22 January 2021 Nuclear Weapons Are Banned

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Today, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons becomes international law.

Civil society has struggled for decades to bring about a global convention banning nuclear weapons, the last weapon of mass destruction now to have a treaty which comprehensively prohibits the use, production stockpiling or trade of the weapon.

This is an enormous achievement in which we can all celebrate. The civil society network which coordinated global action to bring this treaty into being is the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Nonviolence International is part of this campaign, as it is other humanitarian disarmament movements (see Humanitarian Disarmament)

While Canada does not possess any nuclear weapons, and while many Canadian provinces have passed resolution declaring themselves nuclear weapons free (and many Canadian municipalities have signed the ICAN cities pledge), our neighbour to the immediate south has many.

British Columbia shares the Salish Sea with the US state of Washington, and the channel through which it sails its largest fleet of nuclear armed vessels, the Trident nuclear weapon submarine fleet. It also houses the world’s largest known arsenal of nuclear weapons just 50 mi. off the BC coastline.

Residents of both BC and Washington State who live along this waterway joined together to proclaim today that nuclear weapons are now banned.

This photo action was produced in cooperation with Washington Against Nuclear Weapons and Mines Action Canada.

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