Affiliates on the ITUC General Council, representing a total of 109 million members, also signed on behalf of their organisations. The petition will be handed over to UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson at a ceremony at UN Headquarters in conjunction with the UN Review Conference of the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A seminar jointly organised by RENGO and the ITUC on disarmament issues will take place on 27 April in New York.

This initiative is a step in the implementation of the 2014 ITUC Congress commitment to promote peace and disarmament. Maintaining the world’s nuclear arsenals costs 100 billion dollars per year, money which could be better allocated to creating jobs, ensuring industrial transformation to combat climate change, and providing universal social protection.

The threat of a nuclear conflict is never far away, and with several nuclear-armed countries (India, Israel and Pakistan) refusing to sign the NPT and North Korea announcing its withdrawal from the NPT in 2003, a major international effort is required to ensure that all countries adhere to the treaty as a basis for global nuclear disarmament.