Appeal to Bring Pacific Woman Leader to NPT in May 2005
Women’s History Month: March 2005
Bring Motarilavoa Hilda Lini from Vanuatu to New York for the NPT
Review Conference.
Help Bring a Pacific Woman who Made Nuclear History to the UN in May.
In this 60th anniversary year of the nuclear age, we honor all women leaders working in sung and unsung ways to bring an end to the nuclear dangers we all face.
The Need for Women Leaders at the NPT Review Conference
We are writing to ask your help to bring one of those leaders, Motarilavoa Hilda Lini of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, to the United Nations in May. Many of you know that in May all the nations of the world (except for Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea) will gather at the United Nations in New York to assess our nuclear world by reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. (click on NPT to go to more info). We are living in precarious nuclear times made worse by the Bush Administration’s belligerent nuclear policies, fruitless searches for WMD that result in ongoing wars, loose nuclear materials on the world’s black markets, and the prospect of new nuclear power plants. We need strong, articulate leaders to bring these concerns to decision makers at this important meeting, and to turn us toward a healthier future. Hilda Lini is one of those leaders.
Why Bring Hilda Lini?
In the liquid continent of the Pacific, the name Motarilavoa Hilda Lini has long been synonymous with the nuclear-free and independent Pacific movement, with women's rights, and with environmental issues. In the early 1990s, as Vanuatu’s Minister of Health, she was instrumental in getting the World Health Organization to bring the question of the illegality of nuclear weapons to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. She is a chief of the Turaga nation of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, and has been an activist for progressive political causes since she was a teenager. She has carved out impressive careers as a journalist and parliamentarian. In a country where all news media are state-run and censored, she believes in an alternative media voice and thus served as editor of the progressive party's newspaper, Vanua'aku Viewpoints. She established the South Pacific Commission Women's Bureau in Noumea. In 1987, she became the first woman elected to Parliament in Vanuatu since independence in 1980, and later served as both Minister for Health and Minister for Justice. Last year she stepped down as the Director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Suva, Fiji to return to Vanuatu in the hopes of representing her country at the upcoming NPT Review Conference.
We’re One Fifth of the Way There
The Atomic Mirror, through its Petra Kelly Testimony Fund (see www.atomicmirror.org/fund.htm) is raising $5,000 to help bring Hilda Lini to the United Nations this May. We are appealing to our friends and colleagues across the world, who know the importance of women’s leadership, to help us bring her to New York. We have already secured the first $1,000, and ask you to match it by four. Please send what you can. Please make checks payable to the Atomic Mirror and send to either the US address: Atomic Mirror, P.O. Box 220, Port Hueneme, CA 93044, or UK address: Atomic Mirror, 25, Farmadine, Saffron Walden, Essex, CB11 3HR.
Don’t Let the United States Sit in Her Place
When Pamela first attended an NPT meeting (in Geneva in 1994), she intended to speak to all Pacific Island representatives because she knew what world-level leadership they provide in nuclear disarmament. But no representatives were present. It was too far away and far too expensive. So she watched as the seat reserved for Vanuatu was occupied by the previous country in the alphabet: the United States. We vowed then to do what we could to ensure that the U.S. would not continue to occupy that worthy seat. If and when Motarilavoa Hilda Lini takes her seat at the NPT Review Conference this spring, you will help to fulfill that vow. We can assure you, Hilda will have a lot to say to those seated next to her.
We look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to write if you have any questions.
In peace,
Pamela Meidell
Director
The Atomic Mirror
Janet Bloomfield
British Coordinator
The Atomic Mirror
