Deodat Maharaj,
Managing Director of the United Nations Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2024 (IPS) – Last month, world leaders gathered at the time of the UN General Assembly in New York and agreed on a pioneering Pact for the Future. This global accord has implications across a broad range of issues that affect every country. It offers much hope for the poorest and most vulnerable countries on the planet, known as Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
The world’s 45 LDCs are home to a billion people who face systemic underdevelopment marked by poverty, inadequate health systems, poor infrastructure and limited access to education and technology.
While some progress has been made during the last decade, less than a fifth of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are on track to be met. For example, only around 60% of children in least developed countries complete primary school despite improving literacy rates across the globe. Healthcare disparities are also stark, with maternal mortality rates averaging 430 deaths per 100,000 live births in low-income countries compared to 13 per 100,000 in wealthier nations.
The Pact for the Future, along with its two annexes, the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations, offers an inclusive roadmap aimed at accelerating progress towards the SDGs. By also leveraging advancements in science, technology and innovation, the framework seeks to dislodge decades of stagnation and inequality.
The Pact for the Future outlines several key commitments: On digital cooperation, the Global Digital Compact presents targeted actions for a safer, more inclusive, more equitable digital world by closing the digital divide and expanding inclusion in the digital economy.
On sustainable development and financing for development, the Pact reaffirms the 2030 Agenda and places the eradication of poverty at the centre of efforts to achieve it. Amongst the proposed actions, it pledges to close the SDG financing gap and strengthen efforts to address climate change, which is disproportionately impacting LDCs.
On financial reform, the Pact seeks an overhaul of global financial systems, including by granting developing countries a greater voice in decision-making. It seeks to mobilize additional financing for the SDGs and generally making finance more readily available. The Pact also addresses the unsustainable debt burdens of many LDCs.
This novel Pact for the Future has the potential to give a push to the development agenda across the developing world, but especially so in LDCs. However, for success, there are some prerequisites. Firstly, there is the matter of financing. It is good to see the welcome emphasis on boosting financing for developing countries and making it more accessible. With finance, the possibilities are unlimited. Without finance, progress will once more be stymied. Therefore, the international community must match words with action.
Secondly, the role of business as an essential partner is key. A government-centric approach on its own cannot and will not work. More specifically, there must be attention to the micro, small and medium-scale enterprises sector, which accounts for the majority of businesses and generates the bulk of employment in most developing countries. Systematic support for digitalisation, innovation and the application of technology to this sector will create jobs and opportunities whilst boosting inclusive growth.
Thirdly, multilateralism is vital. The Pact for the Future has enormous potential, with the power to materially shift the dial for least-developed countries. However, it will require international cooperation, sustained political will and strong accountability mechanisms. If realised, this bold initiative could become the catalyst for new technological investments that can help shape an equally bold future for the world’s poorest.
At its core, the UN’s Pact for the Future is a blueprint for renewed cooperation in a fragmented world and offers much hope. There may not be another such opportunity. Let us seize the moment.
Note: Deodat Maharaj is the Managing Director of the United Nations Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries and can be contacted at: Deodat.Maharaj@un.org
The world must take action to improve food security, which is at risk due to conflict and climate change. Credit, Busani Bafana/IPS
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 15 2024 (IPS) – High levels of hunger will continue for another 136 years in many developing countries, according to a new report assessing global hunger.
The report, the 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI), paints a grim picture, predicting that global hunger levels will remain high for another century. If more progress is not made to end hunger, it will continue to reverse many development gains. The report blames the combined crises of conflict, climate change, high food prices and mounting debt, all of which are denying billions of people the right to adequate food.
Hunger Here To Stay
Published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, on October 10, 2024, the GHI reveals that at least 64 countries are unlikely to reach low hunger levels until 2160 if the current pace of change continues.
Hunger is at serious or alarming levels in 42 countries, with conflicts exacerbating food crises in places like Gaza and Sudan, where famine is already present in North Darfur, the report found.
Now in its 19th year, the GHI ranks countries based on recorded levels of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality. Of the 136 countries examined, 36 face serious hunger levels, while six at the bottom of the index—Somalia, Yemen, Chad, Madagascar, Burundi, and South Sudan—have alarming hunger levels. In 2023 alone, 281.6 million people in 59 countries and territories faced crisis-level or acute food insecurity, including Gaza, Sudan, Haiti and Burkina Faso.
