Loretto Community Supports 2017 U.N. Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The Loretto Community firmly and unequivocally supports the 2017 U.N. Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons. We call upon the President and Congress of the United States of America, where we are based, to immediately support the abolition and unilateral disarmament of nuclear weapons, which means to discontinue all further testing, production, updating and deployment of nuclear weapons.

This year the United Nations celebrated its 72nd year of promoting world peace and sustainability. This has been an especially fruitful year at the U.N.: on July 7, 2017, after five months of negotiations, 122 nation states approved a treaty to formally outlaw all nuclear weapons. The treaty is seen as being in line with other prohibitions on weapons of mass destruction, such as treaties banning biological weapons (45 years ago) and chemical weapons (25 years ago). It contains prohibitions against the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and even threat of use of nuclear weapons.

While the United States boycotted the negotiations, now is the time to support this important step towards a nuclear-free world by banning the weapons under international law. The coalition of non-governmental civil society organizations supporting the treaty negotiations, ICAN: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, just won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, so it is becoming more obvious each day that the international community wants to shift to a completely different security paradigm that does not include nuclear weapons.

For the sake of the future of humanity and the Earth, we implore the United States to sign this significant treaty.

Ratified by the Loretto Community Forum
Dec. 9, 2017