Nuclear Ban week in New York

By Matty Maslen, partially sponsored by SPARK to attend this conference in New York. photo credit to Darren Ornitz, ICAN

From the 27th of November to the 1st of December last year, I had the privilege to attend the Second Meeting of State Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2MSP TPNW).

For this article I’ve written a Q&A with myself, using questions that people have tended to ask me when it comes up…

What is the TPNW, and why was the conference held in New York?
The TPNW is the international treaty which made nuclear weapons illegal. It’s more colloquially known as ‘The Ban Treaty’ because that’s what it did: it banned nuclear weapons. When a treaty is first made, countries sign and ratify it.

• To sign a treaty is to show willing to continue the treaty’s development and a wish to be involved in the process.
• To ratify is to go further, to consent to be legally bound by the treaty law.

Then, once 50 states have ratified it, it officially comes into force. For the TPNW this happened in 2021. Once this had happened, the next stage was to hold a meeting with all those who had signed. This meeting occurred in 2022 in Vienna. Just over a year later, the second meeting was convened, with Mexico as the presiding state.

The meeting was held in New York because the United Nations Headquarters are there. Therefore, although there are other UN locations, such as in Vienna and Geneva, it is in New York that the most countries have a permanent representative.

However, this is not to say that holding the meeting in New York was the most convenient location. Many people, particularly civil society members, had issues obtaining visas and funding, with many ultimately unable to attend.

What was your role?

Originally, I was given a place to attend the 2MSP as a Youth Delegate through the organisation Youth for TPNW. This is the same organisation I attended the 1MSP with. On the Tuesday we had our official ‘Youth MSP’, held in the UN Church Centre. Here we had Q&A sessions with panels on topics such as universalisation, positive obligations, and complementation, which were the ‘buzzwords’ of the week. These 3 concepts were consistently revisited over the week because they are what makes the TPNW unique among treaties on nuclear weapons.

The second half of the Youth MSP consisted of smaller group discussions on what our role is in the disarmament movement, the barriers that currently face us from fulfilling them, and how we can overcome these.

As the official youth events did not fill the entire week, I also applied to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) to volunteer with them on the days I was free. I was given a number of roles across the week:

On the Sunday, the Campaigners Meeting was held at Brick Church, the day before the official MSP began. It was a chance for members of civil society to come together and learn about the work that other organisations had been doing over the past year, to hear about the research people have produced, and to gain clarity in what the expectations were for the week ahead. I was able to attend this meeting as a volunteer on the catering team. This gave me a chance to meet hundreds of inspiring people (everyone needed a coffee at some point!). This meeting was actually one of my favourite parts of the week because it was the ‘campaigners meeting’. In other words, the people doing the groundwork in advocating for, and shaping what is still a very young treaty.

Throughout the rest of the week, I helped as a runner to the main MSP, giving me front-row access to the room (the Trusteeship Council Chamber) where state and civil society representatives gave their statements. It was so exciting to be in the middle of official UN-business.

What talks did you attend?
There were also periods over the course of the week when I did not have an official job to do. I used this time to attend any side-events that piqued my interest. (‘Side-events’ refers to any event that was not the main MSP in the Trusteeship Council Chamber.)

I attended a range of talks, including:

– Voices of Civil Society
– Urgency of Disarmament
– Prevention is the Only Cure
– Influencing Nuclear Weapon States.

Experts in various fields contributed to these events, giving me deeper insight into interdisciplinary approaches to nuclear abolition.

Did you attend any events outside the UN building?
As well as talks I also attended other events such as the ‘New Manhattan Project Concert: A Concert for Nuclear Abolition’. This was held on the Monday evening in a theatre room in the Japan Society. It was a multi-media concert with a mix of theatre, film and music including a performance by ‘MARK Harmony’, a group of young singers from the Marshall Islands, whose people and lands are some of the most affected by nuclear testing. The evening was incredibly moving and immersive and is something that I will remember forever.
Another event which I attended was a Mass dedicated to Dorothy Day. I was invited by members of Pax Christi whom I met at the conference and Brendan Fay, a well-known Catholic nuclear abolition and LGBTQ activist. The Mass was given by the Most Rev. John C. Wester, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, also a nuclear disarmament activist. It was really invigorating to see a member of the clergy using their platform and authority to encourage people to act on an issue which is so important. It really hit home how rare it is for us to be called upon in church to take action other than prayer.