Key points
- Joint appeal come from Nihon Hidankyo, ICAN and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
- Nihon Hidankyo won last year’s Nobel
- Nobel laureates call for following the example set by Reagan and Gorbachev
GENEVA, Switzerland: Three Nobel Peace Prize-winning groups campaigning to eliminate nuclear weapons joined forces on Monday to urge the US and Russian presidents to meet and agree on significant denuclearisation.
According to AFP, the joint appeal came from Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo, which won last year’s Nobel; 2017 laureate the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN); and the 1985 winner, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
They sent a joint letter to the two leaders, ICAN said in a statement Monday.
“Moment of extreme nuclear danger”
“At this moment of extreme nuclear danger, we call on you to take urgent steps to de-escalate tensions and to engage in meaningful negotiations for nuclear disarmament,” they wrote to US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The two countries between them control 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
The groups said they were prompted to write their letter following Trump’s suggestion after returning to power in January that he wanted the world to “denuclearise”, and the Kremlin’s expressed openness to the idea.
“Catastrophic consequences”
“The current climate surrounding nuclear weapons is the most volatile in decades,” they said, warning of potential “catastrophic consequences for all humankind”.
The Nobel laureates called in their letter on the two leaders to follow the example set by their predecessors Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
The then US and Soviet leaders met in Iceland in 1986 during the Cold War and agreed the deepest cuts ever in their countries’ nuclear forces.
“The expansion of nuclear weapons capabilities is not a route to safety,” the groups argued. “It only increases the risk these weapons will be used by accident or design.
“The only viable security strategy is one that moves the world away from the brink of nuclear catastrophe and prioritises disarmament,” they added.
“Nuclear weapons are not an inevitable force of nature that must be endured,” they said, according to AFP.
“They were built by human hands, and they can be dismantled by human hands. All that’s required is political will.”
According to a report published by Arms Control Association in March, US President Donald Trump signalled interest in “denuclearisation” with Russia and China, but efforts to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and differences over the scope of potential arms control negotiations present challenges to talks.
