CATASTROPHIC HUMANITARIAN HARM WARNING Some images may disturb.

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First published in August 2012 by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons ([email protected]). Updated in August 2015. 1

Reframing the nuclear weapons debate

The catastrophic effects of nuclear weapons on our health, societies and the environment must be at the centre of all discussions about nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

bolishing nuclear weapons A HUMANITARIAN APPROACH weapons must focus not on Ais a paramount challenge Although the number of nuclear narrow concepts of national for people and governments the weapons in global stockpiles is security, but on the effects of world over – a pre-condition for declining, the risk of their use, these weapons on human beings survival, sustainability and the by accident or design, appears to – our health, our societies, and health of our planet and future be growing. Any such use would the environment on which generations. Both in the scale of have catastrophic humanitarian we all depend. The successful the indiscriminate devastation consequences. Despite rhetoric processes that led to treaties they cause, and in their uniquely in favour of achieving a world banning landmines in 1997 persistent, spreading, genetically without nuclear weapons, and cluster munitions in 2008 damaging radioactive fallout, governments have not yet demonstrated the importance nuclear weapons are unlike any begun negotiations on a global of adopting a humanitarian- other weapons. A single nuclear treaty banning nuclear weapons. based discourse: new political bomb detonated over a large The International Campaign coalitions were formed, city could kill millions of people to Abolish Nuclear Weapons longstanding deadlocks were in an instant. The use of tens (ICAN), a movement of non- broken, and two whole classes or hundreds of nuclear bombs government organizations of weapons were outlawed. would disrupt the global climate, advocating such a treaty, believes Today we must adopt a similar causing widespread famine. that discussions about nuclear approach for nuclear weapons. 2

A unique existential threat to humanity

The effects of nuclear weapons cannot be controlled in space or time. Their existence anywhere is a threat to people everywhere.

uclear weapons are the NUCLEAR WEAPONS USE NUCLEAR ARSENALS Nmost destructive, inhumane Nuclear weapons have been The dangers of nuclear weapons and indiscriminate instruments used twice in warfare – on the arise from their very existence. of mass murder ever created. Japanese cities of Hiroshima Nine countries today possess The term “catastrophic and Nagasaki in 1945. More an estimated 15,700 nuclear humanitarian consequences” than 200,000 innocent civilians weapons, around 1,800 of which – now commonly used by died, while many more suffered are kept on hair-trigger alert – governments – describes their acute injuries. Even if a nuclear ready for use within minutes. NUCLEAR FORCES IN 2015 unique and horrifying effects on weapon were never again Most of today’s nuclear weapons Country Warheads people, including lethal harm to exploded over a city, there are are dozens of times more United States 7,200 those who are not part of the effects from the production, powerful than the Hiroshima Russia 7,500 United Kingdom 215 conflicts in which they are used. testing and deployment of bomb. The failure of the nuclear France 300 Physicians and scientists have nuclear arsenals that are powers to disarm has heightened China 250 India 90–110 long studied and documented experienced as an ongoing the risk that other countries, or Pakistan 100–120 the medical consequences of personal and community terrorists, will one day acquire Israel 80 nuclear war, concluding that catastrophe by many people nuclear weapons. The only North Korea <10 human security and survival around the globe. This must guarantee against their spread Total ~15,700 depend upon ridding the Earth inform and motivate efforts to and use is to eliminate them Estimates only. Source: FAS of these indefensible weapons. eliminate these weapons. without delay. “The conference expresses its deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons.”

