Defense Alliance launches popular initiative for a treaty banning nuclear weapons

On Tuesday, the Alliance for a Ban on Nuclear Weapons launches its popular initiative for Switzerland to join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The aim of the treaty is to outlaw nuclear weapons worldwide and achieve their complete abolition.

The initiative will be presented by the initiative committee in the afternoon. Its members include Carlo Sommaruga, member of the SP Council of States in Geneva, and Marionna Schlatter, member of the Green National Council in Zurich, as well as representatives of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the Group for a Switzerland without an Army (Gsoa).

The signatories include former Federal Councillor Micheline Calmy-Rey (SP), the President of the Swiss Green Party, Lisa Mazzone, and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Jacques Dubochet.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which supplements the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, came into force in 2021 and has been ratified by 70 states, but not by the possessors of nuclear weapons and their allies. The Federal Council had only spoken out against it in March.

SDA