General Assembly High-Level Meeting to Commemorate and Promote International Day against Nuclear Tests

The General Assembly holds a high-level plenary meeting to commemorate and promote the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

• Categories: Meetings & Events / General Assembly
• Video Length: 03:18:45
• Production Date: 26 August 2020
• Asset Language: English
• Personal Subject: IZUMI NAKAMITSU; LASSINA ZERBO; TARJA KAARINA HALONEN; TIJJANI MUHAMMAD-BANDE
• Subject Topical: DISARMAMENT; NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY
• MAMS Id: 2554733
• Parent Id: 2554631

Description

Achieving a nuclear-free world is the best way to honour lives devastated by these weapons, the UN disarmament chief told a virtual meeting to commemorate the International Day against Nuclear Tests, observed annually on 29 August.

Speaking on behalf of the Secretary-General, Izumi Nakamitsu said this year’s commemoration falls 75 years after the United States first conducted a nuclear test, resulting in the use of atomic weapons against Japan and some 2,000 more tests carried out by at least eight countries over the succeeding decades.

Impacts on the environment, health and economic development are still being felt today.

“The best way to honour the victims of past nuclear tests is to prevent any in the future,” she stated.

“As the Secretary-General has said, nuclear testing is a relic of another era, and should remain there.”

The International Day Against Nuclear Tests has been commemorated annually since 2010.

The date 29 August marks the anniversary of the 1991 closure of the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan, the largest nuclear test site in the former Soviet Union.

Despite the adoption of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, thousands of nuclear weapons remain at the ready in stockpiles across the world.

As Ms. Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, pointed out, the current era is marked by “increasingly hostile” relations between nuclear arm states seeking to improve the quality and, in some cases, quantity, of their arsenals.

For UN General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for collective action to safeguard humanity, including by making a nuclear-free world a priority.

“The very survival of humanity hinges on our resolute agreement that nuclear weapons are not to be used and should be forever eliminated. A nuclear weapons-free world is the only true guarantee to safeguard civilization from this existential threat,” he said.

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International Day Against Nuclear Tests