January 10, 2025 11:13 pm (IST)

Make this your homepage

Foreign

Los Angeles wildfire toll climbs to 10, thousands of structures destroyed | 8 labourers still trapped in Assam's flooded mine even after 3 days of rescue ops | SC refuses to hear petitions seeking review of its same-sex marriage judgement, says there is 'no error' | 'They should wind up the alliance': Omar Abdullah on AAP-Congress fight over Delhi elections | Pune woman killed by her colleague in full public view for not paying back his money, no one intervenes | Los Angeles wildfire leaves 5 dead, forces 1 lakh including celebs to flee, Hollywood hills ablazed | PM Modi condoles death of six people in Tirupati stampede incident | Days after condemning Pak airstrikes, India in a first engages with Afghanistan's Taliban regime | 6 dead in stampede near Tirupati temple during token distribution to offer prayers | Prominent journalist-film producer Pritish Nandy dies of cardiac arrest at 73

UN chief urges all countries to join legally-binding treaty against nuclear tests

India Blooms News Service | | Aug 30, 2017, at 04:30 am

#UN # legally-binding treaty # nuclear tests # AntÃ³nio Guterres

New York, Aug 29(Just Earth News): United Nations Secretary-General AntÃ³nio Guterres has urged all countries to sign and ratify a global treaty that bans nuclear explosions on the Earth's surface, in the atmosphere, underwater and underground.

“More than 2,000 nuclear tests have been conducted over the past seven decades – from the South Pacific to North America, from Central Asia to North Africa. They have harmed some of the world's most vulnerable peoples and pristine ecosystems,” the Secretary-General said in his message for the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

To ensure that no country could conduct another test, he urged all countries to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

To date, 183 countries have signed the CTBT and 166 have ratified it. For the treaty to enter into force, ratification is required from eight more of the so-called Annex 2 States. Of these, China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, and the United States, have yet to ratify it.

DPRK, India and Pakistan are among the 13 countries that have not signed the CTBT.

“I urge all countries yet to join the CTBT to do so as soon as possible,” Guterres said. “For almost 20 years, a global norm has existed against nuclear testing based on voluntarily unilateral moratoriuI applaud this restraint, but it is not enough.”

He noted that continued nuclear tests by DPRK demonstrate that “even the strongest norm is no substitute for a legally-binding prohibition.”

Overnight, DPRK fired a ballistic missile in violation of Security Council resolutions, Guterres said in a separate statement condemning the event and urging DPRK to fully comply with its international obligations.

The comments come on the International Day against Nuclear Tests, which is observed annually on 29 August, following the declaration of that day in a resolution unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2009.

The resolution called for increasing awareness and education “about the effects of nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.” The resolution's adoption also commemorated the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan in 1991.

Photo: US Government

Source: www.justearthnews.com

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.