Speech to the Civil Society Forum at the Nuclear Weapons Free Zones Conference in Mexico

Civil Society Forum
April 27, 2005
Conference of States Parties and Signatories of Treaties that Establish Nuclear Weapon Free Zones,
26-28 April 2005
Tlatelolco, Mexico

Remarks of Pamela S. Meidell
Cofounder of Abolition 2000 Network for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
Director of Atomic Mirror

Honorable and distinguished friends of our beautiful planet, in all of your roles representing her peoples and lands, I bring you greetings from Ventura County in Alta California, where I am very happy to be working in partnership with Mayor Gabino Aguirre of Santa Paula (the co-chair of today’s forum). Muchas gracias to the Government of Mexico for hosting and convening this unprecedented gathering of the Nuclear Weapons Free half of our world in this 60th anniversary year of the nuclear age. I offer special thanks to Senora Andrea Garcia Guerra, for her vision in bringing this conference into reality, and His Excellency Luis Alfonso de Alba, Mexican Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, for his presence here with us. Mexico has long been a world leader on the issue of nuclear disarmament, and a consistent supporter of NGO access and participation in all diplomatic disarmament arenas. We thank you. You have given us Ambassador Garcia Robles, Ambassador Miguel Marin-Bosch, Ambassador de Alba, as well as the distinguished diplomat and poet, Ambassador Octavio Paz. I have been thinking of him this morning, looking out this large window at the Tres Culturas and the Plaza Tlatelolco beyond. Octavio Paz knew the power of people’s passion for justice, and shared that passion. One year after the landmark treaty we celebrate here, Paz resigned his diplomatic post as Ambassador to India in protest over the massacre of the students at Plaza Tlatelolco. I’m hopeful that our work here during these days will reinforce the association of the name Tlatelolco with a vision of justice and peace.

I am here on behalf of Abolition 2000 to honor NWFZs for your vision, and to offer the hands, hearts and talents of over 2300 NGOs in 90 countries in partnership. Monday (April 25) marked the 10th anniversary of the Abolition Statement, written in the cafeteria of the UN in New York by over 25 NGO representatives during the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference. It launched the Abolition 2000 Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, which led to this past year’s Abolition Now campaign, partnered with Mayors for Peace. This joint effort calls for the commencement, in 2010, and conclusion and implementation, by 2020, of a Nuclear Weapons Convention. To that end, we fully support the specific recommendations Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba outlined last night in his speech.

Although NWFZs are included in the Abolition Statement, they are missing from the 13 points of the final document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Regional NWFZs form the heart of the untold success story of the road to a nuclear-weapons free world; they are one of our best hopes for bringing it into being. We can expand upon and link these zones as part of the global menu to achieve nuclear abolition. At a time when people and governments of nearly every persuasion look for better ways to be safe and create the conditions for their children and societies to flourish, the citizens and governments of the world’s NWFZs have much to teach us. In a post 9/11 world, it is more important than ever to create regional zones of safety and security that foster cooperation and trust among neighboring states. Sustaining and expanding NWFZs can lead the way to nuclear abolition and the fulfillment of the NPT promises.

We honor the Latin American and Caribbean countries of the Treaty of Tlatelolco for giving the world the idea of NWFZ treaties, an idea whose time had clearly come, and for creating the conditions for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

We honor the South Pacific countries and island nations of the Treaty of Rarotonga, and especially support Aotearoa/New Zealand’s call for the establishment of a Southern Hemisphere Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (and adjacent areas), and hope that the adjacent area is the Northern Hemisphere.

We honor the Southeast Asian countries of the Treaty of Bangkok, and especially encourage cosponsorship of Malaysia’s working paper during the upcoming NPT Review Conference for strengthening the elements necessary to create a Nuclear Weapons Free world.

We honor the African countries of the Treaty of Pelindaba, and especially South Africa for voluntarily giving up its nuclear weapons, thus showing the world that we can do it, we can give up our nuclear arms.

We can all live nuclear free! The Nuclear Age began in the Western Hemisphere, in New Mexico. We can begin to end it here, in Old Mexico. Yesterday, in Teotihuacán, I climbed to the top of the Temple of the Moon. As two monarch butterflies flitted around me, I thought that the butterfly effect-- the idea (of meteorologist Edward Lorenz) that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas--applies as well in the social world. With that image in our hearts and minds, let us go forth from Tlatelolco, in partnership, to bring about a Nuclear Free World.

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