Abstract
In recent years, African countries have demonstrated enhanced levels of participation in the global denuclearisation agenda. This is partly attributed to a stimulus injected by a new international movement, known as the ‘humanitarian initiative’, an approach that heralded significant departure from the traditional security-oriented discourse on nuclear weapons. The momentum created by the ‘humanitarian initiative’ has not only led to the adoption of a new treaty on the abolition of nuclear weapons, but also it has strong resonance with the well-known African humanist philosophical thought, the hallmarks of which include emphasis on communality, the interdependence of the members of a community and the peaceful coexistence of human beings. Building on its recognised status as the largest continental bloc in the history of the creation of nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs), and the host of the only country in the world that has voluntarily given up on its nuclear disarmament (South Africa), Africa also portrays dependable potential in shaping global discourses on denuclearisation.
We must ask the question, which might sound naive to those who have elaborated sophisticated arguments to justify their refusal to eliminate these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction -- why do they need them anyway?
Mandela (1998)
Mankind has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination.
Winston Churchill (cf. Langworth 2015)
Senior Core Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Central European University (CEU); Academic Staff Member of the ‘Luis del Castillo’ Permanent Seminar and Master’s in International Criminal Justice, a joint programme of the International Criminal Bar (ICB) and the University of Tarragona in Spain; Executive Director of Eritrean Law Society (ELS). Partial research for this chapter was conducted during my stay at the IAS of the CEU. The institutional and financial support of the IAS and CEU is thankfully acknowledged. The standard disclaimer applies; opinion expressed in this chapter is attributable only to the author.
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Notes
- 1.
International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) 2014, 11–13.
- 2.
- 3.
The name is traced to a description used by Ambassador Cornel Feruta of Romania, who used the term 24 April 2013 in reference to a group of 80 states, which made a ‘Joint Statement on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons’, at the second session of the preparatory committee to the 2015 NPT Review Conference, held in Geneva. The statement was made by South Africa. The statement was described at the time as ‘the largest mono-thematic statement in the history of the NPT’. See Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 2013.
- 4.
ICAN 2017a. ICAN received the prize for its ‘ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition’ of such nuclear weapons.
- 5.
Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013.
- 6.
Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013.
- 7.
Tutu 2014, 4.
- 8.
ILPI 2013, 4.
- 9.
ICAN 2014, 18.
- 10.
Tutu 2014, 3.
- 11.
ILPI 2013, 3.
- 12.
ICJ, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 1996, 226.
- 13.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 2015.
- 14.
2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, Volume I, NPT/CONF.2010/50 (Vol. I), para 80 and para A.v of the resolutions of the Review Conference (conclusions and recommendations for follow-up actions): ‘The Conference expresses its deep concern at the continued risk for humanity represented by the possibility that these weapons could be used and the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from the use of nuclear weapons’.
- 15.
Treaty on the Non‐Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1 July 1968), in force 5 March 1970, 729 UNTS 161.
- 16.
Reaching Critical Will 2012a.
- 17.
Reaching Critical Will 2012b. At this level, the number of states that endorsed the statement reached 39. In April 2013, it became 80.
- 18.
Swart 2015, 758.
- 19.
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 2017.
- 20.
- 21.
See Chap. 18, n 62 in this volume (the above concern is attributed to Switzerland).
- 22.
ILPI 2016, 14.
- 23.
Arms Trade Treaty (3 June 2013), in force 24 December 2014, 52 ILM 985 (2013). See also Mweemba 2014, 8.
- 24.
ICAN 2014, 1.
- 25.
ICAN 2014, 2.
- 26.
United Nations Regional Groups of Member States (2018), http://www.un.org/depts/DGACM/RegionalGroups.shtml.
- 27.
ICAN 2014, 2.
- 28.
Treaty on the Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Africa (‘Pelindaba Treaty’), Pelindaba, 11 April 1996, in force 15 July 2009, 35 ILM 698 (1996). ‘Pelindaba’ was the name of a former nuclear weapons facility near Pretoria in South Africa.
- 29.
See in general, Hellestveit and Mekonnen 2014, 347–373.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
- 32.
Hellestveit and Mekonnen 2014, 357.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Declaration on the Denuclearization of Africa, adopted by the Summit of the OAU at its first ordinary session, Cairo, 17–21 July 1964.
- 35.
Cited by Ambassador Mxakato-Diseko 2013. See also the Lusaka Declaration on Peace, Independence, Development, Cooperation and Democratisation of International Relations, adopted 8–10 September 1970.
- 36.
Treaty of Pelindaba, Article 12, and Annexes III and VI.
- 37.
Swart 2015, 760–762.
- 38.
Statement by Oyugi 2014.
- 39.
Swart 2015, 761.
- 40.
- 41.
- 42.
As propagated by the former Chairperson of the AU Commission, Alpha Oumar Konaré, cited in Murithi 2005, 16.
- 43.
- 44.
Mekonnen 2010, 104–108.
- 45.
Cornell and van Marle 2005, 197, citing Mudimbe 1988, 186, assert that gnosis ‘means seeking to know, inquiry, methods of knowing, investigation, and even acquaintance with someone’. The authors do not use IKS in their discussion of African philosophy. Instead, they use ‘indigenous system’, which in the context their discussion is not different from IKS.
- 46.
Nel 2005, 7.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
See, for example, Tutu 1999.
- 49.
South African Constitutional Court, S v Makwanyane and Another 1995 (3) SA 391 (CC), para 224.
- 50.
Cobbah (1987: 320). See also Gibson 2002, 543, who quotes Tutu’s words on Ubuntu as follows: ‘Ubuntu says I am human because you are human. If I undermine your humanity I dehumanise myself. You must do what you can to maintain this great harmony, which is perpetually undermined by resentment, anger, desire for vengeance’.
- 51.
For example, the online version of the Collins Dictionary defines humanitarianism ‘the doctrine that man’s duty is to strive to promote the welfare of mankind’.
- 52.
Herbjørnsrud 2017.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Tutu 2014, 4.
- 55.
Ibid.
- 56.
UN.Doc.S/RES/1540 (2004), adopted 28 April 2004.
- 57.
ILPI 2016, 19.
- 58.
ILPI 2016, 19.
- 59.
- 60.
Swart 2015, 768.
- 61.
Ibid. See also The Diplomacy of Ubuntu 2011.
- 62.
Swart 2015, 771.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
This is based on the so-called ‘Atoms for Peace’ initiative, popularised by the speech of Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States of America, to the 470th Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953. See also Fourth Report of the Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation and Contemporary International Law of the International Law Association (ILA) (Draft Report January 2018), para 4. See also Black-Branch and Fleck 2016, 1–19.
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
World Nuclear Association. Radioactive Waste Management. June 2017. http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx. See also Y Museveni, Speech Given at the UN Security Council Summit on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament, September 2009, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Mf2830wQ8.
- 67.
Museveni, note 66 above.
- 68.
Ibid.
- 69.
Fleck 2018.
- 70.
Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013, note 8 above.
- 71.
Langworth 2015.
- 72.
BBC 2018.
- 73.
- 74.
See, for example, Vitkovskaya 2018.
- 75.
Fleck 2018, paras 5–6.
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Mekonnen, D. (2019). African Perspectives on Denuclearisation and the Use of Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Purposes. In: Black-Branch, J., Fleck, D. (eds) Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law - Volume IV. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-267-5_8
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