NZ Mayor appointed to international body

Bob Harvey QSO JP, Mayor of Waitakere City and President of the Peace Foundation was recently appointed to the Executive Committee of Mayors for Peace, an international organisation of over 2400 mayors and cities promoting the global abolition and elimination of nuclear weapons.

 Mayors for Peace, led by the Mayor of Hiroshima Tadatoshi Akiba, was established to represent the security interests of citizens in cities around the world. A statement presented by Mayors for Peace to the United Nations notes that 'such security is not advanced when there remain 30,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are deployed and ready for use at short notice. The risk of nuclear weapons use - by accident, design or miscalculation – is increasing due to the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new States, the possibility of non-State access to nuclear weapons and bomb-building materials, and the expanded nuclear weapons use doctrines of the nuclear weapon States.'

Mayors for Peace is advancing a number of initiatives at the United Nations and the Non-Proliferation Treaty Conferences including a call for nuclear weapon States to stop targeting cities, take existing nuclear forces of high-readiness-to-use, and start negotiations on a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.

Mayors for Peace has also proposed a mechanism for making progress – a Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This would utilise the fact that the NPT provides a forum for both non-nuclear and nuclear weapon States to discuss disarmament and non-proliferation proposals.

Mayor Bob Harvey will be travelling to Belguim for the Mayors for Peace Board Meeting in November.