NPT Speech
Tadatoshi Akiba,Mayor, City of Hiroshima
President, Mayors for Peace
May 5, 2009

Mr. President, Delegates, Colleagues,
You have just heard Mayor Taue present the intense desire of the people of Nagasaki for theabolition of nuclear weapons. I would like to add, as mayor of the first city ever toexperience the catastrophe of a nuclear war, that there are at least 2,869 more cities andmayors from 134 countries and regions around the world that agree with him! I am referring
to Mayors for Peace, which started the 2020 Vision Campaign five and a half years ago tocreate a nuclear-weapon-free world by 2020. Because mayors are determined to rid theworld of nuclear weapons, our membership has grown almost 6-fold over these 5 years. We
do represent the majority voice of the world.
I predicted last August that the American people would choose a President who would “listenconscientiously to the majority, for whom the top priority is human survival.” President
Obama’s speech in Prague has assured us that the vast majority of the world is absolutely
right in asserting that nuclear weapons should be abolished. The speech was a clarion echoof what Mayors for Peace has created and is pursuing.
It is only proper and fitting that President Obama’s speech is firmly anchored in moral
responsibility. Cities concluded a long time ago that they have suffered for centuries due tothe lack of an effective moral foundation. That is why the City of Gernika-Lumo in its
Peace Declaration demanded that ethics be ushered back into international politics. That is
why Ypres, Belgium, still holds a solemn ceremony to console the souls of the war dead morethan 90 years after the end of World War every evening.
The international community has translated this sublime, moral axiom into a concrete andpractical legal entity by establishing it as the foundation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Article VI, which has been endorsed by the International Court of Justice, legallyobligated all governments to adhere to it diligently and faithfully.
The Court clearly stated that the emphasis must be on the outcome, not on how hard you try.
Let me quote again:“The legal import of that obligation goes beyond that of a mere obligation ofconduct; the obligation involved here is an obligation to achieve a precise result -nuclear disarmament in all its aspects -- by adopting a particular course of conduct,
namely, the pursuit of negotiations on the matter in good faith.”
I cannot overemphasize the fact that this is the majority opinion of the world. That is why
190 countries are members of the NPT, which binds them to do their utmost to abolish nuclear
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weapons. Precisely 119 countries, a clear majority of the 192 members of the UN, havetaken the trouble to sign nuclear-free zone treaties. And every year, approximately 170
countries vote for the Japanese resolution calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
President Obama knows that we are the majority standing on a solid moral foundation. That
is why he has promised to conclude negotiations between the US and Russia on a new
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the end of this year that will be “legally binding andsufficiently bold.” And I quote “And this will set the stage for further cuts, and we will seekto include all nuclear weapon states in this endeavor.” I would also like to applaud President
Medvedev for his outstanding efforts in this direction as well.
President Obama knows that to convince even the incurable skeptics that we must show solidand indisputable results quickly. That is why he has pledged that his “administration will
immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty”
as well as the conclusion of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty soon.
We must support his objectives. This is where mayors, especially mayors from the UnitedStates, can play a pivotal role in creating a surge of public opinion supporting ratification.
To make sure that we succeed, we must work closely together. President Obama
underscores this point when he says that “Human destiny is what we make of it” and“Together we can do it.” “Yes, we can!”We can do it because we are the majority led by inspirational leaders. We have President
Obama. We have leaders in other countries with strong commitment to a nuclear-free world.
We also have Dr. Kissinger and the four wise men, Ground Zero, ICNND, IAEA, CTBTO,IALANA, IPB, AFSC, International Red Cross and Crescent, just to name a few and the list
goes on, and the United Nations, this body, is filled with experts in international affairs whocan help.
At this point, let me propose a new word that describes who we are, our aspirations, ourexpertise, moral conviction, and the fact that the future of the globe rests on the efforts westart to launch today. I propose that we call ourselves the “Obamajority.” I hopePresident Obama does not mind my borrowing his name. I do it because he is the one whohas given all of us new energy and hope that we can and must abolish all nuclear weapons
from the surface of this earth. This new word also emphasizes the coming of age ofparticipatory diplomacy and the paradigm shift to a partnership model of the world.