Final Document, Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, 2010

Mushroom cloud: A 37-kiloton nuclear device Obliteration: The Japanese city of Hiroshima was instantly reduced to ashes when is exploded in Nevada. Credit: US Government a single US 15-kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated over it. Credit: US Government Burns: Nagasaki bomb victim Sumiteru Taniguchi looks at a photo of himself taken in 1945. His horrific burns have required 17 operations. Credit: Yuriko Nakao

SUMITERU TANIGUCHI’S STORY

“As a 16-year-old boy, I was I suffered such awful pain during riding my bicycle down the street that time that I often called out when the atomic bomb exploded ‘Please kill me!’ as I was being 1.8 km away, scorching my back treated. Among the survivors of and leaving the skin on my right the atomic bombing, there are arm hanging down from the those who committed suicide shoulder to the fingertips. Most and those who died after saying of the people around me had they couldn’t stand yet another no one to look after them, and operation. As someone who passed away while begging for knows about this, I feel that I water. I spent two nights up in have a responsibility to live my the mountainside before a rescue life to the very end. Sometimes squad found me on the morning it’s a struggle. I’ll keep on of the third day and took me to fighting until all nuclear weapons a first-aid station some 28 km are banished from this Earth. To away. I went from one aid station everyone who is reading this, I to another until I was finally beg you to think of yourselves as released from Omura Naval parents building a bright future Hospital in March 1949. for your descendants.” 5

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings

The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people, and their effects are still being felt today.

he highly enriched uranium MEDICAL RESPONSE LONG-TERM EFFECTS Tbomb detonated over In Hiroshima 90 per cent of The incidence of leukaemia Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 physicians and nurses were killed among survivors increased had an explosive yield equal or injured; 42 of 45 hospitals noticeably five to six years to 15,000 tonnes of TNT. It were rendered non-functional; after the bombings, and about razed and burned around 70 and 70 per cent of victims had a decade later survivors began per cent of all buildings and combined injuries including, in suffering from thyroid, breast, caused an estimated 140,000 most cases, severe burns. All the lung and other cancers at higher deaths by the end of 1945, along dedicated burn beds around the than normal rates. For solid DEATHS BY END OF 1945 with increased rates of cancer world would be insufficient to cancers, the added risks related Hiroshima 140,000 and chronic disease among care for the survivors of a single to radiation exposure continue Nagasaki 74,000 the survivors. A slightly larger nuclear bomb on any city. In to increase throughout the plutonium bomb exploded Hiroshima and Nagasaki most lifespan of survivors even to this over Nagasaki three days later victims died without any care day, almost seven decades after exposed to radiation in their levelled 6.7 km2 of the city and to ease their suffering. Some the bombings. Women exposed mother’s womb were more likely killed 74,000 people by the end of the people who entered the to the bombings while they were to be mentally retarded, and of 1945. Ground temperatures cities after the bombings to pregnant experienced higher have smaller brains and impaired reached 4,000°C and black provide assistance also died from rates of miscarriage and deaths growth, as well as increased risk radioactive rain poured down. radiation-related illnesses. among their infants. Children of developing cancer. Heat and blast: House No. 1, located 1 km from ground zero, is completely destroyed during a nuclear test in Nevada in 1953. The elapsed time from the first picture to the last is two seconds. Credit: US Government

EFFECTS OF A 100-KT NUCLEAR BOMB

3 km radius A radioactive fireball hotter than the Sun and with the force of 100,000 tonnes of TNT kills everyone.

5 km radius The vast majority of people die quickly from blast injuries, asphyxiation or (over weeks) radiation sickness.

10 km radius About half die from trauma and burns. Many succumb soon after to fires and radiation sickness.

80 km radius Radioactive fallout spreads. Over time, many thousands will die from radiation sickness and cancers. 7

Blast, heat and radiation

It takes around 10 seconds for the fireball from a nuclear explosion to reach its maximum size, but the effects last for decades.

