Nuclear Weapons Don’t Belong on Our Planet

Abstract

ABSTRACT In January 2024, the newly appointed Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Melissa Parke, visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the first time, where she met with atomic bomb survivors (hibakusha), officials, educators and youth. In this commentary piece, she reflects on her time in Japan and the essential role of the hibakusha in the decades-long struggle for a nuclear-weapon-free world. She appeals to the Japanese government to sign the landmark 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and dispense with the misguided notion of a “nuclear umbrella”, which is based on the fallacy of nuclear deterrence. She also underscores the need for better education about nuclear weapons, focusing on abolition as the goal and centring the voices of the hibakusha, lest the horrors of the past be repeated. “Nuclear weapons don’t belong on our planet – all they can do is destroy”, she concludes. “Together we will eliminate them”.