The report warns that the chances of meeting the UN’s goal of zero hunger by 2030 are grim.
Concern Worldwide’s Chief Executive, David Regan, described the situation as disappointing that the 2030 goal was now out of reach.
“Our response should be to redouble our efforts to regain momentum,” Regan told IPS. “We need global action to tackle hunger.”
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the regions most affected by hunger. According to the GHI, about 22 countries in Africa are facing serious hunger levels. Of the top ten countries cited for having serious to alarming hunger levels, five are in Africa.
David Regan, Chief Executive, Concern Worldwide. Credit: Concern worldwide
Conflict, Climate Change and High Debt Fuel Hunger
Large-scale armed conflicts, climate change, high food prices, market disruptions, economic downturns, and debt crises in many low- and middle-income countries have combined to complicate efforts to reduce hunger, the report found.
“Conflict can only be resolved where the external stakeholders that are typically fueling the conflict, step away from using conflict to acquire the resources or to increase the instability of the most fragile states,” Regan told IPS. “Climate change will not stop until those responsible for the largest emissions reduce them. It is not possible to say that the human right to food is being respected globally when powerful nations are clearly not playing their role in addressing its causes.”
Regan criticized wealthy nations for not playing their part in addressing global hunger, stating that while they have not turned their backs on the issue, political interest in solving hunger has waned in recent years.
The report further notes that more than 115 million people globally are internally displaced—some have been forced to migrate as a result of persecution, conflict violence and many more displaced by weather-related disasters.
The wars in Gaza and Sudan have led to exceptional food crises, the report stated, flagging rising inequality between and within countries. Although extreme poverty in middle-income countries has decreased, income inequality remains persistently high, and poverty in the poorest countries is worse than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gender Equality, Key to Food Security
The report also draws attention to the link between gender inequality, food insecurity, and climate change, noting that these factors combined have put communities and countries under extreme stress.
FAO Director-General QU Dongyu delivers his speech during the opening session of 29th Session of the Committee on Agriculture. Credit: FAO/Cristiano Minichiello
“Governments must invest in and promote gender equality and climate change and recognize and deliver on the right to food so that all people are assured the right to food,” Regan said.
Ahead of World Food Day, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has echoed the call for swift action to eliminate hunger and ensure everyone has access to safe, nutritious food.
The World Food Day is being marked under the theme Right to food for a better life and a better future, which underscores the urgency to provide varied and healthy food to all.
FAO Director General Qu Dongyu noted that 730 million people are facing hunger due to the global challenges caused by man-made and natural disasters. Besides, more than 2.8 billion people in the world cannot afford a healthy diet.
“There is no time to lose, we must take immediate action, we must act together,” Dongyu urged, reiterating that the right to food is a basic human right.
Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo waws today awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Credit: Niklas Elmehed/Nobel Prize
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 2024 (IPS) – The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres congratulated grassroots Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo on being awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
“The atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as the hibakusha, are selfless, soul-bearing witnesses of the horrific human cost of nuclear weapons,” he said in a statement.
“While their numbers grow smaller each year, the relentless work and resilience of the hibakusha are the backbone of the global nuclear disarmament movement.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2024 Peace Prize for “its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
The committee said the global movement arose in response to the atom bomb attacks of August 1945.
“The testimony of the Hibakusha—the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—is unique in this larger context. These historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons. The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.”
It singled out Nihon Hidankyo, who reportedly cried following the announcement and other representatives of the Hibakusha to have contributed greatly to the establishment of the “nuclear taboo.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee acknowledged one encouraging fact: “No nuclear weapon has been used in war in nearly 80 years.”
The award comes as the world prepares to mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated 120 000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A comparable number died of burn and radiation injuries in the months and years that followed.
“Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically. A nuclear war could destroy our civilization,” the committee said.
“The fates of those who survived the infernos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were long concealed and neglected. In 1956, local Hibakusha associations along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations. This name was shortened in Japanese to Nihon Hidankyo. It would become the largest and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan.”
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 fulfills Alfred Nobel’s desire to recognize efforts of the greatest benefit to humankind.
Guterres said he would “never forget my many meetings with them over the years. Their haunting living testimony reminds the world that the nuclear threat is not confined to history books. Nuclear weapons remain a clear and present danger to humanity, once again appearing in the daily rhetoric of international relations.”
He said the only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons is to eliminate them altogether. IPS UN Bureau Report
Farmers, traders and consumers at the Mbare Musika Territorial Market in Harare, Zimbabwe. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
HARARE, Oct 4 2024 (IPS) – African policymakers, local leaders and the private sector have been asked to create an enabling environment that will help African traders and farmer folks build reliable systems for food security and resilience through territorial markets.
During a week-long 2024 Africa Agroecological Entrepreneurship and Seed Festival in Harare, Zimbabwe, experts observed that persistent crises have shown the importance of resilient close-to-home ‘territorial’ markets that feed billions of people every day—from public markets and street vendors to cooperatives, from urban agriculture to online direct sales, and from food hubs to community kitchens.
“For instance, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global food prices spiked by 15 percent, forcing policymakers around the world to question how to reduce dependency on volatile global markets and strengthen food self-sufficiency,” said Dr. Million Belay, the General Coordinator at the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).
“Further, questions have been raised about how people are actually fed and by whom, prompting us to ask: in this century of crisis, what kinds of food supply chains and markets can build resilience and help fulfill the right to food—nourishing people around the world more sustainably and equitably?” asked Belay.
To answer the question, experts are calling for policies and a sound working environment that will empower territorial markets that promote dietary diversity and affordable nutritious foods for all, allow producers and food workers to retain control over their livelihoods, and produce food that is adaptable to climate change shocks and emerging crises.
These markets have been broadly defined as markets that are centered on small-scale agroecological food producers and business owners that produce and sell a variety of commodities, and often meet the preferences of the majority of farmers, traders and consumers.
Studies have shown that these markets play a crucial role in making food accessible and affordable, especially for low-income populations in the Global South, allowing for the purchase of small and flexible quantities of food, price bargaining, informal credit arrangements, and being located in or near low-income neighborhoods.
A new study launched on the sidelines of the Harare event that culminated into the fifth Biennial Africa Food Systems Conference, however, shows that profit-oriented corporate value chains are highly concentrated in Africa’s market places.
The report, titled ‘Food from Somewhere,’ by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES Food), finds that just seven grain traders control at least 50 percent of the global grain trade, six major corporations control 78 percent of the agrochemical market, the top eight carriers of freight account for more than 80 percent of the market for ocean freight capacity and globally, 1 percent of the world’s largest farms control 70 percent of the world’s farmland.
This, according to experts, amounts to a corporate capture of Africa’s food systems.
The report is therefore advocating for a paradigm shift, urging governments to reinvest in local and regional supply infrastructure, relocalize public purchasing and develop food security strategies for a more resilient and equitable approach to food security.
“The problem for smallholders is not of being connected to markets (most are already involved in markets) but rather the conditions of their access and the rules and logics by which markets operate—who determines prices and on what criteria, who controls the costs of production, who holds market power, among other issues,” said Mamadou Goïta, a member of IPES and the lead author.
A spot check at the Mbare Musika territorial market in Harare found a variety of foodstuffs sourced from all eight regions of Zimbabwe, among others from neighboring countries, such as apples and other fruits from South Africa, fish and ginger from Mozambique, groundnuts from Malawi, sorghum from Botswana, as well as grapes from Egypt and tamarind from Tanzania, among others.
“This is the central hub for smallholder farmers and traders, supporting over seven million people from all over Zimbabwe and other parts of the continent,” said Charles Dhewa, Chief Executive Officer, Knowledge Transfer Africa (KTA), whose flagship known as eMkambo (eMarket) is to create a physical and web-based market for agriculture and rural development, integrating the use of mobile phones and the internet to create, adapt and share knowledge.
Mbare Musika Market, which is in the outskirts of Harare, is located next to the main bus-park, through which food is brought in using informal means such as passenger buses and vans from different parts of the country, in small and big quantities, and of different varieties and qualities.
“The evidence is clear—localized food systems are vital for feeding an increasingly hungry planet and preventing food insecurity and famine,” said Shalmali Guttal, the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South. “They provide nutritious, affordable food and are far more adaptable to global shocks and disruptions than industrial supply chains,” she added.
Jennifer Clapp, professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada, pointed out that during this time of rising hunger and ecological fragility, global industrial food chains will be catastrophically liable to break down under the strain of frequent crises.
“To have a chance of reaching the world’s zero hunger goal by 2030, we need to re-imagine our food systems, and we need to bolster the food markets that serve the poor,” she said.
When the weather is bad, the residents of the Litoral neighborhood in Manzanillo, Cuba, are forced to evacuate their houses. When it’s calm, the sea penetrates the foundations of houses, leaving them vulnerable. Now the community is getting together to restore the mangroves and improve the environment to return their homes to safety.
A fisherman sits next to several boats at the GeoCuba Local Interest Fishing Port in the bay of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
MANZANILLO, Cuba, Oct 2 2024 (IPS) – Every time a hurricane clouds the skies over the city of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma, the sea pounds the Litoral neighbourhood, forcing many of the 200 families who live there to evacuate inland because of flooding.
When the weather is calm, the sea penetrates subtly and constantly, salinizing the water table and eroding the coast, affecting the foundations of houses and artesian wells.
“The water almost always enters this area. The houses were built too close to the sea and the mangroves are deforested,” community leader Martha Labrada, 65, told IPS.
Labrada has presided over the people’s council (local administration organisation) for 13 years, which covers the Litoral neighbourhood and a two-kilometer stretch of coastline that is home to about 5,000 people.
A mangrove forest in Manzanillo Bay, eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
Protective mangroves
According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), mangroves extract up to five times more carbon than land forests, raise the ground level and thus slow down the rise in sea level.
This coastal ecosystem, typical of tropical and subtropical areas, usually consists of a swamp forest, a strip of black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) and a strip of red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), the barrier closest to the sea, whose trunks absorb the impact of waves and protect against extreme weather conditions.
Mangroves act as nurseries for fish fry and as havens for honey bees, among a huge variety of fauna and flora.
They also serve as a protective area for fresh water. If degraded, salt from marine waters would more easily enter underground water basins, contaminating the drinkability of this liquid and disabling wells located miles inland.
Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of the Mi Costa project on behalf of the provincial government of Granma in eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
Protection from the sea
The Litoral neighbourhood is one of the most vulnerable in the municipality to climate change because it borders the mangroves, but it is not the only one in this situation.
In Manzanillo there are six people’s councils that are in direct contact with the coast. Some 60,000 inhabitants suffer the consequences, almost half of the total population of the municipality located 753 kilometres east of Havana.
The need to find solutions to the problem of rising sea levels was therefore born in the rural neighborhoods and villages of Manzanillo.
To counteract this prospect, small community projects emerged in 2018, also promoted by a national plan to tackle climate change known as Tarea Vida, which had been launched by the central government a year earlier.
As a result, 23 initiatives were set up in the municipality, which were later grouped in a single nationwide project called Mi Costa, the project’s coordinator in Manzanillo, Margot Hernández, told IPS.
Mi Costa seeks to create conditions of resilience to climate change through adaptation solutions based on strengthening the benefits provided by coastal ecosystems. In essence, its main task is to reforest and rehabilitate mangroves.
“In addition, we have to change living habits. That’s what we are working on,” Hernández added.
Ditch built in the middle of a mangrove swamp to contribute to its drainage and the recirculation of saline and fresh water in the municipality of Manzanillo, eastern Cuba. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo
Behind deforestation
Manzanillo, because of its low isometry and its 25 kilometres of coastline, is in a serious state of environmental vulnerability.
The deforested areas of mangroves amount to 708.7 hectares, being the most affected concentrated at the river mouths.
With a weakened natural containment barrier, the saline waters penetrate the riverbeds and, for example, in the Yara River, in the north of the municipality, they do so up to seven kilometres inland, according to Leandro Concepción, the project coordinator for the Granma Provincial Delegation of Hydraulic Resources.
In any case, the salinity penetrates through underground water basins and, according to Hernández, the coordinator in Manzanillo, “there are people’s artesian wells, which were once used for consumption but are now salinized.”
Mangrove deforestation has several causes: the lack or blockage of channels hinders the ebb and flow of the tide and alters the exchange of freshwater with marine waters.
It is also affected by the invasion of invasive exotic species such as the arboreal Ipil Ipil or guaje (Leucaena leucocephala), anthropogenic human intervention through the construction of infrastructure, agricultural and livestock practices near the coast, and even the felling of mangroves to make charcoal.
A group of people receive a class given by the Mi Costa project at the Manzanillo Training Center. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo
According to Labrada, the community leader in Litoral, several houses have been built almost adjacent to the mangrove, without the corresponding construction permits. Moreover, state-owned industrial infrastructures, such as a shoe factory and an inactive sawmill, cause the same damage.
Coastal and river pollution from industrial waste dumping also depresses coastal ecosystems.
For decades, the region’s sugar mills and rice industry dumped their waste into the rivers, Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of Mi Costa on behalf of the Granma provincial government, told IPS.
This situation is one of the examples of climate injustice in the area: upstream, the industrial sector caused environmental havoc that affected mangrove health and, at the end of the chain, the quality of life of coastal residents, making them more vulnerable to climatic events.
In 2023, decisive measures were taken to solve the problem and the few active factories no longer discharge their waste into the sea or use filters. In the second half of 2024, the results have already begun to show: “The migratory birds have returned, something you didn’t see months ago,” said Estrada.
However, the effects of climate change still persist in Manzanillo.
“The environmental situation today is quite complex for the keys,” Víctor Remón, director of Manzanillo’s Department of Territorial Development, which belongs to the local government, told IPS.
The municipality’s territory contains an extensive cay of 2.44 square kilometres, but Cayo Perla has already been submerged under the waters of the Gulf of Guacanayabo.
“It disappeared six or seven years ago. It was a beautiful key, with beautiful white sands. There was a tourist facility from where you could see the city of Manzanillo,” Remón said.
For his part, Roberto David Rosales, fisherman and Mi Costa contributor, remembers a path he used to walk along the shore until last year; now it has been ‘swallowed’ by the sea.
“Almost two meters were lost in this area in one year. These are things that force us to be protectors of the mangroves. The Mi Costa project came at the right time,” he told IPS.
Margot Hernández (left), coordinator of the Mi Costa project in Manzanillo, opens the training centre in the city of Manzanillo. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo
Steps towards a solution
Mi Costa was made official in December 2021, but heavy work began in 2023, due to a pause caused by the COVID pandemic.
In Manzanillo, the project brought together about 100 collaborators, who were divided into small community groups of about 10 people, who support the monitoring and cleaning of mangroves and ditches and awareness-raising among the population.
Labrada also has its own people’s council group, composed of six women and four men.
In addition, training centres have been set up in the municipality on climate change adaptability, environmental safeguards, gender and other issues. To date, 10,500 people have been trained.
“We are working with the coast dwellers, because the issue is that people don’t leave the coasts, but that they stay and learn to live there, taking care of them,” said Estrada, the government coordinator.
Sunset on the boardwalk in the eastern Cuban city of Manzanillo. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
They have also built 1,300 meters of ditches, using picks and shovels, to achieve a form of water rotation, but this figure has yet to be multiplied.
The immediate challenge is to finish building the nursery where the mangrove seedlings will sprout and then be planted in the deforested areas.
“Once we have the nursery, there will be no difficulty at all in Granma to begin the process of rehabilitating the mangroves,” Norvelis Reyes, Mi Costa’s main coordinator in the province, told IPS.
Mi Costa’s area of action in Granma covers, in addition to the coast of Manzanillo, the northern municipalities of Yara and Río Cauto.
Nationwide, 24 communities in the south of Cuba are involved in resilience actions (1,300 kilometres of coastline), of which 14 are at risk of disappearing due to coastal flooding by 2050, including Manzanillo.
The southern coast of this Caribbean island country was chosen because it is more vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, given its lower geographical isometry than in the north.
In addition, the south also has a higher concentration of mangroves, making it more necessary and effective to build coastal resilience based on adaptation and focused on the rehabilitation and reforestation of these ecosystems.
While implemented by the communities themselves and with the participation of the villagers, the project is supervised by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and the country office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The Green Climate Fund provided funding of USD 23.9 million, while Cuban state institutions contributed USD 20.3 million.
The ultimate goal will be to restore some 114 square kilometres of mangroves, 31 square kilometres of swamp forest and nine square kilometres of grassy swamps in eight years. After that, a period of 22 years will be dedicated to the operation and maintenance of the implemented actions.
It is estimated that more than 1.3 million people will benefit on this Caribbean island, the largest in the region and home to 11 million people.
