![]() Nuclear weapons are extremely efficient at igniting vast numbers of simultaneous fires over large areas. The most important new evidence relates to climate impacts. The evidence grows ever clearer as to the catastrophic effects. In the decades since 1983 we have learned much about the multiplicity of impacts of nuclear explosions and war. A one-day intergovernmental humanitarian conference will precede it to review research updates on the impacts of nuclear weapons and the risks of nuclear war. ![]() The regularly scheduled at least biennial meetings of States Parties, including review conferences at least every 6 years, to further implementation, promotion, and development of the treaty will begin with the first meeting currently planned for 22–24 March 2022 in Vienna, Austria. Thus, the number of States Parties will continue to grow, and with them the legal, political, and moral force of the treaty. The 31 signatory states which have not yet ratified the treaty are very likely to do so. Despite many competing priorities and fierce opposition to the TPNW from states deploying nuclear weapons, many of the supportive but not yet signatory states are likely to sign. In 2016, more than 120 states supported the development and negotiation of the treaty at each step in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that required voting, and adoption of the treaty in 2017, then again for subsequent UNGA resolutions supporting the treaty. From 2014, 127 states joined the Austrian-initiated Humanitarian Pledge, committing to work collaboratively to fill a legal gap: nuclear weapons as the last and only weapon of mass destruction not prohibited by an international treaty. From this date, nations are required to fulfil their obligations under the treaty, starting 90 days after each completed its procedure for joining the treaty, thereby becoming a "State Party" to it.īy 14 December 2021, 86 countries had signed the treaty and 57 had ratified it. This triggered the treaty's formal legal entry into force 90 days later, on 22 January 2021. When Honduras ratified the treaty (hereinafter, TPNW) on 24 October 2020, the world achieved a milestone of 50 state ratifications, signalling their readiness to be legally bound by its provisions. ![]() It discussed the role of public health evidence-based advocacy in its development. Both demand urgent attention.Īn article in these pages in 2018 titled: "The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: a planetary health good of the highest order" described this new United Nations treaty, adopted in 2017, the first to comprehensively and categorically prohibit the worst weapons of mass destruction. While the climate emergency from global heating is finally receiving substantial government, professional, and public attention worldwide, the more acute existential risk to the stable and hospitable climate needed for human and planetary health posed by nuclear weapons is not. For nuclear weapons, the gap between government policy and the evidence on consequences and risks is a gaping chasm in 41 nations that claim some unique right to threaten people worldwide with indiscriminate nuclear violence or to assist others to do so. Sadly, in many jurisdictions this is inadequately the case, exacerbating adverse health effects and risks. During the years 20, dramatic explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic and rapidly accelerating severity and frequency of extreme weather and disasters caused by global heating have painfully underscored the necessity for public policies to be firmly grounded in evidence, especially those related to catastrophic and existential risks. This article reviews current evidence, challenges, and opportunities towards controlling the most acute existential threat facing humankind and the biosphere: growing danger of nuclear war. ![]() The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is now in legal force Evidence-based advocacy by health professionals on the planetary health imperative to eliminate nuclear weapons has never been more urgent. These factors, abrogation of existing nuclear arms control agreements, policies of first nuclear use and war fighting, growing armed conflicts worldwide, and increasing use of information and cyberwarfare, exacerbate dangers of nuclear war. Nor has any of the 32 states claiming reliance on another state's nuclear weapons yet ended such reliance. None of the nine nuclear-armed states is disarming instead, all invest enormously in new and more hazardous nuclear weapons. Evidence of the consequences of nuclear war, particularly the global climatic and nutritional effects of the abrupt ice age conditions from even a relatively small regional nuclear war, indicates that these are more severe than previously thought. The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)-an important planetary health good-entered into legal force in January 2021. ![]()
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