The humanitarian dimensions of nuclear weapons

This Oslo conference is the first meeting of states ever to specifically address the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. Despite not being signatories to the NPT, nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have notified their intention to participate.

The P5 boycott makes the Oslo conference even more important. Such vital matters cannot be left to a few states. Sixty-eight years after nuclear weapons were first used on cities, we should not continue to allow ourselves to be held hostage by a few states, waiting for crumbs that may fall from their table. These states that created the problem and continue to invest more than $100 billion annually in modernising their nuclear arsenals are unlikely to lead us out of this mess.

Although more than 140 nations support the goal of a treaty banning nuclear weapons, Australia is not among them. This is despite high-level advocacy for such a step from many Australians. Nearly eight hundred recipients of the Order of Australia – including former prime ministers, governors-general, foreign affairs and defence ministers, premiers, governors, High Court justices and chiefs of the armed forces – have called on the government to adopt a nuclear-weapon-free defence posture and work for a nuclear weapons convention. An opinion poll has shown that more than 90 per cent of Australians support a ban.

Back in September 2009, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, reporting on Australia's nuclear treaties and how parliament could strengthen non-proliferation and disarmament, recommended that the government make clear in international forums its support for a nuclear weapons convention, and that the parliament adopt a resolution on its commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

A weak parliamentary resolution was finally adopted in 2012, but Australia continues to vote against a nuclear weapons ban at the UN, and undermines nuclear disarmament by continuing to put the nuclear weapons of the US at the centre of its military security. Australia's uranium exports add to the fissile materials stockpile and potential fuel for weapons.

Humanity's survival depends on people and their governments refusing to be held hostage any longer by inertia and the vested interests in a few states.

It depends on breaking the logjam in disarmament, on a group of leading states seizing the initiative to begin negotiations on banning nuclear weapons, the logical next step towards their elimination. It is time for the shared interest of humanity to prevail. Understanding the catastrophe of any use of nuclear weapons, and the imperative to prevent the untreatable, will drive such a process, which should follow from the conference in Oslo.