The United Nations has adopted a legally-binding treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons for the first time in the seven-decade effort to avert a nuclear war.
The document, called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, was adopted on Friday by a vote of 122 in favor with one country – NATO member The Netherlands voting against – and Singapore abstaining.
The United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and the Israeli regime – all of which possess nuclear weapons – did not take part in the negotiations and vote.
Elayne Whyte Gomez, the president of the UN conference that negotiated the treaty, said it was the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years.
She said, “The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years,” since the use of the first atomic bombs on Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
According to the draft text, agreed on by…