UN First Committee Resolution L.41

The UN vote will take place today, October 27th 2016.  The UK, France and US have been at the forefront of opposition, having boycotted previous UN working groups on multilateral nuclear disarmament in 2013 and 2016, but if at least 100 UN member states vote in favour, as looks very likely now, then negotiations will go ahead, starting  in March 2017, and a History-Changing treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons could well be concluded under International Humanitarian Law by 2018.

This treaty would prohibit the use, deployment, production/manufacture, transport/transfer, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons and unequivocally require full implementation of previously vague NPT obligations to eliminate nuclear weapons. This is truly groundbreaking as it bypasses the blocking done by a handful of nuclear-armed states and works with a cross section of all the other states, many of which are already nuclear free, to promote humanitarian security for everyone.