NATIONAL SECURITY/NUCLEAR/UN: “For the first time in the seven-decade effort to avert a nuclear war, a global treaty has been negotiated that proponents say would, if successful, lead to the destruction of all nuclear weapons and forever prohibit their use.
Negotiators representing two-thirds of the 192-member United Nations finalized the 10-page treaty this week after months of talks.
The document, called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, was formally adopted on Friday [7-7-17] at United Nations headquarters in New York during the final session of the negotiation conference.
It will be open for signature by any member state starting on Sept. 20 during the annual General Assembly and will enter into legal force 90 days after it has been ratified by 50 countries.
‘The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years,’ said Elayne G. Whyte Gómez, Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and chairwoman of the conference, which was broadcast live on the United Nations website.”
-Rick Gladstone, “A Treaty Is Reached to Ban Nuclear Arms. Now Comes the Hard Part.,” The New York Times online, July 7, 2017