Day: June 22, 2022

VIENNA, Nuclear weapons are “a deadly reminder of countries’ inability to solve problems through dialogue and collaboration”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, urging the international community to abandon them once and for all.

“These weapons offer false promises of security and deterrence – while guaranteeing only destruction, death, and endless brinksmanship,” he said in a video message to the First Meeting of States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, taking place in Vienna, Austria.

“Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.”

The UN chief said the “terrifying lessons” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fading from memory, referring to the atomic bombing of these two major Japanese cities during the Second World War.

However, with more than 13,000 nuclear weapons still held across the globe, “the once unthinkable prospect of nuclear conflict is now back within the realm of possibility,” he warned.

“In a world rife with geopolitical tensions and mistrust, this is a recipe for annihilation. We cannot allow the nuclear weapons wielded by a handful of States to jeopardize all life on our planet. We must stop knocking at doomsday’s door,” he said.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is an important step towards the common aspiration of a world without nuclear weapons, Guterres told participants.

It prohibits a full range of nuclear-weapon-related activities, such as undertaking to develop, test, produce, manufacture, acquire, or stockpile nuclear weapons, or other nuclear explosive devices.

The treaty was adopted in July 2017 and entered into force in January 2021. It has been signed by 86 countries and ratified by 65.

Governments, civil society groups and other observers are attending the meeting in Vienna, reflecting the central truth that “disarmament is everybody’s business, because life itself is everybody’s business”, said the Secretary-General.

Decisions made there will help cement the Treaty’s position as an essential element of global disarmament and non-proliferation efforts, he added, expressing hope that more countries will be convinced to get on board.

“It is only by joining in solidarity that we can eliminate this scourge and get back to the business of building a better, more peaceful and trusting world for all.”

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

ABUJA, Nigerian troops have found two former schoolgirls who were abducted by Boko Haram jihadists eight years ago, the military said Tuesday, freeing some of the last victims of the 2014 Chibok abduction.

The two women each carried babies on their laps as they were presented by the military, after captivity with militants who stormed their school in April, 2014 in northeast Nigeria in a mass kidnapping that sparked international outrage.

Major-General Christopher Musa, the military commander of troops in the region, told reporters the girls were found on June 12 and 14 in two different locations by troops.

“We are very lucky to have been able to recover two of the Chibok girls,” Musa said.

Dozens of Boko Haram militants stormed the Chibok girls’ boarding school in 2014 and packed 276 pupils, aged 12-17, at the time into trucks in the jihadist group’s first mass school abduction.

Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape by jumping from the trucks shortly after their abduction while 80 were released in exchange for some detained Boko Haram commanders following negotiations with the Nigerian government.

In the recent releases, one of the women, Hauwa Joseph, was found along with other civilians on June 12 around Bama after troops dislodged a Boko Haram camp, while the other, Mary Dauda, was found later outside Ngoshe village in Gwoza district, near the border with Cameroon.

On June 15 the military said on Twitter that they had found one of the Chibok girls named Mary Ngoshe. She turned out to be Mary Dauda.

“I was nine when we were kidnapped from our school in Chibok and I was married off not long ago and had this child,” Joseph told reporters at the military headquarters.

Joseph’s husband and father-in-law were killed in a military raid and she was left to fend for herself and her 14-month-old son.

“We were abandoned, no one cared to look after us. We were not being fed,” she said.

Thousands of Boko Haram fighters and families have been surrendering over the last year, fleeing government bombardments and infighting with the rival group Islamic State West Africa Province.

The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced 2.2 million more since 2009.

Dauda, who was 18 when she was kidnapped was married at different times to Boko Haram fighters in the group’s enclave in the Sambisa forest.

“They would starve and beat you if you refused to pray,” Dauda said about life under Boko Haram.

She decided to flee and told her husband she was visiting another Chibok girl in Dutse village near Ngoshe, close to the border with Cameroon.

With the help of an old man who lived outside the village with his family, Dauda trekked all night to Ngoshe where she surrendered to troops in the morning.

“All the remaining Chibok girls have been married with children. I left more than 20 of them in Sambisa, she said. “I’m so happy I’m back.”

After the Chibok school mass abduction jihadists carried out several mass abductions and deadly attacks on schools in the northeast.

In 2018, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters kidnapped 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years from Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGSTC) Dapchi in neighbouring Yobe state.

All the schoolgirls were released a month later except Leah Sharibu, the only Christian among the girls, who was held by the group for refusing to renounce her faith.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK