On October 27, 2016, the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution urging member-states to start negotiation the following year for a nuclear weapons convention, with unanimous support by 123 states. This historic resolution proposed to have multilateral negotiations at the UN for legally binding instruments, leading to a total elimination of nuclear weapons, which is now scheduled in March and June to July. A possible document will stigmatize nuclear weapons and the danger they represent for the first time in human history. If this resolution is put into effect, nuclear powers will be under political and moral pressure for possession of such weapons, which will pave the new way for a world without nuclear weapons.
This was achieved by some willing powers such as the Non-Allied Movement and some governments in developed countries, as well as by strong campaign by civil societies around the world. In this decade, more than 50 million people in total, signed various petitions for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and our organization, UITBB, has been one of the driving forces in this campaign, which is something we should be proud of.
In these very critical moments, the atomic bomb survivors (Hibakusha) proposed and called on societies and people around the world to join their International Signature Campaign in Support of the Appeal of the Hibakusha, the Atomic Bomb Survivors of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Their average age is now over 80, and this is our responsibility for next generation, namely to pass on a world without nuclear weapons.
The UITBB Executive Committee endorsed this International Signature Campaign and requested that all its affiliates promote this petition among their respective members.