uclear weapons are unique HEAT damages organs and causes Nin their destructive power Thermal radiation from the rapid death. At low doses, it and the threat they pose to explosion is so intense that can damage cells and lead to the environment and human almost everything close to cancer, genetic damage and survival. They release vast ground zero is vaporized. The mutations. In human beings, it amounts of energy in the form extreme heat causes severe causes most types of leukaemia, of blast, heat and radiation. burns and ignites fires over a Above: Chromosomal damage in a or blood cancer, as well as solid large area, which coalesce into a nuclear test veteran. Credit: R. Rowland cancers such as thyroid, lung BLAST giant firestorm. Even people in Below: Children in Hiroshima suffer from and breast cancers. Radiation hair loss. Credit: Shunkichi Kikuchi A nuclear explosion creates underground shelters face likely exposure can also heighten the an enormous shockwave death due to a lack of oxygen risk of hereditary effects in that reaches speeds of many and carbon monoxide poisoning. future generations. Radiation hundreds of kilometres an hour. exposure can occur externally The blast kills people close to RADIATION (from particles in the air, ground zero, and causes lung Unlike conventional weapons, water and soil) or internally injuries, ear damage and internal nuclear weapons release ionizing (from breathing, eating and bleeding further away. People radiation: particles and rays given drinking). Many radioisotopes sustain injuries from collapsing off by radioactive materials. At are concentrated in plants and buildings and flying objects. high doses, radiation kills cells, animals, and thus the food chain. 8

Climate disruption and nuclear famine

A regional nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons would disrupt the global climate and put up to two billion people at risk of famine.

uclear weapons are the at risk of famine, according blocking up to 10 per cent be emitted into the stratosphere, Nonly devices ever created to recent research by the of sunlight from reaching resulting in a 45 per cent global with the capacity to destroy all International Physicians for the the Earth’s surface. Sudden reduction in rainfall and average complex life forms on Earth Prevention of Nuclear War. global cooling would shorten surface cooling of –7 to –8°C. within a relatively short period. Although it would not result growing seasons, threatening By comparison, the global A war fought using 1,000 nuclear in the extinction of the human agriculture worldwide. Increases average cooling at the depth of weapons – around 6 per cent of race, it would bring about an in food prices would make the last ice age more than 18,000 the total global stockpile – would end to modern civilization as we food inaccessible to hundreds years ago was –5°C. render the planet uninhabitable. know it. Even the relatively small of millions of the poorest nuclear arsenals of countries people in the world. For those OZONE DEPLETION REGIONAL NUCLEAR WAR such as India and Pakistan could who are already chronically A nuclear war would cause In addition to causing tens of cause long-lasting global damage malnourished, just a 10 per cent prolonged and severe depletion millions of immediate deaths, a to the Earth’s ecosystems. decline in food consumption of the ozone layer and have a regional nuclear war involving would result in starvation. devastating impact on human around 100 Hiroshima-sized AGRICULTURAL COLLAPSE Infectious disease epidemics and and animal health. Substantial weapons would disrupt the The smoke and dust from conflict over scarce resources increases in ultraviolet radiation global climate and agricultural a limited nuclear war would would be rife. If the entire global would cause increases in skin production so severely that up cause an abrupt drop in global nuclear arsenal were used, 150 cancer rates, crop damage and to two billion people would be temperatures and rainfall by million tonnes of smoke would the destruction of marine life. “Climate change may be the global policy issue that has captured most attention in the last decade, but the problem of nuclear weapons is at least its equal in terms of gravity – and much more immediate in its potential impact.”

International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, 2009

Famine: Somali men carry a severely malnourished child to hospital. The use of 100 nuclear Crop failure: A regional nuclear war would result in agricultural weapons would put up to two billion people at risk of famine. Credit: UN Photo/Stuart Price collapse over a wide area. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret “We witnessed a sight totally unlike anything we had ever seen before. The centre of the city was sort of a white patch, flattened and smooth like the palm of a hand. Nothing remained. Every living thing was petrified in an attitude of acute pain.”

