CHOOSING HUMANITY Why Australia must join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons This report was produced by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Australia, on Aboriginal land. We acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded and pay our respects to Indigenous elders past, present and emerging. Indigenous Australians continue to disproportionately suffer the intergenerational health impacts of nuclear testing, with vast tracts of land still contaminated. The legacy of nuclear weapons testing in our region is a constant reminder of the critical need to eliminate these weapons of mass destruction. Contributing authors: Chapter 1 – Stuart Maslen Chapter 2 – Richard Tanter and Sue Wareham Chapter 3 – Tilman Ruff Chapter 4 – Vanessa Griffen, Dimity Hawkins and Talei Luscia Mangioni Chapter 5 – Daryl Le Cornu Chapter 6 – Gem Romuld Editing: Gem Romuld Design: Tessa Sellar This report was produced with financial and editorial support from the Australian Conservation Foundation. Other generous supporters include Quakers Australia (Peace and Social Justice Fund), the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Australia, and many ICAN supporters. Thank you. July 2019. CONTENTS Foreword 4 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: The Treaty 8 Chapter 2: Getting on the right side of history 18 Chapter 3: The danger and the consequences 29 Chapter 4: Black mist, white rain 37 Chapter 5: Australia’s approach to banning the bomb 45 Chapter 6: Momentum for change 56 Conclusion 64 References 66 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 70 FOREWORD Moment of adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, United Nations, New York, 7 July 2017. Credit: Clare Conboy 4 The danger of nuclear war is of states, including those that through hosting key intelligence growing. The more we learn about have not joined them. For example and communications facilities at the catastrophic consequences the US does not manufacture or Pine Gap and elsewhere. These of any use of nuclear weapons, export landmines and is in virtual facilities assist the command, the worse it looks. Nine nations compliance with the landmine ban control and targeting of US possess some fourteen thousand treaty, despite opposing it. nuclear weapons. nuclear weapons.1 Eighteen Former UN High Representative We cannot have it both ways. hundred of them stand poised for Disarmament Affairs, Angela We cannot claim to be working and ready to launch within Kane, said in 2014: for a world free of weapons of minutes. As long as they exist, mass destruction while also nuclear weapons pose the most How many States today boast that claiming that we need US nuclear acute existential threat that human they are ‘biological weapon states’ weapons. This makes us part of beings have created for ourselves or ‘chemical weapon States’? the problem of the most acute and for all species with whom we Who is arguing now that bubonic existential threat humanity share planet Earth. plague or polio are legitimate faces. We should be part of the to use as weapons under any Humanity has made substantial solution instead. The danger circumstance, whether in an attack progress towards eliminating posed by nuclear weapons is a or in retaliation? Who speaks of a other indiscriminate and fundamental issue of humanity, bio-weapon umbrella? 2 inhumane weapons – chemical the right to life, international and biological weapons, It is inconsistent and morally law, intergenerational justice landmines and cluster munitions. bankrupt to deny the use of and sustainability. It should be Evidence of the indiscriminate biological or chemical weapons above party politics. Australia and unacceptable consequences while maintaining a right to should ratify the UN Treaty on the of these weapons provided the threaten millions of civilians with Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons necessary motivation to outlaw radioactive incineration and famine. and implement it in good faith. them. Prohibition treaties have Commendably, Australia under Other nations have demonstrated then established a new standard both Coalition and Labor that supporting the Treaty is and basis for progressively governments has joined all compatible with a military alliance eliminating the relevant weapons. treaties banning unacceptable with the US. More than half the Despite setbacks and slow weapons. It is anomalous that in states that the US designates as its progress, the pathway of recent years Australia has claimed “major non-NATO allies” voted to “stigmatise, prohibit, eliminate” to support nuclear disarmament adopt the Treaty. New Zealand and has proven effective in each case. while opposing the UN Treaty Thailand have ratified the Treaty While universal adherence to on the Prohibition of Nuclear without causing any disruption to these treaties is the ultimate goal, Weapons. Indeed, Australia was military cooperation with the US. no weapons-related treaty has one of the first governments to This is because their cooperation gained universality. declare that it would not join does not involve the use of nuclear this Treaty. The reason for this weapons. Another US ally in our It may take a long time for some inconsistency is that since the region, the Philippines, has also states to join. China and France, early 1990s every Australian signed the Treaty. for example, joined the Non- government has asserted that US Proliferation Treaty in 1992, 24 Joining the Treaty on the nuclear weapons are essential to years after it opened for signature. Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons our national security and should Waiting for other states to do the is an effective way to build a be available for use on our behalf. right thing is no excuse for delay. safer future for all Australians. Moreover, Australia provides Treaties create norms which It will help advance the peace and material assistance for possible become influential over time. security our world so desperately use of US nuclear weapons Treaties influence the behaviour needs. This report explains why. Professor Gillian Triggs Former President of the Australian Human Rights Commission 5 INTRODUCTION Some claim that nuclear weapons would produce a massive group of people gathered in keep us safe, but the reverse firestorm, with an area tens Melbourne in 2005. This group is true. Along with the explicit of kilometres wide starved of of people founded ICAN, the threat of nuclear war, there have oxygen, killing any survivors of International Campaign to Abolish been many accidents or near the initial blast. Nuclear Weapons, which sought a misses due to human, technical global ban on the worst weapons Even a limited regional nuclear war and computer errors. Only luck of mass destruction. – perhaps between Pakistan and has prevented a nuclear launch India fighting yet again in Kashmir A decade later, in July 2017, since 1945. This luck cannot hold – would produce enough soot the United Nations adopted indefinitely. Extremists, hackers to trigger a decade-long nuclear the Treaty on the Prohibition of and unstable leaders further winter. Reduced crop yields would Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and worsen the odds. result in global famine. Careful in December that year ICAN was The humanitarian impacts are too modelling of detonations of under awarded the Nobel Peace Prize great, and the risks too high. 0.5% of the global nuclear arsenal for our work to “draw attention finds up to two billion people at to the catastrophic humanitarian Past horrors are a pale shadow of risk of starvation. consequences of any use of what newer weapons, many times nuclear weapons” and for our more destructive than those used Dismayed by the lack of progress “ground-breaking efforts to on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, can on nuclear disarmament following achieve a treaty-based prohibition do. The Red Cross acknowledges the failure of nuclear-armed of such weapons”.3 that responding meaningfully to a states to disarm despite their nuclear detonation is impossible. obligations under the nuclear Globally, we are at a turning point. One large thermonuclear blast Non-Proliferation Treaty, a small The TPNW delegitimises and 6 stigmatises nuclear weapons, In the past Australia played and as much an existential providing fresh impetus and a an important role in efforts to threat as global warming. practical pathway to disarmament. achieve multilateral disarmament We are out of step with our Prohibition and stigmatisation treaties, most notably with neighbours in the Asia-Pacific, achieve results and change both chemical weapons. Australia and with the vast majority of discourse and behaviour. joined the treaties banning states globally. Australia signing landmines and cluster munitions This report outlines why it is would send a clear message to even when the US opposed them. crucial that Australia signs and all nuclear-armed states, and be ratifies the TPNW. The TPNW was carefully a major step in increasing global drafted to complement the Non- security. As former UN Secretary- The Australian community wants Proliferation Treaty. It provides General Ban Ki-moon said: our government to sign and ratify the next step forward in the global ”There are no right hands for the the Treaty. Seventy-nine per cent move for nuclear abolition. All wrong weapons”4 of the public are in favour, with signatories to the TPNW commit only 8 per cent opposed (Ipsos, We cannot have it both ways. to work for its universal adoption November 2018). Either Australia supports nuclear and for the time-bound, verifiable disarmament, or it supports the In this report, national health elimination of nuclear stockpiles. potential use of nuclear weapons. organisations, faith leaders, All this will need skilled and international legal experts, sustained diplomacy over time. We have been leaders in nuclear experts and parliamentarians from disarmament in the past – we can Signing and ratifying is in our all sides endorse Australia signing be leaders again. national security interest. These and ratifying the Treaty. weapons are manifestly unsafe Australia needs to join this treaty.