The Secretary-General of OPANAL participated in the First Meeting of States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Vienna, June 21-23, 2022. The Secretary-General of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL), Ambassador Flávio Roberto Bonzanini, took part in the First Meeting of State Parties at the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
The First Meeting of the TPNW, chaired by Ambassador Alexander Kmentt (Austria), aimed to establish an institutional regime for the Treaty’s functioning and implementation. Similarly, the State Parties adopted the “Vienna Declaration”, of political nature, and an Action Plan, which includes fifty measures to facilitate effective and timely implementation of the TPNW. In particular:
● Article 4 – Towards the elimination of nuclear weapons
● Article 6 – Victim assistance and environmental remediation
● Article 7 – International cooperation and assistance
● Article 12 – Universalization of the Treaty
Likewise, the State Parties assumed the commitment of promoting gender provisions and emphasizing the complementarity of the TPNW with other key instruments of the international regime on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the treaties establishing nuclear-weapon-free zones.
In his statement, the Secretary-General highlighted that:
● “The potential use and threat of nuclear weapons must be condemned, as a matter of principle, in the most serious terms by the entire international community. Therefore, explicit and repeated threats to use nuclear weapons by a nuclear-armed state are unacceptable, as they should be to any nuclear-armed state or military coalition that bases its security on nuclear deterrence.”
● “The First Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW provides States committed to supporting the nuclear weapons ban norm. This support is not only a relevant platform to express their concerns about nuclear risk, but also another forum to take action and work on effective nuclear disarmament measures leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
● “We are present here today to contribute from our experience and support the logical convergence between the Nuclear Weapons Free Zones and the TPNW.”
● “…with the universalization and effective implementation of another historic treaty: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, we will be on the right path towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons through establishing a universal zone free of nuclear weapons. ”
Also, in the margins of the First Meeting of the NPT, the heads of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and the Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Latin America and the Caribbean issued a joint communiqué signed by the Executive Secretary of the African Commission on Nuclear Energy (AFCONE), Mr. Messaoud Baaliouamer and the Secretary General of OPANAL, Ambassador Flávio Roberto Bonzanini, highlighting, among other aspects, the following:
● “The nuclear risk is greater than ever considering the situation in Ukraine, and the explicit threats to use nuclear weapons have increased this imminent threat.”
● “AFCONE and OPANAL are convinced that only the total elimination of nuclear weapons can be the only guarantee against the use or threat of nuclear weapons.”
● “For this reason, they urge the States that have not yet done so to adhere, without further delay, to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).”
Within the framework of the Conference, the Secretary General also met with Amb. Luis Javier Campuzano Piña, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the International Organizations based in Vienna and Coordinator of OPANAL in Vienna, other delegations of the States Parties to the Treaty of Tlatelolco, representatives of other Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as representatives of civil society, including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP).
The Second Meeting of the States Parties to the TPNW will take place from 27 November to 1 December 2023, at the UN headquarters in New York, under the presidency of Mexico.