Human Wrongs Watch
Five months from now, the government of Norway will host an international conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.
With this International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) conference– Civil Society Forum – Oslo, 2-3 March, 2013 — governments clearly signal that they are finally ready to pull their heads from the sand and open their eyes to the catastrophic and all-too-real humanitarian effects of nuclear weapons.
If just one of the world’s 19,000 nuclear weapons was detonated, be it intentionally or accidentally, not only would it kill thousands of people instantly, but, as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has concluded, first responders would be unable to provide the emergency relief so urgently needed, ICAN informs.
“This would compound the humanitarian impact of the blast and transfom it into a catastrophe. This makes the continued existence and deployment of nuclear weapons one of the most serious humanitarian challenges of our time.”
