NGO Presentation at NPT PrepCom 2008
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates, friends, ladies and gentlemen,
My name is Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of the City of Hiroshima, and President of Mayorsfor Peace.
I would like to ask your indulgence in changing the order in which we speak toaccommodate a Belgian City that needs one of my colleagues within hours. And
therefore, our presentation precedes our good young friends, and I appreciate yourcooperation very much. It is an honor for me to speak in front of this august body.
I recall that almost exactly five years ago, here in the Palais, I addressed you as I am
doing today. I announced that Mayors for Peace would be launching an emergency
campaign to ban nuclear weapons. During these five years the membership of Mayors
for Peace has more than quadrupled. In January this year we proudly declared 2020
Mayors for the 2020 Vision. Today we have more than 2200 city members, with two or
three cities joining us every day, and we are entering the third phase of our campaign.
My colleagues, whom I will introduce shortly, will describe how we foresee the lead-up
to the 2010 Review Conference and the decade beyond. I am here to assure you that wehave not lost sight of, or enthusiasm for, our objective of a nuclear-weapon-free world by
the year 2020. As a matter of fact, our effort has been intensified and has become morevigorous as the average age of hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings, hasexceeded 74. I invite you to attend our lunchtime session tomorrow, entitled, 20102020: from Survival to Success to hear and discuss our plans in greater detail.
Mr. Chairman,
Today I am asking this body to perform the God-like act of creating time. Unless you
give us the time we need, we will be unable to tackle the Earth-threatening environmental
issues and other serious problems that confront us. You have the power. In fact, it isyour obligation to give us this time. That is the intention of the international community
as set forth in the NPT and confirmed by the Advisory Opinion the ICJ handed down in
1996, which clearly stipulates that all governments are “under obligation to pursue ingood faith negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict andeffective international control.” Without nuclear disarmament soon, we will have notime to solve our other real problems.
The two most serious immediate threats to human evolution are environmental
degradation and weapons of mass destruction. Our collective need to curb humancapacity for violence and destructive effects on our ecosystem demands a rapid anddecisive shift away from selfish, competitive struggles for dominance toward mutual,
cooperative problem solving. And yet, the only phenomenon more obvious than thispressing need is the utter inability of national governments to respond with anything thateven resembles a solution to these problems. Mayors for Peace is growing because
cities are drawn into the vacuum created by failure at the national level to accept reality.

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Hiroshima, responding to the most reliable scientific recommendations we have received,
is committed to reducing our CO2 emissions by 70% by the year 2050. We are doing
this because it is necessary, regardless of national-level irresponsibility, and we are notalone. Around the world, cities are working to reduce emissions far beyond nationalrequirements. They do this at great risk to their local economies because their residents
want to do what is right. In order for us to complete the now sprouting effort worldwide
to curb global warming, let me repeat: we need time.
Unfortunately, the public remains largely unaware of the danger of nuclear weapons.
They are unaware that certain nuclear-weapon states are developing tactical nuclear
weapons designed not for deterrence but for combat use. They are unaware that Arab
League foreign ministers declared on March 8 that if Israel admits to having a nuclear
weapon, the Arab states will drop out of the NPT and make weapons of their own. They
are unaware that a low-level smuggler in Russia was recently found to be carrying highly
enriched uranium. They are unaware that the NPT is on the brink of collapse andnuclear weapons are poised to spread swiftly throughout the world.
National governments certainly must be aware of the nuclear threat, but you act as if you
have all the time in the world. Perhaps national leaders are high and mighty enough toassume they will survive any catastrophe that may occur. We mayors, however, live
down in the valley with our people, where facts and reality play a far more powerful rolein decision-making.
On October 31st, 2007, United Cities and Local Governments, representing cities
throughout the world, took up the Mayors for Peace rallying cry. Declaring with us that
“Cities Are Not Targets!” they expressed full support for our Campaign. This year,according to the UN Population Fund, the majority of humanity now resides in cities.
Therefore, I can say with complete conviction that our message to you today is spoken on
behalf of the majority of humanity. No governmental delegation here can rightfully
make such a claim, so I respectfully ask that you heed our message.
In June 2006, the US Conference of Mayors, representing 1139 American cities, calledon the United States and Russia to renounce their Cold War policies of Mutually Assured
Destruction. The threat of inflicting grossly indiscriminate and disproportionate
casualties among noncombatant populations has never been morally or legally acceptable,
but with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a global terrorist threat, such a
policy is utterly futile and foolhardy. At our urging, the US Conference of Mayors
wrote to the Ambassadors of Russia and China asking them to openly declare that theywould never again target US cities. They simultaneously asked the US Government toprovide such assurances to Russian and Chinese cities. The cities of the world have
lived far too long with the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. We demand its
removal.
In February 2007, I wrote to the Heads of Government of the nine states thought topossess nuclear arms, asking them to explicitly rule out the targeting of cities and to2

