Nobel Women's Initiative

Seventeen Nobel Peace Laureates have issued a declaration calling upon political leaders and citizens worldwide to act immediately to eliminate nuclear weapons.  The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration urges leaders to choose non-proliferation over nuclear brinkmanship, and citizens to press their leaders to ban nuclear weapons.

With just a year until the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference convenes at the United Nations  April 26 - May 21, 2010, we the undersigned Nobel Peace Laureates renew the call for a complete ban on the production, testing, stockpiling and deployment of nuclear weapons.

The declaration was initiated by Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire, after a visit to the a-bombed city of Hiroshima, Japan.  Signatories include President Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor, President Oscar Arias Sánchez from Costa Rica,  former president Frederik Willem de Klerk from South Africa, President Kim Dae-jung from South Korea, and Wangari Maathai from Kenya.

View the declaration here, as well as video and written messages from the signatories.

LEARN MORE:

View a video message from Mairead Maguire.

View a video message from Shirin Ebadi.

View a video message from Jody Williams.

IN THE MEDIA:

Nobel Laureates compare climate crisis to threat from nuclear weapons,  guardian.co.uk, 29 May 2009

Why we should start worrying and learn to fear the bomb again, thestar.com, 30 May 2009

Peace laureates publish declaration against nuclear arms, Japan Times Online, 19 May 2009

Nobel Peace Winners Issue Declaration, UPI.com, 17 May 2009

The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration of Nobel Peace Laureates

Sixty-four years ago, the horror of atomic bombs was unleashed on Japan, and the world witnessed the destructive power of nuclear weapons.  The world knew then, as we know now, that nuclear weapons must be banned. With just a year until the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference convenes at the United Nations  April 26 - May 21, 2010, we the undersigned Nobel Peace Laureates renew the call for a complete ban on the production, testing, stockpiling and deployment of nuclear weapons.  We remain convinced that world leaders must hear the voices of the millions of people demanding a safer world for all.

We find ourselves in a new era of proliferation.  Despite the near universal ratification of the 1970 treaty, which binds states to nuclear disarmament, there are few signs that nuclear weapon states intend to eliminate their nuclear weapons.  On the contrary, some states are openly threatening to use their weapons, driving others to acquire their own nuclear arms.

We are deeply troubled by the threat of proliferation to non-nuclear weapon states, but equally concerned by the continued development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons by the nuclear states.

The fact that humanity has managed to avoid a third nuclear nightmare is not merely a fortunate whim of history. The resolve of the A-bomb survivors, who have called on the world to avert another Hiroshima or Nagasaki, has surely helped prevent that catastrophe. Moreover, the millions who have supported the survivors in their quest for peace, as well as the reality of our collective restraint, suggest that human beings are imbued with a better, higher nature, an instinct for inhibiting violence and upholding life.

In this year leading up to the NPT Review Conference, states are reviewing progress in the treaty’s implementation, and mapping a path forward.  For the first time in decades, there is an opportunity for genuine progress towards the confidence building, negotiation, and institution-building that will be required to put an end to the nuclear threat.

As this process moves forward, world leaders will be faced with a stark choice: nuclear non-proliferation or nuclear brinkmanship. We can either negotiate an end to proliferation, and a fast track to abolition; or we can wait for the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be repeated.

We believe it is long past the time that humanity heeds the warning made by Albert Einstein in 1946: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”

We know that such a new manner of thinking is possible.  In the past ten years, the governments of the world, working alongside non-governmental organizations, survivors, and international institutions, have negotiated treaties banning two indiscriminate weapons systems - landmines and cluster bombs.  The weapons were banned when the world finally began to understand these weapons for the humanitarian disaster they are.

The world already knows that nuclear weapons are a humanitarian disaster of monstrous proportion.  They too are indiscriminate, illegal and immoral. They are military tools whose consequences have already been in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the long-term impacts of those attacks.  Eliminating nuclear weapons is a possibility -- more than that it is a fundamental necessity for a more secure planet for us all.

As Nobel Peace Laureates, we call on the citizens of the world individually and collectively to press their leaders to grasp the urgency of humanity’s plight and guide us safely to a future that is free of nuclear weapons. Working together we can make that vision a reality.