Urgent appeal for a nuclear-weapons-free world! Connecting the medical-humanitarian and political perspective. Peace Palace, The Hague

摘要

In 2019 the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Medische Polemologie-Artsen voor vrede (NVMP-Aw), the Dutch section of IPPNW, 'celebrated' its 50th birthday, an age it of course rather never wanted to have reached. Its main effort was the organisation of an international conference at the Peace Palace in The Hague making an urgent appeal for a nuclear-weapons-free world, hoping to make this ideal more of a realistic goal for states by connecting the humanitarian and political perspectives. The conference organisers invited several national and international speakers, committed to the subject, but certainly not all thinking alike on it. For example, it was opened - except of course by Peter Buijs, the chair of the NVMP-Aw - by the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Chair of the Carnegie Foundation, both members of Dutch political parties loyal to NATO and subscribing to its nuclear policy and the national tasks coming from this. Nevertheless, they also underlined the importance and indeed the necessity of nuclear disarmament and the role medical-humanitarian arguments could play in convincing others of this point of view. The last speaker in the Welcome and Introduction section was in no need of convincing. Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, described the present challenges and dangers for nuclear disarmament and stressed the urgency of agreeing on a consensus document in the 2020 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).