings. Civil society expectations are high for disarmament. Elites from many key governments have spoken of their interest in achieving a nuclear weapon free world and civil society has called on them to follow through on their rhetoric. The month of August provided many opportunities for citizens around the world to demand concrete nuclear disarmament. As one plaque in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park reads, “The way is not to search but to find out!!”
CD members will continue searching for the way at a high-level meeting to be convened by the UN Secretary-General in New York on 24 September 2010. The Secretary-General was invited to convene this meeting in the 2010 NPT Review Conference Final Document, “in support of the work of the Conference on Disarmament.” Delegations are expected to discuss matters related to the core issues on the CD’s agenda and methods for breaking the continuing deadlock. During the CD meeting on 10 August, the CD president announced that he will hold an informal meeting for CD delegates to make recommendations to the Secretary-General in advance of the 24 September meeting. Reaching Critical Will will provide more information about this meeting as it becomes available.
To follow the activities of the CD, please subscribe to Reaching Critical Will’s CD Report. All statements, papers, and other documents and information are also available on RCW’s website.
4) Follow-up from the Arms Trade Treaty PrepCom
The first Preparatory Committee for the UN Conference on an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) met at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City from 12–23 July 2010. The purpose of the PrepCom was to make recommendations on the elements that would be needed to attain an effective and balanced legally-binding instrument on the highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional arms. The ATT is to be negotiated in 2012.
Reaching Critical Will, along with Global Action to Prevent War, Oxfam International, and other NGOs provided reports from the meeting through a joint blog.
The PrepCom produced the following non-papers:
Faciliator's Summary on Scope
Faciliator's Summary on Parameters
Faciliator's Summary on Implementation and Application
Chair's Draft Paper on elements, principles, and objectives and goals
In his final post on the blog, Dr. Robert Zuber of Global Action to Prevent War wrote:
While several statements were issued urging delegates not to ‘pre-judge’ the elements that would eventually be adopted in a final Treaty, there was nothing to indicate that this PrepCom had in any way compromised longer terms Treaty prospects. Some delegations, clearly, see this ATT as primarily a means to regulate a business and are concerned first and foremost with the preservation of territorial integrity and the ability of states to conduct arms transfers with other states without excessive international interference. Other delegations (and many NGOs) see this ATT as a way of making a strong, normative statement to the international community about our human rights obligations as well as creating the means for robust regulatory coherence in an industry in which so many of its products have previously found an illicit market—diverted to criminality, terrorism and insurgency, and used to commit atrocity crimes.
Part of our task is to listen for the nuance embedded within the definitive, the possible explored within the feasible. While there is much to discuss in February, including items of compelling interest to NGOs, we see delegation differences at this point as more rhetorical than terminal. Nevertheless, we recognize that consensus on elements will require delegations to give up some of what they cherish for the sake of more of what they can live with.
The following ideas were some of the many good proposals put on the table by delegations and are among those of special interest to much of civil society and many global constituents:
Treaty Coverage of Small Arms and Light Weapons: While the threat that these would be left out of the final scope of an ATT does not seem great, it would be a grave disappointment to many delegations, NGOs and global constituents if this somehow were to happen. Other efforts to broaden the scope were intriguing, important and might well be feasible, but this inclusion within the scope, for many, is simply essential.
Cooperation and Assistance: A robust ATT will create heavy regulatory burdens on all states, but those burdens are likely to be felt most acutely by smaller states. Sufficient legal and technical capacity to support potential state activities as diverse as national transfer control systems and victim assistance is of great potential significance.
An ATT Secretariat: Many potential tasks for the international community germane to Treaty objectives were shared by delegations—including licensing, authorizations and denials, information sharing, record-keeping, enforcement, and even determining the extent to which Treaty violations constitute criminal acts. An administrative structure that can both work closely with ODA and provide oversight of these and other critical, Treaty-related tasks seems indispensable.
End-use Certifications/Assurances: This priority can practically reinforce what many delegations and NGOs affirm as the Treaty's core human rights aspirations. It also addresses other important issues of 'divergence' raised by many delegations. The more assurances that can be provided by exporters and importers of arms regarding their intended uses, the easier the process of verification and the more trustworthy the Treaty will likely be seen through the eyes of the global public.
Marking and Tracing: As many delegations acknowledged, standardization in this area would greatly assist overall transparency as well as allow us to be able to follow weapons throughout their full life cycle in addition to focusing on their initial transfer.
In the end, an ATT will hardly solve all of our weapons-related problems. It will do little or nothing to dry up stockpiles of existing weapons that wreck havoc on our communities, to trace weapons that have already been diverted to illicit uses, or to convince states to act more convincingly on the UN Charter principle of security at the least possible levels of armament. Nevertheless, regulatory control of this industry and the resulting transparency are seen by many as an important step towards helping states end their over-reliance on weapons as the means to guarantee national security. This is an opportunity that states, NGOs and the global public know we cannot waste.
5) Million Pleas campaign
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) launched a new campaign on 6 August 2010, attempting to make the world’s longest video chain letter. It created a video featuring schoolchildren from Hiroshima, Japan and is addressed to the 9 countries still in possession of nuclear weapons. This video is currently been screened on television networks.
ICAN is asking people from all over the globe to upload a 2 second video clip of themselves saying the word “please”. The “pleases” will then be edited into a long virtual chain letter, which will act as a petition to abolish nuclear weapons, worldwide. Please add your voice to the campaign, and help by spreading the campaign within your networks.
6) Biking Against Nukes (BAN) Tour
From 14–24 August 2010, 40 daring cyclists from all over the world will bike up the Rhine River, passing through Germany, France and Switzerland on their way to the 2010 IPPNW World Congress in Basel. During the tour, they will make their call for a Nuclear Weapons Free Europe heard, will meet with politicians, hold public demonstrations and visit the last remaining nuclear weapons base in Germany in order to add their voices to the loud call for finally removing these remnants of the Cold War from Europe. More than 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, young doctors and medical students from East and West, from the wealthy industrialized countries and from the Global South will join together once more for a bike tour against nuclear weapons.
Click HERE to download the latest press release of the tour in German (August 2010).
Click HERE to download an older, English language version of the press release.
More information on the IPPNW Students website.
7) International Day against Nuclear Tests
29 August 2010 will mark the first International Day against Nuclear Tests, which “is meant to galvanize the efforts of the United Nations, Member States, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, youth networks and the media in informing, educating and advocating the necessity of banning nuclear tests as a valuable step to achieving a safer world.” The Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly through the unanimous adoption of its resolution 64/35 on 2 December 2009. For more information, please see the UN’s new website.
8) Disarmament Times now available electronically
The New York-based NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security is pleased to announce that Disarmament Times is now available quarterly in an email edition.
Sign up to receive Disarmament Times electronically by sending an email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. This service is free. If you currently subscribe to the print edition, subscribing to the email edition will not affect your print subscription.
The summer issue of Disarmament Times features articles by Sergio Duarte (UNODA), Ray Acheson (Reaching Critical Will), John Burroughs (Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy), Daryl Kimball (Arms Control Association), Dominic Moran (Greenpeace) and Tim Wright (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons).
9) UN General Assembly and First Committee: coming soon
The sixty-fifth session of the UN General Assembly will open on Tuesday, 14 September 2010. The General Debate, at which high-level officials convene to discuss all matters related to international peace and security, will run from 23–25 September and 27–30 September. As in previous years, Reaching Critical Will will provide excerpts from the debate of all comments related to disarmament, while its sister project PeaceWomen will provide excerpts of all discussion on gender-related issues. More information will be provided in the next edition of the E-News.
The UNGA First Committee on Disarmament and International Security is scheduled to run from 4 October to 1 November 2010. A draft programme of work and timetable is available on the RCW website. More information about NGO participation in First Committee, including the booking of side events, will be available on the site soon, so please keep checking back for updates.
10) Featured News
Hiroshima Conference for the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons by 2010
From 25–27 July 2010, Mayors for Peace hosted a conference for the total elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020. The conference adopted a far-reaching appeal with the support of representatives from the UN and many Japanese and international NGOs. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also contributed a message to the conference.
