“Recent calls for a resumption of nuclear testing demonstrate that the terrible lessons of the past are being forgotten – or ignored.“, he said.
The International Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2009 to commemorate the official closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons testing site in present-day Kazakhstan on August 29, 1991.
That site alone saw 456 nuclear test explosions between 1949 and 1989.
Semipalatinsk test site in Kurchatov, Kazakhstan. (file)
The era of nuclear proliferation
Under the shadow of the Cold War, the world witnessed an unprecedented era of nuclear weapons proliferation and testing.
Between 1954 and 1984, there was an average of at least one nuclear weapons test somewhere in the world. per weekMost had a destructive power far exceeding that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Furthermore, nuclear arsenals have grown exponentially, most of them much more powerful than the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
According to Mr. Guterres, this development has left a “legacy of destruction”, significantly disrupting people’s lives and livelihoods, and affecting the environment with radioactive traces even in the deepest ocean trenches.
‘The world must speak with one voice’
The UN Secretary-General is calling on the world to speak out and “end this practice once and for all”.
He has praised the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty as an “essential, verifiable security tool” due to its total ban on all nuclear test
He called on all countries required to ratify the Treaty for it to enter into force to do so immediately and unconditionally.
“Let us rise to the challenge for humanity – and ban nuclear testing forever,” he concluded.
Read The editorial here marks the day on our United Nations News The website was written by the President of the General Assembly and the head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.
