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Mozambique: Assembly Ratifies Nuclear Weapon Free Zone
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
26 March 2008
Posted to the web 26 March 2008
Maputo
The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Wednesday unanimously ratified the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty.
Since the text was drawn up by experts who met at Pelindaba in Ssouth Africa in mid-1995, the document is also known as thje Pelindaba Treaty. Later that year it was approved by both the Organisation of African Unity (the predecessor of today's African Union) and the United Nations.
Introducing the ratification resolution, Foreign Minister Oldemiro Baloi said that nuclear weapon free zones "are one of the most effective means of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and of promoting general and complte disarmament".
The first nuclear-weapon free zone was Antarctica, declared as such in 1959. Much more significant was the 1967 Tlatelolco Treaty, which declared Latin America and the Caribbean to be a nuclear weapon free zone. This was followed by the Rarotonga Treaty in 1985 (for the South Pacific), the Bangkok treaty in 1995 (for south-east Asia), and the Semipalatinsk Treaty in 2006 (for central Asia).
Baloi said that the drive to ban nuclear weapons from Africa was driven first by the French nuclear test in the Sahara in 1960, and then by the attempts of the apartheid regime to develop a nuclear bomb. After the fall of apartheid, democratic South Africa became the only country that has ever dismantled a nuclear weapons programme.
All parties to the Pelindaba Treaty undertake "not to conduct research on, develop, manufacture, stockpile or otherwise acquire, possess or have control over any nuclear explosive device by any means anywhere" and "not to seek or receive any assistance in the research on, development, manufacture, stockpiling or acquisition, or possession of any nuclear explosive device".
They also pledge to prohibit the stationing of any nuclear device on their territory. Not only does the treaty seek to ban nuclear tests in Africa, but the signatories also promise "not to assist or encourage the testing of any nuclear explosive device by any State anywhere".
The Pelindaba Treaty has already been signed by 51 African states (98 per cent of the total), and Mozambique is the 24th state to ratify it. The treaty will take effect when 28 African states have ratified it.
The Assembly also unanimously approved a resolution ratifying the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Parties to this protocol recognise the competence of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to receive complaints from individuals or groups from states who have signed up to the main convention that their governments are not respecting the duties that the convention imposes.
The protocol states that "if the Committee receives reliable information indicating grave or systematic violations by a State Party of rights set forth in the Convention, the Committee shall invite that State Party to cooperate in the examination of the information and to this end to submit observations with regard to the information concerned". The Committee can then "designate one or more of its members to conduct an inquiry and to report urgently to the Committee"
This is the only mechanism to enforce the convention, and to ensure that signatories are not merely paying lip service to women's rights.
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Introducing the resolution, the Minister for Women's Affairs and Social Welfare, Virgilia Matabele, said that ratification of the protocol "will demonstrate commitment to the cause of gender equality and to improve the status of Mozambican women". It would also strengthen "public awareness of the international guarantees of women's human rights".
"There are no human rights without women's rights", she declared. "There is no development of a society without the involvement of all of its members".
Pf/ (623)
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