Faith leaders gathered at the United States Peace Institute to solidify a common stance on nuclear disarmament. Credit: Courtesy of SGI

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON, Apr 25 2014 (IPS)

On the eve of next week’s meeting at the U.N. headquarters in New York on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), more than 100 representatives of 11 faith groups from around the world have pledged to step up their efforts to seek the global abolition of nuclear weapons.

Gathered at the U.S. Institute of Peace here Thursday, the participants, composed of influential representatives of the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths, among others, said their traditions teach that the threat posed by nuclear weapons was “unacceptable and must be eliminated”.“Nuclear deterrence theory does not work like it used to. In order to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, the only way is to create an era in which there are no nuclear weapons.” -- Hirotsugu Terasaki

Soka Gakkai International, a global grassroots Buddhist organisation based in Japan, hosted the event.

“The continued existence of nuclear weapons forces humankind to live in the shadow of apocalyptic destruction,” according to a statement issued at the end of the one-day conference.

“The catastrophic consequences of any use of nuclear weapons cannot be fully communicated by numbers or statistics; it is a reality that frustrates the power of both rational analysis and ordinary imagination.”

Signatories of the statement include representatives from the Muslim American Citizens Coalition and Public Affairs Council, the Friends Committee on National Legislation and Pax Christi International.

The conference, the latest in a series on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, came as delegates from around the world prepared to convene in New York for the NPT PrepCom, set to run Apr. 28 through May 9. That meeting will help lay the groundwork for the 2015 Review Conference, also slated for New York, on implementing the NPT’s goals of non-proliferation and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

“Nuclear deterrence theory does not work like it used to. In order to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, the only way is to create an era in which there are no nuclear weapons,” Hirotsugu Terasaki, vice-president of Soka Gakkai and executive director of Peace Affairs of Soka Gakkai International, told IPS.

“The president of our organisation has said, ‘Nuclear weapons are not a necessary evil, they are an absolute evil.’”

Prodding the process

One goal of Thursday’s symposium was to flesh out the fatal consequences of nuclear weapons, including ramifications that go well the immediate fallout of a nuclear strike.

For instance, keynote speaker Dr. Andrew Kanter, former director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, told the participants of scientific findings that even a small detonation could cause a widespread deadly famine by accelerating climate change and disrupting global agriculture.

Others discussed the need to engage the Permanent Five members of the U.N. Security Council in the broader conversation. As a first step, Thursday’s statement will be presented next week to the chair of the NPT PrepCom.

“We need to think again about what we mean by security and how we experience security,” Marie Dennis, co-president of Pax Christi International, said. “As faith-based communities, we are in a position to ask those kinds of questions.”

Since 1970, when the NPT became effective, its regular review conferences have produced few successes other than the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bars all nuclear explosions – including those, such as took place in the Marshall Islands, for testing purposes.

Additionally, the five nuclear-armed signatories have met annually since 2009. Last week, they met in Beijing where they reaffirmed past commitments and solidified a reporting framework to share national progress on meeting treaties.

Also present at Thursday’s symposium was Anita Friedt, an official on nuclear policy at the U.S. State Department. She described some of the reasons that nuclear abolition has been such a frustratingly slow process.

More than 100 representatives of 11 faith groups from around the world have pledged to step up their efforts to seek the global abolition of nuclear weapons. Credit: Courtesy of SGI

“Why can’t we just stop and give up nuclear weapons? This is really hard work,” Friedt said.

“If we just say today we’re just going to give up nuclear weapons, there’s no incentive for other countries to do so, necessarily. Unfortunately, it is more complex than it may seem at the surface.”

There are also significant bureaucratic challenges to the ongoing NPT negotiations. The U.S. Congress, for instance, failed to ratify the CTBT in 1999 and only barely ratified President Barack Obama’s New START Treaty – a strategic arms-reduction agreement between the U.S. and Russia – in 2010.

“It’s a slower pace than I would like; it’s a slower pace than our president would like,” Friedt said.

Yet SGI’s Terasaki says global faith communities are well placed use their broad leverage to try to influence, and speed up, this process. Thursday’s event, he noted, was the first time such a discussion had come to the United States.

“We want to help re-energise the voice of faith communities,” he said, “and explore ways to raise public awareness of the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons.”

Obligation to disarm

The conference occurred on the same day that the Marshall Islands filed an unprecedented lawsuit before the International Court of Justice against the United States and eight other nuclear-armed countries for not upholding their commitments to the NPT and international law.

“Article VI [of the NPT] defines an obligation to negotiate in good faith for an end to nuclear arms and disarmament,” David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a consultant to the Marshall Islands lawsuit, filed Thursday, told IPS.

“This lawsuit indicates that each of the nuclear armed states are modernising their nuclear arsenal. You can’t modernise your arsenal and say you’re negotiating in good faith.”

Five countries are currently party to the NPT: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. However, the Marshall Islands is also suing India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan, claiming that those countries are bound to the same nuclear disarmament provisions under international law.

The small island nation, in Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean, is not suing for monetary compensation. Rather, its government wants the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare the nine countries in breach of their treaty obligations and to issue an injunction ordering them to begin negotiating in good faith.

Krieger says the Marshall Islands have “suffered gravely” as a result of nuclear testing carried out by the United States between 1946 and 1958.

“They don’t want any other country or people to suffer the consequences that they have,” he said, noting that the residents of the Marshall Islands have suffered health effects in the generations since the testing stopped, including stillborn babies and abnormally high rates of cancer.

