Left to right: Ambassador Sadykov of Kazakhstan; Alyn Ware, director of the Basel Peace Office; Guy C.

Quinlan, NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security; Virginia Gamba, director of the UN Office
for Disarmament Affairs; and Ambassador Samanjuntuk of Indonesia.

NGOCDPS hosts the launch of UNFOLD ZERO
A UN-driven approach to advance nuclear disarmament

On May 7 at the United Nations, Guy Quinlan of NGOCDPS chaired a meeting to launch UNFOLD ZERO, a
campaign aimed at advancing UN-focused approaches to nuclear disarmament including those organized
for September 26, the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Virginia Gamba, director of the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs, opened by voicing the need to eliminate
nuclear arms worldwide, calling it a mission integral to the "organizational identity of the United Nations." She
spoke of "nuclear famine," a reference to a 2013 report that found a "regional nuclear war involving as few as
100 weapons anywhere in the world would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production so severely
that the lives of more than two billion people would be in jeopardy."

Ms. Gamba listed the five basic norms for disarmament agreements that have been developed over the years
by General Assembly resolutions, special sessions and multilateral treaties: verification, transparency,
irreversibility, universality, and commitments that are legally binding.

Ambassador Daniel Samanjuntuk of Indonesia spoke of his countrys role as a leader in the nuclear abolition
movement. He suggested that countries criminalize nuclear weapons, making their possession or use in the
nations jurisdiction a prosecutable offensean idea based on the 1996 decision of the International Court of
Justice and subsequent global laws.

Alyn Ware, director of the Basel Peace Office, haled the launch the UNFOLD ZERO platform by the Basel
Peace Office, PragueVision, Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-
proliferation and Disarmament and Aotearoa Lawyers for Peace. He explained the concept in detail, sparking
discussion among global peace organizations and governments about ways to fully engage U.N. bodies and
their processes to move toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

Meanwhile, the 2014 Preparatory Committee meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has
ended without any agreed statement of recommendations to next year's NPT Review Conference.
Throughout the two-week session, the original nuclear powers (U.S., Russia, China, UK and France) united
in resisting calls by most of the world's non-nuclear-weapon states for faster action on nuclear disarmament
with a specific timetable.

A follow-up to the May meeting on the abolition of nuclear weapons will be held Tuesday, June 10,
from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. at the Church Center for the United Nations, 777 UN Plaza (1st Ave. & 44th St.),
in the Hardin Room on the 11
th
floor.