ensure that their armed forces were rigorously trained to disobey any order to use anuclear weapon in lethal proximity of cities. Only one country had the courtesy toreply: the United Kingdom, perhaps because in July 2006 an international delegation ofmayors had already begun a dialog with the UK Foreign Ministry on this subject.
Our written submission describes how this dialog developed. In the end, the British
Government’s response was that any discussion of what is not targeted would diminishthe deterrent value of the nuclear weapons. So, rather than diminish a dangerous andobsolete deterrence policy, Britain placed itself on the wrong side of international law
and in the morally reprehensible position of threatening what I have called “civicide”,
the obliteration of civic life and the endangerment of civilization itself.
In 2004 the US Conference of Mayors declared: “Weapons of mass destruction have noplace in a civilized world.” Why is it that national governments are unable to arrive at
the same obvious conclusion?
I do not mean to single out Britain. The US declined any discussion of targeting policy
based, no doubt, on similar delusions of deterrence; it could well be that, in their silence,Beijing, Delhi, Islamabad, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tel Aviv share this delusion. They
apparently consider the threat to annihilate whole cities to be acceptable and evennecessary. We do not.
We have just heard from IPPNW about the catastrophic impact of a limited nuclear war.
Only at the national level of abstraction and “all-out war” can anyone speak so blithelyabout one hundred cities being completely incinerated in a nuclear exchange in the Asian
Subcontinent. We cities are the ‘firewood’ that has been unwittingly gathered by ourcivilizations for the great nuclear firestorms. In a world of cities, nuclear weapons
endanger everyone, at least indirectly through catastrophic climate change. Why is it sodifficult for national governments to come to grips with this reality and free us from thisthreat all together?
The Rand Corporation did a study for US Homeland Security on catastrophic terrorism.
In choosing a city for destruction, the study picked Long Beach, California, the USmegaport. What it found after ‘gaming’ the scenario 20 days out from the explosion
was that in 20 days we would not even begin to get a handle on the GLOBAL
ramifications of such an attack. The massive economic and social problems would
continue to spread and intensify. The productivity of the US economy would sharply
decline, drawing the entire world with it into economic turmoil and a deep depression.
Following the good example of The Rand Corporation and of IPPNW, the City ofHiroshima has recently conducted a similar scientific study of effects on the city if
another nuclear weapon should be used in the City of Hiroshima. The result is utter
disaster. And I will not go into details, but let me simply mention that the summary
report conclusion is available for you from my staff in this hall. The Rand study, theIPPNW study and the Hiroshima study all confirmed what Mayor Itoh of Nagasaki saidat the 2004 PrepCom. “Civilization and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist indefinitely.”

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So why, when we know how high the stakes are, do we continue to gamble?! Why
should cities and the whole world economy be held hostage to this madness even one daylonger?
We are preparing for the UN Disarmament Decade as if our lives depend on it. I
challenge each one of you to strive in good faith to match our sense of urgency andpurpose. You know as well as I do that unless strong, substantive moves towarddisarmament are made in the next two years, nuclear weapons will spread throughout theworld. The decision is upon you. Will you act in good faith to eliminate these heinous
and totally unnecessary threats to our survival, or will you allow them to spread, mostcertainly to be used? If you do not move effectively to achieve a nuclear-weapon-freeworld by 2020, you will be partially responsible for the nuclear catastrophe I have nodoubt will befall us before that date. I urge you not to underestimate the gravity andurgency of this decision.
And let me repeat our plea: please create time; time that will give our children and theirchildren a chance. To complete the Mayors for Peace presentation, I would like tointroduce two of my colleagues: Mayor Luc Dehaene of Ypres, Belgium, and Patrick
Vankrunkelsven of the Laakdal City Council. And finally, thank you for your precioustime.

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