Dr Marcel Junod, International Committee of the Red Cross, Hiroshima, September 1945

Total devastation: A mother and her son in Hiroshima four months after the atomic bombing. Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt 11

The radioactive incineration of cities

The death toll from a nuclear attack against a large city today could be measured in the millions rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands.

cientists have modelled the September 11 terrorist attacks. Scatastrophic humanitarian Blast and thermal effects would MILLIONS KILLED Source: Science 15M consequences of nuclear strikes kill 52,000 people immediately. This graph shows against various urban centres. In Another 238,000 would be the estimated a city like Mumbai, India, with exposed to direct radiation number of fatalities due to immediate population densities in some from the blast. Fallout would radiation, blast and 10M areas of 100,000 people per expose a further million and a fire damage from 50 nuclear weapons square kilometre, a Hiroshima- half people. In total, more than with 15-kiloton yields sized bomb is estimated to cause 200,000 would die. on various countries. 5M up to 870,000 deaths in the first The total death toll from cancers and FULL-SCALE NUCLEAR WAR weeks. A 1-megaton bomb could wider environmental promptly kill several million. The effects of a war involving effects would be

many nuclear explosions substantially higher. BRAZIL CHINA EGYPT FRANCE INDIA IRAN ISRAEL JAPAN PAKISTAN RUSSIA UK US TERRORIST SCENARIO would be on a scale larger than A 12.5-kiloton nuclear explosion anything previously experienced in a New York shipping yard in human history. If 500 an hour and tens of millions fallout. Most Americans and would produce casualties more warheads were to hit major US would be fatally injured. Huge Russians would die in the than one order of magnitude and Russian cities, 100 million swaths of both countries would following months from radiation greater than those inflicted in the people would die in the first half be blanketed by radioactive sickness and disease epidemics. Nevada: Judith Vollmer, poet and teacher, has Utah: Dave Timothy, a “down winder”, believes come to Sedan Crater on the Nevada Test Site his multiple thyroid cancers were caused by the to better understand the loss of her father to radiation from atomic tests that rained down on his radiation-related illnesses. Credit: Lynn Johnson boyhood home in Utah. Credit: Lynn Johnson Semipalatinsk: A Kazakh nuclear test victim receives treatment. Between 1949 and 1991, 456 Soviet nuclear tests were conducted at Semipalatinsk. Credit: Jonathan Silvers/Saybrook Productions Ltd Refugees: Libyan refugees line up for food near the border with Tunisia. A nuclear attack would potentially displace millions of people. Credit: OCHA/David Ohana

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

“Nuclear weapons constitute the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of mankind .... It is obvious that no health service in any area of the world would be capable of dealing adequately with the hundreds of thousands of people seriously injured by blast, heat or radiation from even a single one-megaton bomb .... Whatever remained of the medical services in the world could not alleviate the disaster in any significant way .... To the immediate catastrophe must be added the long-term effects on the environment. Famine and diseases would be widespread, and social and economic systems would be totally disrupted .... Therefore the only approach to the treatment of the health effects of nuclear explosions is primary prevention of such explosions.” 15

No adequate response capacity

A nuclear attack anywhere in the world would overwhelm the health infrastructure, making an effective humanitarian response impossible.

uclear bombings eradicate THE RED CROSS UN AGENCIES Nthe social infrastructure Consistent with the humanitarian In 1984, at the height of the required for recovery from vision of its founder Henry cold war, the World Health conflict. Communications Dunant, the International Organization published a and transportation systems, Committee of the Red Cross definitive study on the global fire-fighting equipment, and first called for nuclear weapons health repercussions of nuclear hospitals and pharmacies would to be banned in September war. Its report, updated in 1987, all lie in rubble throughout a 1945, just weeks after the atomic concluded that the immediate zone of complete destruction bombings of Hiroshima and and delayed loss of human extending for kilometres. Those Nagasaki. Since then, it has and animal life would be attempting to provide relief repeatedly warned that nuclear enormous, and “the plight of to the sick or wounded would weapons will not spare hospitals, survivors would be physically be exposed to high levels of prisoner-of-war camps and and psychologically appalling”. radioactivity, risking their own civilians, and “their inevitable Nuclear disarmament is directly lives. Nowhere in the world consequence is extermination”. relevant to the work of many would it be possible to render an In 2010 the Committee adopted UN agencies, including those effective humanitarian response, the prohibition and complete responsible for refugees, human underscoring the absolute elimination of nuclear weapons rights, development, food imperative of nuclear abolition. as one of its top priorities. security and the environment. Australia: As a 10-year-old boy, Yami Lester was covered by a cloud of Marshall Islands: Iroji Kebenli, a Marshallese boy, suffered radiation burns to radioactive fallout from a British nuclear test conducted at Emu Junction in his skin after contact with “Bikini snow” – radioactive ash and coral fragments 1953 with the support of the Australian government. Credit: Jessie Boylan dispersed over the islands from US nuclear tests. Credit: US Government

