Prepare for some good news in 2009. Despite the terrible start in Gaza and other endemic conflicts, governments committed to shared security are set to reach an historic milestone this year. Specifically, the number of countries protected by nuclear-weapon-free zones is set to jump to 110 countries from 56 at present.
The change will come from an African capital, like Windhoek or Bujumbura, as soon as two more governments ratify the treaty making Africa a nuclear-weapon-free zone. Churches are promoting the step, and linking Africa's action to the need for similar progress in the Middle East.
"This will be good news on the nuclear front for Africa and the world," notes Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat, a senior African statesman. Kiplagat is leading a World Council of Churches (WCC) initiative to help bring the Africa Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty into force, with church action nationally to support an international goal.
A recent ecumenical delegation to Namibia received a positive response from top government officials there. Ratification of the Africa treaty will mean that the whole southern hemisphere and adjoining regions are protected. Latin America and the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and Central Asia have also set up zones that exclude nuclear arms and related activities.
The focus on collective international security has been growing for months, with ecumenical participation of different kinds. "The commitment of world religions to shared security means bringing governments to make good on their promise to free the world of nuclear weapons," WCC president for Asia Soritua Nababan told a summit of world religious leaders in Japan on the eve of last year's G8 meeting.
The advent of a new administration in the United States has already helped push nuclear treaties higher on the world agenda. Curbing nuclear fuels and banning all nuclear tests will be central issues at major United Nations conferences the WCC will attend in Geneva and New York in 2009. For churches, the trend means that 60 years of disarmament policies reinforced by all WCC Assemblies have a future again after years of frustration.
"You will see fundamental transformation of US nuclear policies," an adviser to President Obama during his election campaign, Joseph Cirincione, told groups including the WCC at a European Parliament conference last month. "These will include reaching out early to the Russian government and negotiating deep cuts in nuclear arsenals," said Cirincione, who is president of a fund that builds civil society capacity in the field, the Ploughshares Foundation.
In a major address late last year, UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon called the abolition of nuclear weapons "a global public good of the highest order". He said progress would come via the rule of law, including treaties establishing nuclear-weapon-free zones in Africa and, unavoidably, the Middle East. The UN leader noted the essential role of the main nuclear arms control treaty (known by its acronym, NPT) and the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Ecumenical and interfaith delegations attend both forums regularly.
To promote the nuclear-weapon-free zones in Africa and the Middle East, the WCC has established contacts in 50 countries with representatives of governments, civil society and religious groups.
