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Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration of Nobel Peace Laureates, 18 May 2009
Full text of Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration of Nobel Peace laureates,
18 May 2009.
HIROSHIMA - The following is the full text of ''The
Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration of Nobel Peace Laureates'' published Monday
in the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper in Hiroshima.
The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration of Nobel Peace Laureates
Sixty-four years ago, the horror of atomic bombs was unleashed on Japan,
and the world witnessed the destructive power of nuclear weapons. Today,
with just a year until the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review
Conference convenes at the United Nations in the spring of 2010, we, the
undersigned Nobel Peace Laureates, echo U.S. President Barack Obama's
call for a world without nuclear weapons and appeal to the leader of every
nation to resolutely pursue this goal for the good of all.
We find ourselves in a new era of proliferation. Despite the near universal
ratification of the 1970 treaty, which binds states to nuclear disarmament,
little progress has been made to fulfill this pact and eliminate nuclear
weapons from our world. On the contrary, as the nuclear powers have continued
to brandish their weapons, other nations have sought to produce their
own nuclear arsenals.
We are deeply troubled by this threat of proliferation to non-nuclear
weapon states, but equally concerned at the faltering will of the nuclear
powers to move forward in their obligation to disarm their own nations
of these dreadful weapons.
The fact that humanity has managed to avoid a third nuclear nightmare
is not merely a fortunate whim of history. The resolve of the A-bomb survivors,
who have called on the world to avert another Hiroshima or Nagasaki, has
surely helped prevent that catastrophe. Moreover, the millions who have
supported the survivors in their quest for peace, as well as the reality
of our collective restraint, suggest that human beings are imbued with
a better, higher nature, an instinct for inhibiting violence and upholding
life.
In the months leading up to the NPT Review Conference, this higher nature
must rise to guide our efforts. Nations are now reviewing progress in
the treaty's implementation and mapping a path forward. For the first
time in many years, the opportunity exists for genuine movement toward
reducing and eliminating nuclear arms.
As this process unfolds, world leaders will be faced with a stark choice:
nuclear non-proliferation or nuclear brinkmanship. We can either put an
end to proliferation, and set a course toward abolition; or we can wait
for the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be repeated.
We believe it is long past time for humanity to heed the warning made
by Albert Einstein in 1946: ''The unleashed power of the atom has changed
everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled
catastrophe. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if
mankind is to survive.''
We know that such a new manner of thinking is possible. In the past ten
years, the governments of the world, working alongside international institutions,
non-governmental organizations, and survivors, have negotiated treaties
banning two indiscriminate weapons systems: landmines and cluster bombs.
These weapons were banned when the world finally recognized them for the
humanitarian disaster they are.
The world is well aware that nuclear weapons are a humanitarian disaster
of monstrous proportion. They are indiscriminate, immoral, and illegal.
They are military tools whose staggering consequences have already been
seen in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the long-term impacts
of those attacks. Eliminating nuclear weapons is indeed a possibility
-- more than that, it is a fundamental necessity in forging a more secure
planet for us all.
As Nobel Peace Laureates, we call on the citizens of the world to press
their leaders to grasp the peril of inaction and summon the political
will to advance toward nuclear disarmament and abolition. To fulfill a
world without nuclear weapons, and inspire a greater peace among our kind,
humanity must stand together to make this vision a reality.
(The 17 laureates are Betty Williams, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Adolfo
Perez Esquivel, Desmond Tutu, Oscar Arias Sanchez, The Dalai Lama, Rigoberta
Menchu Tum, Frederik W. de Klerk, Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, Jose Ramos-Horta,
Jody Williams, John Hume, Kim Dae Jung, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai,
Mohamed Elbaradei and Muhammad Yunus)
© 2009 Kyodo World News Service
Source: International Atomic Energy Agency, www.iaea.org.
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