The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favor of an independent scientific panel to report on the physical and societal consequences of nuclear war, the first such study in more than three decades, reports BenarNews (a Malaysia-based outlet financed by the U.S. Agency for Global Media). The resolution’s backers say research into the catastrophic consequences of nuclear conflict needs to be urgently updated and expanded, especially at a time of heightened geopolitical tension and escalating nuclear rhetoric.
The world body’s First Committee on Disarmament approved on Nov. 1 the resolution sponsored by 20 nations, by a vote of 144 to 3, with 30 abstentions. Only the nuclear-armed states of Russia, the United Kingdom, and France were opposed; the United States, India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan abstained. China supported the resolution.
The resolution was motivated mainly by the archipelagic states of the Western Pacific, supported by Australia and New Zealand, which were the sites for much U.S. nuclear testing in the 1940s and ’50s, the effects of which they say lingers still to this very day.