Algeria: A danger sign warns of the toxic legacy of French nuclear testing in Algeria in the 1960s. Credit: Nic Maclellan 17

The legacy of nuclear testing

Physicians project that some 2.4 million people worldwide will eventually die from cancers due to atmospheric nuclear tests conducted between 1945 and 1980.

ince the dawn of the NUCLEAR TEST SITES A NUCLEAR TEST BAN Satomic age in July 1945, Nuclear tests have been carried NUCLEAR TESTS Public concern in the 1950s nuclear weapons have been out at more than 60 locations Programme No. tests about the health and environ- tested on more than 2,000 around the globe, often on USA 1,054 mental impacts of nuclear occasions – in the atmosphere, the lands of indigenous and Russia/USSR 715 testing, including its effect on underground and underwater. minority peoples, far away from France 210 mothers’ milk and babies’ teeth, United Kingdom 45 The toll on human health and those who made the decisions China 45 led to the negotiation in 1963 the environment has been to conduct them. While some India 6 of a treaty banning atmospheric Pakistan 6 staggering. Today we each test sites have been virtually North Korea 3 and underwater nuclear tests. A carry in our bodies radioactive uninhabited, others have Total 2,084 comprehensive nuclear test ban, substances from the fallout of been densely populated. The covering underground tests, was nuclear testing, increasing our tests have irradiated people negotiated in 1996. Although the risk of developing cancer. Much working on the programmes, of Nuclear War has estimated latter treaty has not yet entered of the Earth’s surface has been the downwind and downstream that roughly 2.4 million people into legal force, full-scale nuclear contaminated at some point with communities, and the whole will eventually die as a result of testing has largely come to halt. radioactive particles. Nuclear global population. The the atmospheric nuclear tests However, a number of countries testing enables governments to Nobel Peace Prize-winning conducted between 1945 and continue to test their nuclear increase the destructiveness and organization International 1980, which were equal in force weapons sub-critically, involving lethality of their nuclear forces. Physicians for the Prevention to 29,000 Hiroshima bombs. no chain reaction. 18

Production of nuclear weapons

The production of the explosive materials used in all nuclear weapons – highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium – is harmful to human health and the environment.

uclear weapons derive lands of indigenous peoples. linked. Most of the recent Ntheir explosive force from Large volumes of waste tailings instances of nuclear proliferation uranium and/or plutonium, the result in long-lasting radioactive have stemmed from ostensibly latter of which is a by-product and chemical pollution. No peaceful programmes. Releases of nuclear fission in reactors. uranium mine anywhere in the of radiation similar to or larger The production of both world has been fully cleaned up than those from a nuclear bomb substances causes widespread after mining has finished. Fissile can come from nuclear reactors environmental contamination materials created from uranium and spent fuel ponds – meaning and is harmful to human health. ore remain toxic and weapons- that every reactor is, in effect, a usable for many millennia. Any giant pre-positioned dirty bomb. MINING & ENRICHING URANIUM enrichment plant that can enrich Nuclear accidents, such as that at Uranium, its radioactive decay uranium to reactor grade can Chernobyl in 1986, will eventu- products, and other substances also enrich it to weapons grade. ally cause at least several tens released through uranium mining of thousands of cancer deaths. and processing can cause disease NUCLEAR REACTORS Even during normal use, nuclear in mineworkers, nuclear industry Plutonium is produced from reactors emit radiation into the Ranger Mine: Yvonne Margarula, a workers and nearby inhabitants. uranium in a nuclear reactor. Mirarr elder from Australia, has long air, water and soil, resulting in More than 70 per cent of the Military and civilian nuclear fought to protect her country from increased rates of leukaemia in uranium mining. Credit: Dominic O’Brien world’s uranium is mined on the programmes are often closely children living within 50 km. “A phase-out of civilian nuclear energy would provide the most effective and enduring constraint on proliferation risks in a nuclear-weapon-free world.”

