The following is a brief statement from the International Committee of the Red Cross on the recent Philippine Senate’s approval of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
We are printing it in full.
We commend the Philippine government following the Senate’s approval on Monday, 1 February 2021, of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
The Philippine government’s action on this international instrument is an important contribution toward a world free of nuclear weapons.
Once formal notification is given to the United Nations, the Philippines will become the 53rd State to ratify the treaty, which entered into force on 22 January 2021.
The Philippines was among the 122 States that adopted the treaty in July 2017 and was one of the 50 States that signed the treaty when it opened on 20 September 2017.
The TPNW explicitly and unequivocally prohibits the use, threat of use, development, production, testing and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, and it obliges all States Parties to not assist, encourage or induce anyone in any way to engage in any activity prohibited by the Treaty.
The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement around the world has repeatedly called on all States to ratify the Treaty, to prevent massive human suffering and environmental devastation as previously seen in the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
“This Treaty – the result of more than 75 years of work – sends a clear signal that nuclear weapons are unacceptable from a moral, humanitarian, and now a legal point of view. It sets in motion even higher legal barriers and an even greater stigmatization of nuclear warheads than already exists. It allows us to imagine a world free from these inhumane weapons as an achievable goal,” said ICRC President
Peter Maurer, in a statement on the Treaty’s recent entry into force.
