The Abolition 2000 Global Council, meeting in Saffron Walden England, with participants from Australia, Belgium, Egypt, France, Japan, Romania, Russia, Sweden, the UK, and the USA, reaffirms the Abolition 2000 Statement, which calls for a world free of the nuclear threat, and the Moorea Declaration, which acknowledges the abuses of colonialism and the suffering of indigenous peoples caused by the production and testing of nuclear weapons. We remember the hibakusha — the atomic bomb survivors ? and call on the nations of the world to heed their urgent plea: “Before the last of us leaves this world, nuclear weapons must be abolished forever.”
We recognise that Abolition 2000 now faces a new world context because of the continuing modernisation of nuclear weapons, the US drive to weaponise and nuclearise space, and the increasing burden on the world’s resources that this immoral and illegal quest for global domination creates. The western nuclear weapons states and their allies believe they can put a “lid” on the rising tide of discontent at the economic inequity and lack of social justice among the vast majority of the earth’s people in order to maintain their access to world resources and their unsustainable levels of consumption. We assert that this dangerous and destabilising paradigm cannot endure.
We call instead for a new security framework that will serve all humanity, based on respect for international law and Treaties, conflict prevention and co-operation through a reformed United Nations. We call for immediate negotiations to abolish nuclear weapons, ban all missiles, and keep space for peace. We envisage a world that is free of nuclear weapons, free of the resultant environmental contamination, and free of social and economic injustice. We affirm our belief that this new framework is more than practical and ethical. It is imperative for our planet?s future.
Saffron Walden, May 2001.