The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will soon enter into force
A US ballistic missile test in the Marshall Islands on August 4, 2020 (illustrative image).
Senior Airman Hanah Abercrombie / US Air Force via AP
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Thanks to Honduras, which has just ratified it, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will enter into force in three months.
A text above all symbolic, but which puts pressure on the great atomic powers.
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An absolute paradox of international diplomacy, the five members of the UN Security Council are also five countries that have not signed this Treaty banning nuclear weapons.
France, China, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom have even put pressure on their allies so that this treaty never sees the light of day.
It's missed, it will take effect on January 25.
By this date, the signatory states will have to respect a golden rule: do not use, test or produce any nuclear weapon.
This treaty is above all symbolic because in reality, none of the nations which have ratified this agreement hold the atomic bomb.
South Africa gave it up in the 1990s, as did Kazakhstan, which had inherited thousands of warheads when the Soviet Union broke up.
But this text wants to serve as a cry of alarm.
It puts nuclear power at the same level as chemical or bacteriological weapons by defining them as weapons of mass destruction which should be prohibited.
The promoters of denuclearization are now hoping for an ethical and moral leap from the great powers but also from the banking sector which finances the development of these arsenals.
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Nuclear
Defense
Diplomacy
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