International Panel on Fissile Materials, 2009

Chernobyl: Useless against gamma radiation, these Fukushima: A baby is tested for radiation in 2011, gas masks lie strewn across an empty classroom four days after an earthquake and tsunami struck the floor in Pripyat, Ukraine.Credit: Ricky Pitman Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Credit: Kyodo Hunger: A woman holding her young malnourished baby queues for food in Somalia. Money spent on nuclear weapons could be redirected towards meeting basic human needs. Credit: UN Photo/Stuart Price

“The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded .... The end of the cold war has led the world to expect a massive peace dividend. Yet, there are over 20,000 nuclear weapons around the world. Many of them are still on hair-trigger alert, threatening our own survival.”

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Mexico City, 2009 21

A diversion of public resources

As millions across the globe go hungry and are denied access to clean water, basic medicines and sanitation, the nuclear-armed nations spend close to US$300 million a day on their nuclear forces.

he production, maintenance meet the internationally agreed Tand modernization of Millennium Development Goals ESTIMATED ANNUAL SPENDING nuclear forces diverts vast on poverty alleviation by the ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS public resources away from target date of 2015. Nuclear Country USD health care, education, climate weapons spending is estimated United States 61.3 bn change mitigation, disaster relief, to be more than twice the Russia 14.8 bn China 7.6 bn development assistance and official development assistance France 6.0 bn other vital services. Globally, provided to Africa, the poorest United Kingdom 5.5 bn India 4.9 bn annual expenditure on nuclear continent on Earth, and equal to Israel 1.9 bn weapons is estimated at US$105 the gross domestic product of Pakistan 2.2 bn billion – or $12 million an hour. Bangladesh, a nation of some North Korea 0.7 bn 160 million people. The Office Total US$104.9 bn SPENDING ON DEVELOPMENT for Disarmament Affairs – the Source: Global Zero, 2011 The World Bank forecast in 2002 principal UN body responsible that an annual investment of just for advancing a nuclear-weapon-

US$40–60 billion, or roughly free world – has an annual Poverty: Achan Ajwal, a villager in South half the amount currently budget of $10 million, which is Sudan, shows riverweed, her only diet before a World Food Programme food spent on nuclear weapons, less than the amount spent on distribution. Credit: UN Photo/Fred Noy would have been enough to nuclear weapons every hour. “Some governments tell us that a nuclear weapons ban is premature and unlikely. Don’t believe it. They told us the same thing about a mine ban treaty.”

Anti-landmine campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams

Cluster bombs: Abdullah Yaqoob was Landmines: Kabibi Tabu lost both legs in a landmine injured in a British cluster bomb strike explosion in 2006 in the Democratic Republic of in Iraq in 2003. Credit: DanChurchAid Congo. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret 23

Outlawing inhumane weapons

There are treaties prohibiting biological weapons, chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions, but no such treaty exists – as yet – for nuclear weapons.

he international community HUMANITARIAN LAW This disproportionate and Thas negotiated conventions PROHIBITED WEAPONS Nuclear weapons cannot indiscriminate destructiveness to eliminate certain types of Type of weapon Banned distinguish between military is clearly a violation of weapons that cause unacceptable Biological weapons 1972 and civilian targets, or international humanitarian law. harm to people and the Chemical weapons 1993 between combatants and environment. These include Anti-personnel mines 1997 non-combatants. Most of the HUMAN SECURITY Cluster munitions 2008 biological and chemical weapons, casualties of a nuclear attack The catastrophic health and landmines and, most recently, would inevitably be civilians. environmental consequences of cluster munitions. Although Once the explosive energy of a nuclear war are at the extreme the destructive capacity of nuclear chain reaction has been end of a continuum of armed nuclear weapons is many times released, it cannot be contained. violence that undermines health greater than that of these and People in neighbouring and and security. Outlawing and all other weapons, they are not distant countries who have eliminating nuclear weapons yet subject to a universal treaty nothing to do with the conflict is part of a broader struggle ban. Nevertheless, their use is would suffer from the effects for genuine human-centred prohibited under international of radioactive fallout, even if security founded on respect for humanitarian law, and all nations they were at a safe distance basic rights, including rights to are obliged to negotiate in good from the blast and thermal education, health care, decent faith for nuclear disarmament. destruction near ground zero. work and a clean environment. 24

