“Today, the effects of nuclear weapons upon civilian populations, agriculture, livestock and ground-water supplies are better known and well documented. They have contributed significantly to our collective efforts towards achieving the prohibition and elimination of all nuclear weapons for all time.”
— UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Statement for the 2014 UN Day Against Nuclear Tests
PNND Members are taking action around the world to commemorate the UN Day Against Nuclear Tests.
The UN Day Against Nuclear Tests was established in 2009 by United Nations General Assembly resolution 64/35 at the initiative of the government of Kazakhstan. The day coincides with the anniversary of the closure of the Soviet nuclear test site in Kazakhstan in 1991 following a strong anti-nuclear civil society campaign.
The aims of the day are to:
US Representative Eni Faleomavaega
In the United States, PNND Member Emi Faleomavaega (Congress Representative for American Samoa) entered a statement into the U.S. Congressional Record on the horrific health and environmental consequences of the nuclear tests in the Pacific, especially the US tests in the Marshall islands. The statement commends Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum for initiating a case in a US Federal Court against the US, and additional cases in the International Court of Justice against all nine nuclear-armed States challenging their non-compliance with nuclear disarmament obligations.
‘When I was 9 years old, I remember vividly the white flash of the Bravo detonation on Bikini atoll, 6 decades ago in 1954, and one thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima…Bravo went off with a very bright flash, almost a blinding flash; bear in mind we are almost 200 miles away from ground zero... I like to describe it as if you are under a glass bowl and someone poured blood over it. Everything turned red: sky, the ocean, the fish, and my grandfather’s net. People in Rongelap nowadays claim they saw the sun rising from the West. I saw the sun rising from the middle of the sky…’
Tony de Brum, Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, quoted by US Congressman Emi Faleomavaega, U.S. Congressional Record
The cases in the International Court of Justice follow-on from previous cases lodged by New Zealand and Australia against French nuclear tests in 1974, and a case (advisory opinion) on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons requested by the United Nations General Assembly in 1994.
PNND Past-President Abacca Anjain Maddison from the Marshall Islands is calling on parliamentarians and civil society around the world to support the cases in the International Court of Justice by signing the Nuclear Zero Cases petition.
"The planet Earth is ours. It doesn't belong to only nine countries,’ says Maddison, who comes from Rongelap Atoll – an island that has had to be permanently evacuated due to radioactive fallout from the nuclear tests.
PNND Council members from Kazakhstan, Senator Byrganym Aitimova and Viktor Rogalev MP, last week welcomed to Astana seventeen young medical students and doctors who had biked from the former nuclear Soviet test site in Semipalatinsk to the Kazakhstan capital. The cyclists arrived in Astana in time to observe the international day against nuclear tests with the World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The cyclists - who came from Germany, Austria, El Salvador, Estonia, India, Kenya, Nepal, the United States and Kazakhstan – rode for 800 kilometres promoting the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.
Senator Aitimova, who organised the welcome ceremony for the cyclists, previously served as the Kazakhstan ambassador to the United Nations, during which time she initiated a number of nuclear disarmament actions at the UN, including the successful adoption by consensus of the UN General Assembly resolution establishing the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
Nuclear test victim Karipbek Kuyukov launching the ATOM project at the PNND Assembly in 2012
At the PNND Assembly in Kazakhstan on August 29, 2012, the ATOM Project was launched to promote the end of all nuclear tests and the achievement of a nuclear-weapon-free world. PNND invites you to commemorate the UN Day Against Nuclear Tests by:
