The coming into effect of the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will empower and breathe new life into the struggles of affected communities, destroyed landscapes and smaller countries for a nuclear-free world.
The decades long ‘legal gap’ on nuclear weapons has finally been bridged. With the ratification of the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), popularly known as the Nuclear Ban Treaty by Honduras today, the requirement of 50 UN member-states acceding to the treaty is complete and the production, possession and use of nuclear weapons will henceforth be deemed illegal, internationally.
While the United States has consistently pressurized countries against supporting the treaty, other nuclear weapons powers, including China and India, distanced themselves from the cause, despite their long-standing posture of being ‘reluctant’ nuclear states, ready to espouse disarmament if pursued universally. In 2016 when the 122 countries voted for the Nuclear Ban Treaty in the UN, China boycotted the negotiations while India abstained on rather flimsy grounds.
While the entry into force of the TPNW will not automatically and immediately render global nuclear abolition a reality, what sets it apart from other nuclear disarmament endeavours is that it does not leave its goals up to the benevolence of the nuclear-haves. The nuclear ban achieves something fundamental and rather commonsensical: from now on, every conversation about nuclear weapons will be one about illegal weapons of terror, and every transaction related to them will not just be morally abhorrent, but prohibited under the law. Surprisingly for all these decades, while land mines, cluster munitions, use of torture etc. were deemed illegal, nukes were not!