But we need more. We need a plan, a plan of action that rallies all these entities into a single,unstoppable force. We also need a timeline for this plan. When we build a baseballstadium just as we have recently done in Hiroshima, we need a timeline so that the baseballfans know for sure that it will be ready for the opening game.
We need a plan to abolish nuclear weapons, too, and we do have one. We need a timeline to
execute that plan, and we have one. We made public a document last year during the second
PrepCom held in Geneva.
Today, Mayors for Peace, and, I dare add the Obamajority, request your full and enthusiastic
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support for the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol.
This protocol is the plan that will get us to the unequivocal commitment that was promised by
all the nuclear-weapon states at the review conference in 2000. It stipulates common-sense,
good-faith behavior to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world by 2020. It eliminates theprovocative discrepancy between nuclear haves and have-nots by stipulating the immediate
termination of all preparations to develop, acquire, deploy or use nuclear weapons. It also
stipulates an immediate start to disarmament negotiations to continue until a nuclear weapon
convention or comparable framework agreement is signed no later than 2015.
The Protocol will ensure that hundreds of days of collective planning are devoted to thisworld-saving project, instead of just a few hours during the Cold War and the ‘absolute zero’days since it ended.
The date 2020 is based on US and Russia continuing to disassemble nuclear weapons at thepace set and maintained since the end of the Cold War. Anyone suggesting that theelimination of nuclear weapons will take longer than ten years is actually proposing that weslow down the current rate of disassembly. There is no acceptable reason for such footdragging. The desire of the Obamajority is to be liberated from the nuclear threat, andthere is no physical or technical reason we cannot reach that goal by 2020.
You have the passion, commitment, and skills of persuasion to engage your foreign ministers,prime ministers and presidents. As the European Parliament has recently done, let theHiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol guide your work. We will back you up 100%. Your ability
and power combined with our enthusiasm and numbers can bequeath to the next generation a
nuclear-weapon-free world.
Let me tell you what kind of help we can muster. Hiroshima citizens decided to devote one
entire professional baseball game to supporting the 2020 Vision Campaign. We even raised
green posters in the seventh inning to support Mayors for Peace while simultaneously
supporting the Hiroshima Carp, our home team. The campaign was aptly named, theOrizuru Night Game, or the paper crane night game, in the spirit of a 12-year-old girl named
Sadako Sasaki, who folded more than one thousand paper cranes in hopes that theA-bomb-caused leukemia would be cured.
Please look at this tiny paper crane. This is one Sadako herself actually folded using thepaper her powder medicine came in. Sadly, she did not live to celebrate her 13th birthday.
But her friends and the Obamajority have been carrying her torch for over 60 years. Thatspirit was fully manifest during the Paper Crane Night Game.
Let me offer another gargantuan example. Our 2020 Vision Campaign was endorsed
definitively by resolutions unanimously adopted several times at the annual meetings of theUS Conference of Mayors, consisting of 1139 US cities with populations larger than 30,000.
The most recent resolution urges the US Federal government to lead the world in utilizing theHiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol as the roadmap to the abolition of all nuclear weapons by 2020.
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Other cities are also engaged in their own creative activities and more will be appearing after
this PrepCom sends its strong message about the final goal.
Buttressed by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, I bet my life that we can achieve that goal
within the lifetimes of the venerable hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors, who are with us
here today. What a tribute it would be to let them, at the end of their days, take the news tothose, including Sadako Sasaki, who did not live to see the day. Let them announce with joythat the world has finally turned resolutely away from these infernal weapons of mass
destruction and that civilization triumphed over barbarism!
Please look at this crane again. Beautiful as it is, let us work together so that not even one
more child will fold such a crane, wishing to live and praying fervently to be spared from aneffect caused by a nuclear weapon.
You have the power. You have the responsibility. And we are the Obamajority.
Together we can do it! Yes, we can! Thank you very much.

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