A nuclear weapons ban

To avert a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions, nations must intensify efforts to outlaw and eliminate nuclear weapons.

n understanding of “the A UNIVERSAL BAN South Pacific, Southeast Asia, A devastation that would be A global ban on nuclear Central Asia and Africa. It would visited upon all mankind by a weapons is long overdue and can allow nations in any part of the nuclear war” was the motivating be achieved in the near future world to formalize their rejection force behind the adoption of the with enough public pressure of nuclear weapons and help nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and political leadership. A ban create a clear international legal (NPT) in 1968. Article VI of would not only make it illegal norm against the possession the agreement obliges all nations for nations to use and possess of nuclear weapons. Similarly, to negotiate in good faith for nuclear weapons; it would a ban would build on, and total nuclear disarmament under also help pave the way to their reinforce, the NPT and strict and effective international complete elimination. Nations Comprehensive Nuclear-Test- control. More than four decades committed to reaching the Ban Treaty – which, although on, however, this provision goal of abolition should begin having helped prevent the use remains unfulfilled. At an negotiating a ban now. and limit the spread of nuclear important review of the treaty in A nuclear weapons ban weapons, are insufficient to May 2010, governments warned would globalize what nuclear- achieve disarmament. A nuclear that catastrophic humanitarian weapon-free zone treaties have weapons ban is the missing piece consequences could result from done regionally – for Latin for a broad legal rejection of all continued failure to act. America and the Caribbean, the weapons of mass destruction. Everyone’s responsibility

Engaging the Engaging United Building the political Raising public 1 development sector 2 Nations agencies 3 will for a ban 4 awareness

A nuclear attack anywhere in Nuclear disarmament is a Ultimately, the responsibility to Generating a powerful the world would have profound longstanding objective of the disarm rests with governments. groundswell of public support implications for the work of United Nations. It is directly All barriers to achieving a world for nuclear abolition will be key organizations that provide relevant to the work of most free of nuclear weapons are to ensuring that all governments disaster relief, refugee assistance of its major agencies, including political, not technical. The engage constructively in and health care, as well as those the World Health Organization, growing recognition among negotiations for a nuclear promoting human rights, food the Food and Agriculture governments of the catastrophic weapons ban. Information security, poverty alleviation and Organization, unicef, unesco, humanitarian consequences of about the catastrophic effects of environmental sustainability. All and the high commissioners for nuclear weapons is a positive nuclear weapons must be spread such groups must play an active human rights and refugees. The development. It must now through the mass media, become role now in efforts to avert a UN family must join forces to translate into meaningful action part of the national education humanitarian catastrophe by address the continuing threat of towards a treaty to outlaw and curriculum, and be shared widely eliminating nuclear weapons. nuclear conflict. eliminate nuclear weapons. through ngo networks. CATASTROPHIC HUMANITARIAN HARM

Катастрофические гуманитарные последствия

נזק הומניטארי קטסטרופלי Conséquences humanitaires catastrophiques

壊滅的な人道的被害 נזק הומניטארי קטסטרופלי

ﺍﻷﺿﺮﺍﺭ ﺍﻹﻧﺴﺎﻧﻴﺔ ﺍﻟﻜﺎﺭﺛﻴﺔ נזק הומניטארי קטסטרופלי 灾难性的人道主义伤害 Daño humanitario catastrófico

치명적인 인도주의적 피해

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