International Meeting
2024 World Conference against A & H Bombs
Session 3
Roland Nivet
National Spokesman
Mouvement de la Paix
France
Hello everyone,
Thank you for your invitation to the French Peace Movement to speak at the conference.
Hello to the hibakushas and their loved ones.
Last year at this time I spoke at this conference, stressing the need for a global call for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
In August 2023, we were concerned about the possibility of a nuclear war breaking out as a result of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and the almost direct
intervention of NATO. Since then, a new conflict whose genocidal nature has been denounced by the International Criminal Court has erupted in the Middle East.
Recent events in the Golan Heights show that a nuclear war could also break out at any time in the Middle East as a result of heightened tensions.
Global military spending continues to rise, reaching $2,400 billion by 2023, and spending on nuclear weapons modernization continues to increase. In France, the government has set a target of around 100 billion dollars over 15 years for nuclear weapons and their modernization, while in the USA the target is around 1,000 billion dollars over 15 years.
Other nuclear-armed states are following the same trajectory, to varying degrees.
Some fifty conflicts are bloodying the world, killing tens of thousands of the world’s most precious commodities, our young people, who are putting on a resplendent show for us at the 2024 Olympic Games. These young people from all over the world represent the future of the world and of humanity. They are the tangible and real proof that peace is possible, and I would even go so far as to say that these young people show that humanity has no other path to its future than peace, and that it is possible.
A nuclear war could break out at any moment in the heart of Europe or the Middle East.
Under these conditions, the urgent need is for united action by people the world over! The number-one emergency is a global action plan that the organizations gathered here must launch.
YES, it is vital that this 2024 conference once again reaffirms the need for civil society to take a leading role in nuclear disarmament, in the face of the military-media-industrial lobby. This global lobby is fueling the relaunch of the nuclear arms race, whereas the urgent need is to build peace.
This peace-building must be based on respect for international law, i.e. implementation of the principles and values of the United Nations Charter, the Sustainable Development Goals, the work of the IPCC on climate change and the United Nations resolutions for a culture of peace.
We represent the conscience of the world. We have the duty and the power to act and to launch a global mobilization for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
Last year, I presented you with a global appeal for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, which are illegal, dangerous, costly, useless for world security and morally unacceptable. This appeal has gone ahead. It was endorsed by the World Social Forum of Struggles and Resistances at the World Social Forum in Nepal in 2024. It was enriched at the International General Assembly of Abolition 2000 in April 2024. In France, it is supported by the Collectif National des Marches pour la Paix, which brings together some 200 organizations, including 3 central trade unions. A few days before the meeting on the NPT in Geneva in July 2024, we launched an appeal to support this campaign, and in three days received the backing of some 50 organizations from 30 different countries.
We publicly launched this appeal on Tuesday, July 24, 2024 at the entrance to the United Nations in Geneva, in the presence of a delegation from BIP bureau
international de la Paix, elected representatives from Mayors for Peace France and members of the Japanese delegation present in Geneva, including Yayoi Tsuchida, a member of BIP (international peace bureau), accompanied by a young Japanese activist, with the slogan “disarmament, enough words! actions!!”
It’s time for me to read this worldwide appeal:
Global Appeal for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
We, citizens of all countries, recognize that “nuclear weapons are illegal, dangerous, costly and immoral” and that their elimination is provided for by the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (CTBT), which came into force on January 22, 2021.
We, the citizens of all countries, demand that all States of the world do everything in their power, without delay and in compliance with the above-mentioned treaties, to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons, weapons of terror and mass extermination of populations, indeed of the annihilation of all life on Earth.
We demand that all the resources wasted on these weapons be used for the well- being of humanity, for the fight against global warming, for the protection of our common planet and for the construction of a peaceful world based on justice, solidarity and cooperation.
Today, we are proposing to the World Conference against A and H Bombs that together we build what can and must become a global mobilization for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, built around this appeal.
We ask the conference to support this initiative, which marks a kind of insurrection of conscience emanating from the civil society of the world’s fourth largest nuclear power, with the support of organizations from some thirty countries acting in several countries possessing nuclear weapons or hosting nuclear weapons on their territory.
Now we have the need and the duty to work together in a united and constructive way to make this appeal the guiding thread of a global campaign of actions to make the demands of people all over the world heard, while working with all the States,
international organizations, national and international institutions and local authorities throughout the world who wish to do so.
We propose that you reflect on and implement together an action plan comprising several stages:
1- Over and above our actions in support of the global appeal for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, we propose a next meeting on September 26, 2024, the UN International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, with the aim of expanding the list of organizations supporting this campaign and organizing a global videoconference.
2- Request the UN to lend its support and set up a global signature site enabling all the peoples of the world to sign this appeal. It is the role of the United Nations to enable us, the peoples, to express our support on a massive scale for the work of the United Nations for nuclear disarmament. Such an initiative has already been taken by the United Nations at the launch of the World Decade for a Culture of Peace in 2000. It was signed by 75 million people in support of the peace manifesto drawn up at UNESCO.
3- call for united and unifying global mobilizations, at the 3rd meeting of the States Parties to the TIAN in March 2025, between August 6 and 9, 2025, for the global wave of peace and the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which should be a huge moment of
mobilization worldwide, then the organization of peace concerts in major cities around the world, including Hiroshima, Nagasaki, New York, Paris, Geneva and elsewhere, as part of the International Day of Peace on September 21, 2025. Finally, on September 26, 2025, we propose to call for peace and nuclear disarmament initiatives around the world as part of the UN International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
4 – to set up a global follow-up committee to lead the campaign through to the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, and beyond.
Let’s imagine and work towards the realization of a world of peace, justice and solidarity, free of nuclear weapons, with the Rev Com of the NPT in 2026 as an important milestone.
We shall overcome.