The panel for the session on “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Imagining a World without Nuclear Weapons.” Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS
PARIS, Sep 27 2024 (IPS) – In any discussion of world peace and the future of humanity, the issue of nuclear arms must be addressed, and now.
That was the message from a range of delegates at the “Imaginer la Paix / Imagine Peace” conference, held in Paris September 22 to 24, and organized by the Sant’Egidio Community, a Christian organization founded in Rome in 1968 and now based in 70 countries.
Describing its tenets as “Prayer, service to the Poor and work for Peace,” the community has hosted 38 international, multi-faith peace meetings, bringing together activists from around the world. This is the first time the conference has been held in Paris, with hundreds traveling to France, itself a nuclear-weapon state.
Occurring against the backdrop of brutal, on-going conflicts in different regions and a new race by some countries to “upgrade” their arsenal, the gathering had a sense of urgency, with growing fears that nuclear weapons might be used by warlords. Participants highlighted current and past atrocities and called upon world leaders to learn from the past.
“After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been blessed with many who have said ‘no’—’no’ a million times, creating movements and treaties, (and) awareness… that the only reasonable insight to learn from the conception and use of nuclear weapons is to say ‘no’,” said Andrea Bartoli, president of the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue, based in New York.
Participating in a conference forum Monday titled “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Imagining a World Without Nuclear Weapons,” Bartoli and other speakers drew stark pictures of what living in a world with nuclear weapons entails, and they highlighted developments since World War II.
“After the two bombs were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humans built more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and performed more than 2,000 tests. Still today we have more than 12,500, each of them with power greatly superior to the two used in August 1945,” Bartoli said.
Despite awareness of the catastrophic potential of these weapons and despite a UN treaty prohibiting their use, some governments argue that possessing nuclear arms is a deterrent—an argument that is deceptive, according to the forum speakers.
Anna Ikeda, program coordinator for disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International. Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS
Jean-Marie Collin, director of ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a movement launched in the early 2000s in Australia and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017), said that leaders who cite deterrence “accept the possibility of violating” international human rights.
“Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy cities and kill and maim entire populations, which means that all presidents and heads of government who implement a defense policy based on nuclear deterrence and who are therefore responsible for giving this order, are aware of this,” Collin told the forum.
ICAN campaigned for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was adopted at the United Nations in 2017, entering into force in 2021. The adoption came nearly five decades after the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which entered into force in 1970.
The terms of the NPT consider five countries to be nuclear weapons states: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. Four other countries also possess nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel.
According to a 2024 ICAN report, these nine states jointly spent €85 billion (USD 94,6 billion) on their atomic weapon arsenals last year, an expenditure ICAN has called “obscene” and “unacceptable.” France, whose president Emmanuel Macron spoke about peace in broad, general terms at the opening of the conference, spent around €5,3 billion (about USD 5,9 billion) in 2023 on its nuclear weapons, said the report.
The policy of “deterrence” and “reciprocity,” which essentially means “we’ll get rid of our weapons if you get rid of yours,” has been slammed by ICAN and fellow disarmament activists.
“With the constant flow of information, we often tend to lose sight of the reality of figures,” Collin said at the peace conference. “I hope this one will hold your attention: it is estimated that more than 38,000 children were killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Children!”
All those killed—an estimated 210,000 people by the end of 1945—died in horrific ways, as survivors and others have testified. Delegates said that this knowledge should be the real “deterrent.”
At the forum, Anna Ikeda, program coordinator for disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International, a global Buddhist movement, described testimony from a Hiroshima a-bomb survivor, Reiko Yamada, as one she would never forget.
“She (Yamada) stated, ‘A good friend of mine in the neighbourhood was waiting for her mother to return home with her four brothers and sisters. Later, she told me that on the second day after the bombing, a moving black lump crawled into the house. They first thought it was a black dog, but they soon realized it was their mother; she collapsed and died when she finally got to her children. They cremated her body in the yard,” Ikeda told the audience with emotion.
“Who deserves to die such a death? Nobody!” she continued. “Yet our world continues to spend billions of dollars to upkeep our nuclear arsenals, and our leaders at times imply readiness to use them. It is utterly unacceptable.”
Ikeda said that survivors, known as the “hibakusha” in Japan, have a fundamental answer to why nuclear weapons must be abolished—it is that “no one else should ever suffer what we did.”
Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.