Modernizing US nuclear weapons and infrastructure
In July, the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed a billion-dollar hike for the nuclear weapons program, with significant increases for New Mexico’s nuclear weapons laboratories. The measure recommended a 36 percent increase in stockpile stewardship work, $225 million for pre-construction work on the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility, $197 million for environmental cleanup and $20 million for the Plutonium Facility at Los Alamos. Source: Rogers Snodgrass, “Senate panel backs billion-dollar boost for nuclear weapons,” The New Mexican, 25 July 2010.
The Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico appears likely to receive a significant funding boost in fiscal year 2011 for modernizing US nuclear weapons. A sizable portion of fresh expenditures at Sandia would fund updates for B-61 nuclear gravity bombs, an effort Sandia head Paul Hommert called the laboratory’s largest such undertaking since the 1970s. The Obama administration requested $160 million to fund the project in the budget year beginning Oct. 1. Sandia National Laboratories is growing, with a net increase of 300 jobs this year and a rising budget next year, said its new director Paul Hommert. Sandia’s biggest hiring boom in a number of years comes with the growth of nuclear weapons work as well as energy and other projects, he explained. Sources: “Sandia Lab Could Get Funding Boost,” Global Security Newswire, 11 August 2010; John Fleck, “Sandia Feeling Growing Pains,” ABQ Journal, 11 August 2010.
UK modernization programme faces more difficulties
Reportedly, the UK Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Finance have begun fighting over who should pay for the modernization of the UK Trident nuclear weapon system. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has insisted in public that the Ministry of Defense should pay for it. Osborne said last month: “The Trident costs, I have made it absolutely clear, are part of the defense budget ... All budgets have pressure. I don't think there's anything particularly unique about the Ministry of Defense.” This put him in a public argument with Defense Secretary Liam Fox, who opposed Osborne's statement. Last Friday he continued his opposition, telling journalists: “Ultimately, all our defense capabilities have to be paid for.”
Four service chiefs, including an air chief marshal, two admirals, and a former government minister, said in a letter to The Sunday Telegraph that the Treasury should pay for the Trident replacement. They complained that Britain’s armed forces “are chronically overstretched and seriously under-resourced,” and that “they cannot withstand further reductions in their budget in order to fund the Trident replacement.” Source: “Nuclear weapons row rumbles on as former service chiefs attack British Treasury,” Xinhua, 15 August 2010.
Furthermore, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg argued that spending “huge, huge” sums to replace the Trident nuclear weapon system will make it harder for ministers to justify cuts in spending in areas like welfare. He suggested that the money for the nuclear weapon would be better spent elsewhere and said the final decisions on a replacement have not yet been taken. Source: “Nick Clegg: ‘Trident replacement makes welfare cuts harder to justify’,” Telegraph.co.uk, 16 August 2010.
Countdown to Zero faces criticism from activists
The documentary Countdown to Zero, lauded by many arms control advocates as being to nuclear weapons as An Inconvenient Truthwas to climate change, has faced serious criticism from many nuclear disarmament advocates. Several groups and individuals have described the film as being a tool not so much to stimulate public opinion in favour of nuclear disarmament as for war against Iran.
Darwin BondGraham, “Co-opting the Anti-Nuclear Movement,” Monthly Review Zine, 22 July 2010.
Andrew Lichterman, "Countdown to Zero: whose nukes matter?" DisarmamentActivist.org, 2 August 2010.
Nima Shirazi, “When the Truth is Inconvenient: A Preview of ‘Countdown to Zero’,” Wide Asleep in America, 18 July 2010.
Rady Ananda, “‘Countdown to Zero’: Hollywood Movie Promotes War on Iran,” Centre for Research on Globalization, 5 August 2010.
11) Recommended Reading
“World inching towards elimination of nuclear weapons, say UN officials,” UN News Centre, 6 August 2010.
Malcom Fraser, “Without a global ban, nuclear conflict is only a matter of time,” The Age (Australia), 6 August 2010.
Eric Johnson, “Rhetoric belies atomic policy,” The Japan Times, 7 August 2010.
