UN's Dennis Francis: Enough Is Enough: End Nuclear Testing Once And For All

In celebration of the International Day against Nuclear Tests, Astana hosted the critical workshop on fostering cooperation and enhancing consultation, discussing the mechanisms among the existing nuclear-weapons-free-zones (#NWFZs) on Aug. 27.

Izumi Nakamitsu, the Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affair, addressing the event, said: "The zones, which cover over half of the world’s land mass, represent the belief held by the majority in the world that not possessing nuclear weapons is actually in their security interests."

In his message for the International Day against Nuclear Tests, UN Chief reaffirmed his call for the resumption of nuclear testing demonstrate that the terrible lessons of the past are being forgotten — or ignored.

He said: "On the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, the world must speak with one voice to end this practice once and for all."

"The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is the only prohibition on all nuclear testing, and an essential, verifiable security tool. But it is not yet in force," he continued.

"In the name of the victims of nuclear tests and future generations, I call on all countries whose ratifications are needed for the Treaty to enter into force to do so— immediately and without conditions." 

According to Dennis Francis, President of the United Nations General Assembly,  the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 29 August the International Day Against Nuclear Tests in 2009.

This date recalled the official closing of the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons testing site in today’s Kazakhstan on 29 August 1991; that one site alone having seen 456 nuclear test explosions between 1949 and 1989, he noted.

Francis continued: "Between 1954 and 1984 there was on average at least one nuclear weapons test somewhere in the world every week, most with a blast far exceeding the bombing of Hiroshima; nuclear weapons exploding in the air, on and under the ground and in the sea."

Radioactivity from these test explosions spread across the planet deep into the environment. It can still be traced and measured today, in elephant tusks, in the coral of the Great Barrier Reef and in the deepest ocean trenches.

Meanwhile nuclear weapons stockpiles have grown exponentially. By the early 1980s there were some 60,000 nuclear weapons, most far more powerful than the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

He concluded: "On the International Day against Nuclear Tests, the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting will be convened. On this occasion, we call on all states to be open to the bold but principled decisions needed to reach a final global consensus under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. To end nuclear testing once and for all. Enough is enough."