The Secretary General of OPANAL participated in the First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Vienna, June 21-23, 2022. The Secretary General of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL), Ambassador Flávio Roberto Bonzanini, participated in the First Meeting of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPAN).
The First Meeting of the TPAN, chaired by Ambassador Alexander Kmentt (Austria), had as its objective the establishment of an institutional regime for the operation and implementation of the Treaty. Likewise, the States Parties adopted the “Vienna Declaration", of a political nature, and a Action plan, which includes 50 measures to facilitate the effective and timely implementation of the TPAN, in particular:
- Article 4 – Towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons
- Article 6 – Assistance to victims and restoration of the environment
- Article 7 – International cooperation and assistance
- Article 12 – Universalization of the treaty
Likewise, States Parties committed to promoting gender provisions and highlighting the complementarity of the TPAN with other key instruments of the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the treaties establishing nuclear weapon-free zones.
In her intervention, the Secretary General highlighted that:
- “The potential use and threatened use of nuclear weapons must be condemned, on principle, in the most serious terms by the entire international community. Therefore, explicit and repeated threats of the use of nuclear weapons by a nuclear-armed State are unacceptable, as should be for any nuclear-armed State or military coalition that bases its security on nuclear deterrence.”
- “The First Meeting of States Parties to the TPAN provides States committed to supporting the nuclear weapons prohibition norm not only with a relevant platform to express their concerns about nuclear risk, but also another forum to take joint action.” and work on effective nuclear disarmament measures that lead to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
- “We are present here today to contribute from our experience and support the logical convergence between the Nuclear Weapons Free Zones and the TPAN.”
- “…with the universalization and effective implementation of another historic treaty: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, we will be on the right path towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons through the establishment of a universal nuclear weapon-free zone.”
Likewise, on the margins of the First Meeting of the TPAN, the heads of the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone and the Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in Latin America and the Caribbean issued a joint statement signed by the Executive Secretary of the African Commission on Nuclear Energy (AFCONE), Mr. Messaoud Baaliouamer and the Secretary General of OPANAL, Amb. Flávio Roberto Bonzanini in which, among other aspects, the following stand out:
- “The nuclear risk is greater than ever given the situation in Ukraine and explicit threats to use nuclear weapons have increased this imminent threat.”
- “AFCONE and OPANAL are convinced that only the total elimination of nuclear weapons can be the only guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons”
- “Therefore, they urge States that have not yet done so to adhere, without further delay, to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPAN).”
Within the framework of the Conference, the Secretary General also met with Amb. Luis Javier Campuzano Piña, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the International Organizations based in Vienna and Coordinator of OPANAL at that headquarters, other delegations of the States Parties to the Treaty of Tlatelolco, representatives of other Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, the International Energy Agency International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); as well as with representatives of civil society, including: the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and the Vienna Center for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (VCDNP).
The Second Meeting of States Parties to the TPAN will take place from November 27 to December 1, 2023, at the UN headquarters in New York, under the presidency of Mexico.