Topic: Reducing the use of Indiscriminate Weapons in Conflict
Country: South Africa
Delegate Name: Victoria Minka
School: Kalamazoo Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All South Africa position papers GLIMUN 2016 committees
In 1989 South Africa was the first and only nation to dismantle all of its nuclear weapons of their own free will. Since then, we in South Africa have taken a firm stance against all use of this form of weaponry, hoping to act as a beacon of peace to other powerful nations who were building large nuclear arsenals of their own. Instead, South Africans use the Uranium native to our country, or that it recovers from old nuclear weaponry, to make strides in nuclear energy, technology, and use as a medical isotope. As a whole, we in South Africa are firmly set against the use of nuclear weaponry and we have been an active voice in nuclear nonproliferation.
Since South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons, we have played a critical role in encouraging other nations to continue forward with nuclear nonproliferation and placing focus on nuclear energy instead of nuclear weaponry. This is enforced by the fact that South Africa has signed all major resolutions regarding the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons in the United Nations since FW de Klerk became President in 1989. Some of the treaties that we have ratified are the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water (PTBT), and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). We in South Africa believe that the best way to reduce the use of indiscriminate weapons is by making sure that all countries are starting to reduce their nuclear stockpiles, with the goal that in the future all nuclear weaponry will be dismantled. Until all nuclear weapons are dismantled, treaties like the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (which South Africa ratified) should remain in place to prohibit all nuclear explosions, for both civilian and military purposes. Bans on nuclear explosions are also essential to protecting our environment, especially ocean life, which we in South Africa protected through our ratification of the PTBT.
The nation of South Africa is also part of several organizations outside of the United Nations that supports these same ideals, such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement, and The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). South Africa’s ideals are quite similar to those put forth in the MTCR, which is a voluntary organization that works to prevent the proliferation of missile and drone technology. Controlling these types of weapons in particular is extremely important to South Africa because of their role in harming civilians in “hostile” territories. We believe in nations working together to safely regulate and understand each other’s nuclear activities in a peaceful manner, which is shown in our participation in the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone Treaty (Treaty of Pelindaba), which was also signed by 42 other African nations. Not only do we think that nuclear weapons should be prohibited, but those that make these weapons more readily available to hostile groups should be persecuted, which we have done in the past to private companies that were selling nuclear materials to non-state actors.
Due to our firm stance on nonproliferation for several decades now, South Africa has created a great deal of allies over the common ideal that nuclear weaponry is too great a threat to global stability and environmental health to continue. Many of our allies are African nations tuat signed the Treaty of Pelindaba as well as other states that ratified treaties regarding nuclear disarmament in the United Nations (Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, and Nigeria). We have also cultivated agreements with several world powers as we continue to try and develop nuclear power plants in our great nation. We in South Africa are proud to stand by a great deal of other powerful nations as we push for a more peaceful world by reducing the use of indiscriminate weapons, especially nuclear weapons, in any sort of conflict. Nuclear weapons not only harm hostile groups, but they also destroy the lives and cultures of innocent civilians who are already struggling to survive in war zones.
