“Recent calls for the resumption of nuclear testing show that the terrible lessons of the past are being forgotten – or ignored“, he said.
The International Day was established in 2009 by the UN General Assembly to commemorate the official closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons test site (present-day Kazakhstan) on August 29, 1991.
At that one location alone, 456 nuclear tests took place between 1949 and 1989.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
The starting point of the Semipalatinsk test site in Kurchatov, Kazakhstan. (file)
Era of nuclear proliferation
In the shadow of the Cold War, the world experienced an unprecedented era of nuclear proliferation and nuclear testing.
Between 1954 and 1984, an average of at least one nuclear weapons test took place somewhere in the world every weekmost of which had an explosive force far exceeding that of the Hiroshima bomb.
Moreover, stockpiles of nuclear weapons have grown exponentially, most of them far more powerful than the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
According to Mr Guterres, this spread has left a “devastating legacy”, significantly disrupting people’s lives and livelihoods and contaminating the environment with traces of radioactivity, even in the deepest ocean trenches.
‘World must speak with one voice’
The UN chief calls on the world to speak with one voice “to end this practice once and for all”.
He has praised the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty as an “essential, verifiable security instrument” because of its complete ban on all nuclear tests.
He calls on all countries whose ratifications are needed for the treaty to enter into force to do so immediately and without conditions.
“Let us pass the test of humanity – and ban nuclear testing for good,” he concluded.
Read the opinion piece here on the occasion of the day on our UN News site prepared by the President of the General Assembly and Head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.
