A World Free of Nuclear Weapons is a Universal Human Right*

Remarks for Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Lantern Ceremony

Alex Neve, Senior Fellow

Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

August 6, 2024

Dear friends in peace, it is an honour to be with you this evening in unceded Algonquin Anishinaabeg Territory.  A somber evening, yes, that reminds us of unspeakable horrors of nuclear weapons, that shatter beauty and peace, and remind us of the depths of inhumanity to which our world can descend. But also, a beautiful, peaceful evening, lifting up our shared humanity, cherishing our connections and fortifying our solidarity. 

With Debbie Grisdale.

I am the Chair of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.  CNWC came together 14 years ago, in 2010, inspired and led by the late Murray Thomson, peace advocate and visionary extraordinaire and a dear friend, neighbour and colleague to many of us.  Murray is no doubt afloat with us tonight, well aboard the lanterns and guiding the way. 

Murray initiated CNWC, working alongside Canadian peace and disarmament leaders and activists, John Polanyi, Doug Roche and Ernie Regehr.  They assembled a remarkable collection of endorsements from 500 recipients of the Order of Canada, who joined together in a call for the Canadian government to support a comprehensive nuclear weapons convention.

I readily signed up. The pressing need was clear to me as a human rights advocate and SG of Amnesty International Canada at the time. The imperative of banning, prohibiting, preventing, and abolishing nuclear weapons was a vital human rights issue, one of the gravest, deadliest threats to human rights in our world.

The impetus for a NWC has gathered considerable momentum internationally over the years. As a crucial step forward, negotiations and drafting at the UN over the course of 2016 and 2017 led to adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017. That treaty subsequently entered into force in 2021 once 50 nations had ratified it and today, 70 nations have bound themselves to the TPNW.  Still far to go, as that is just over 1/3 of the world’s states. And it does not include Canada. More about the treaty, and Canada, in a moment.

Meanwhile, support for a comprehensive NWC that would go further than the TPN, across a wide array of recipients of the OC not only remains strong but has continued to grow and expand, now endorsed by over 1,000 OC recipients.

Along the way to that goal we ardently call on all states, most certainly and very particularly our own Canadian government, to bind themselves to the terms of the TPNW.  The preamble to the TPNW itself makes it clear that the absolute end, dismantling and abolition of nuclear weapons for all time must remain our ultimate goal:

Recognizing that a legally binding prohibition of nuclear weapons constitutes an important contribution towards the achievement and maintenance of a world free of nuclear weapons, including the irreversible, verifiable and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons, and determined to act towards that end.

We gather this evening to remember the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to remember the lives lived and lives lost in those two cities.

Just imagine if we were not here this evening to remember something that took place nearly 80 years ago but instead were reacting to something horrible that had just occurred. Imagine if rather than August 6 1945, Hiroshima had happened today, August 6, 2024.

Imagine the impossible horror of, first, becoming aware – likely through our social media feeds – of the colossal and unspeakable nightmare that had just been unleashed – not only on the people of Hiroshima, not only on the Japanese nation, but on our entire world, on all of humanity. We would scarce be able to even begin to make sense of and understand what we were learning.

And then imagine the unimaginable horror as the news accounts of what had transpired accounts gives way to brutal images of the death, disfigurement and total destruction, photos and videos which multiply exponentially, go viral and unrelentingly arrive on our phones, bringing the names and faces of those who had been immediately incinerated and those terribly maimed but who had, somehow, barely survived, directly to us. 

The staggering scale and utter depravity of what had happened would be impossible to ignore or avoid.  Death and injury at levels that defy belief or understanding.

And then imagine all of us quickly becoming aware of the scale and implication of what had happened.  How quickly.  How cruelly.  How irreversibly.  How easily mass murder at a scale truly tantamount to genocide can descend from the sky.  Consequences that seem pulled from the pages of a dystopian, frightening science fiction novel, but far from fiction, a reality very much present.

I know, I am sure, that if Hiroshima happened today we would all quickly gather here, and in city squares, town plazas, parks, boulevards and of course digitally and virtually, the world over.  We would all be here, our neighbours would be here. We would come together in huge numbers.

We would gather in shock and horror, and with outrage and defiance. We would gather to grieve and console. We would gather in trepidation and fear.  No matter the corner of the world where death of that magnitude had rained down – be it a close ally or a bitter enemy – we would unite out of sheer humanity, with agonizing, unconditional opposition to such a vile act of wonton, indiscriminate and widespread murder. We would be firm and steadfast in our insistence that it was wholly and absolutely wrong, both immoral and illegal, and could, should and must never be allowed to happen again.

Of course, Hiroshima did not happen this year, it happened 79 years ago. And the world did not react with that immediate wave of shock, horror and outrage.  News did not spread so instantaneously and personally. And there was no immediate insistence that it never happen again.  Quite the opposite, four days later, that same horror of mass death and obliterating destruction descended on the people of Nagasaki.

Hiroshima did not happen today, but here we are today, remembering. And it is imperative that we feel that shock, horror and outrage, and that we summon that deep defiance and insistence, as if it did happen today.

For our world has, many would say, never been poised so dangerously on the knife edge of, not merely another Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but the knife edge of nuclear war and nuclear calamity.  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist’s Doomsday Clock is set at a chilling and foreboding 90 seconds to midnight.  Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe:

The war in Ukraine and the widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation.

Alongside the devastation of the catastrophic global climate crisis that marches on, the nuclear threat is perhaps the most pervasive, overarching and existential human rights threat our world faces.  A threat, which just like the climate emergency, truly has global sweep and consequence.

The TPNW, not surprisingly, therefore devotes several paragraphs of its opening preamble to passages that highlight the obvious way in which the use of nuclear weapons violates key principles of international law, in particular international human rights law and international humanitarian law. 

 In stark terms that resonate with the gravity of the climate crisis, the TPNW observes, certainly beyond dispute, that the “catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately addressed, transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations.” 

And perhaps most succinctly, the TPNW makes it clear that the use of nuclear weapons is “abhorrent to the principles of humanity and the dictates of public conscience.”

Words put to paper just seven years ago. And that is what was at stake 79 years ago, before international law had even conceived of, let alone was capable of catching up with this diabolical new weaponry.  It is what is at stake today.  The very real potential of a global human rights catastrophe that would pose grave implications for human survival.

To use nuclear weapons would, yes, blatantly violate a raft of international human rights and international humanitarian law norms.  In fact, many international legal scholars argue that the use of nuclear weapons against a city, a region, a nation, a people almost certainly constitutes the very pinnacle of international crimes, the crime of genocide, something that world leaders committed to preventing and punishing when they adopted the Genocide Convention a mere three years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1948.

But international law is not only violated by nuclear weapons, international law holds the path to their prohibition and abolition.

Surely that can and must at the very least, include Canadian support for the TPNW. Only a handful of our closest allies, including Austria, Ireland and New Zealand have taken that step. What a need, what a moment for principled leadership and a clear demonstration of conviction that the use of nuclear weapons must be prohibited. How vital that we take that critical step and launch a full-out effort to press and persuade other governments to follow suit.

We can stand proud as Ottawans, with much thanks to Councillor Kavanagh, that our city is one of 19 across the country that has pledged its support for the TPNW.

Needless to say, we cannot stop there. We must all raise our voices, send emails, arrange meetings with our MPs, and make it clear to our Minister of Foreign Affairs and to our PM, that 79 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is only one possible future, and that is a future which prohibits and abolishes nuclear weapons, full stop. That is how we best remember, but more importantly how we best honour the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  That is how we best lift up our precious, shared humanity.

* Photo Credits: Koozma J. Tarasoff