Out of the nine nuclear-armed countries, only the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan accept the ICJ’s jurisdiction. The other six countries, including the United States, are not to be invited to the court in order to state their reasons for not fulfilling their obligations under the NPT.

Still, just to be sure that the United States answers for its responsibility to the NPT, the Marshall Islands has also filed a lawsuit in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco.

Relations between the United States and Native American tribes have historically been poor. Credit: Shannon Kringen/CC by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jun 27 2013 (IPS)

Indigenous rights groups are applauding U.S. President Barack Obama’s creation of a new high-level council aimed at coordinating government actions relating to Native American communities, a move that advocates have been urging since early in the president’s first term.

The new White House Council on Native American Affairs will consist of top officials from all agencies and departments, including the budget office, that implement policies affecting Native American tribes.

Critically, these tribes are considered sovereign nations under U.S. law, so that much of the council’s mandate has to do with strengthening this government-to-government context.

The new body will be tasked with improving the atrocious track record of consultation between tribes and the government. That history, coupled with the sometimes bewilderingly complex bureaucracy governing this relationship, has long exacerbated the anger and suspicion already felt among Native American (also known as American Indian) communities towards the U.S. government.

“President Obama’s Executive Order represents a very strong step forward to strengthen our nation-to-nation relationship,” Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, a six-decade-old advocacy group that has been at the forefront of pushing for the creation of such a high-level body, said Wednesday."The relationship between the tribal governments and the U.S. government is still very rocky in a number of places."
-- Ruth Flower

“The Council has been a top priority of tribal leaders from the earliest days of the Obama administration. It will increase respect for the trust responsibility and facilitate the efficient delivery of government services.”

Legal decisions, official treaties and agreements have repeatedly confirmed the sovereignty of the country’s more than 560 officially recognised tribes. Yet that understanding has been regularly violated on the ground, resulting in centuries of oppression and marginalisation.

Increasing self-determination

Official relations with Native American communities have come under increased legal scrutiny in recent years. Last year, courts found federal mismanagement of native funds to have been so egregious that they awarded tribes more than a billion dollars in settlements.

Perhaps more than any past president, Obama appears to have made concerted efforts to strengthen these relationships and begin addressing past wrongs. Advocates say creating the new council is the latest of these steps, aimed at ensuring that these relations extend into subsequent administrations.

“Honouring these relationships and respecting the sovereignty of tribal nations is critical to advancing tribal self-determination and prosperity,” Obama stated in the executive order creating the council, released Wednesday. “We cannot ignore a history of mistreatment and destructive policies that have hurt tribal communities.”

The order also noted that restoring historically tribal-owned lands taken from Native American control – a particularly contentious issue for both indigenous and non-indigenous communities – “helps foster tribal self-determination”.

The White House Council on Native American Affairs will be required to meet at least three times a year, with the first session this summer. The body builds upon an annual conference that Obama began in 2009, which marked the first time that Native American leaders were regularly brought together with high-ranking government officials.

An important part of the council’s responsibilities will also be in educating, or reminding, government officials of the federal government’s roles and responsibilities regarding Native American tribes.

“I never fully understood these ideas of self-determination and governance, and I would expect many colleagues will also not be steeped in those issues,” Sally Jewell, the recently appointed secretary of the interior, who will chair the new council, told reporters Thursday.

“This council will bring [high-ranking officials] together to understand these issues more deeply and to make sure that as we fulfil our relationships and obligations, that we do that at the right government-to-government level.”

Federal impact

Proponents are hoping the new council indicates the consolidation of improved coordination between the U.S. government’s many departments and the concerns of Native American communities throughout the country.

According to both advocates and the government, this shift will require better communication both between agencies and engagement with community leaders.

“All areas, agencies and policies of the federal government impact American Indian citizens in almost every single aspect of our lives, more than other American citizens, from education, health services, natural resources issues and land management, to tribal criminal and civil jurisdiction,” Helen B. Padilla, director of the American Indian Law Centre, told IPS.

“These matters are complex and require that federal agencies become knowledgeable about the federal trust responsibility and their role in carrying out the current policy of Indian self-determination.”

Padilla noted that tribal governments have an “arduous and sometimes insurmountable task” in “providing for their people while navigating…comprehensive federal laws, rules, regulations and policies impacting their ability to provide those services”.

Even with this new step, relations between the federal government and Native American communities have traditionally been so poor and one-sided that it will take years of such regular contact before substantive impact can be gauged.

“Tribal governments do have much more direct access to the administration, and Obama has directed key agencies to engage in far more extensive consultations with tribal agencies,” Ruth Flower, legislative director with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“There’s still a lot to do,” she added, “and the relationship between the tribal governments and the U.S. government is still very rocky in a number of places.”

She cited continued complaints regarding land use, with widespread instances in which Native American lands are taken or used by the federal government without thought given to legal status.

The currently debated immigration reform bill, for example, includes a provision that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to place personnel or infrastructure anywhere within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, including on sovereign tribal land.

“There’s no sense of consultation in these instances, just an assumption that the lands there are open to the use of the U.S. government – there’s no sense that these lands are being reserved for the tribes,” Flower said.

“I’ll be looking very closely at the recommendations guiding the direction in which this new council is expecting to go. If it’s just going to be filing more reports, that’ll be a good indication that it will be pretty ineffectual.”