- The mayor of Hiroshima has urged Japan to sign the Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons(TPNW).This statement came as the city marked the 74 years since being targeted in the world’s first atomic attack.
- Japan is the only country to have experienced atomic attack against Hiroshima and Nagasaki days ahead of the country’s surrender in 1945 to end World War II.
- The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons.The treaty was passed in 2017.
- The treaty will enter into force 90 days after it has been ratified by at least 50 countries.Currently,24 countries have ratified the treaty.
- The treaty prohibits a full range of nuclear-weapon related activities, such as undertaking to develop, test, produce, manufacture, acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
- Further,for nuclear armed states joining the treaty,it provides for a time-bound framework for negotiations leading to the verified and irreversible elimination of its nuclear weapons programme.
- However,eight nuclear weapon states namely the US, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan and North Korea along with Israel had not participated in the negotiations of the treaty.
