South Asia Citizens Web

The CNDP hereby joins the various streams of global peace movements striving for complete abolition of nuclear weapons from the face of the planet in heartily welcoming the adoption of the ’Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ by the UN with 122 nations voting for the motion and one (Netherlands, a NATO member) voting against and another one (Singapore) abstaining.

A treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons was adopted by an overwhelming vote and met with loud cheers this week at the United Nations. More than 70 years in the making, the treaty offers widely agreed principles, commitments, and mechanisms for ending the nuclear weapons age. Getting here was not easy, and achieving nuclear disarmament will still be a long struggle. But the new treaty creates space and means for a creative new disarmament politics based on law and ethics and democracy that go beyond well-trodden debates on the dangers and costs of nuclear weapons and traditional practices of arms control based on step-by-step reductions that limit only the size of arsenals.

Born in Lahore in 1948, Lala Rukh was for decades an active member of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) — one of South Asia’s most significant platforms for women’s rights.

The issues of farm distress in Gujarat are multiplying. Farmers are committing suicide, reeling under the enormous burden of nearly two decades of neglect of the farm sector by the ruling dispensation. Instead of addressing their issues and, at the very least, entering into a dialogue with them, the state government is using every repressive tactic at its disposal.

’... Where there are no tears, just love flourishes’ The Hindi film song from Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Main (1964) was re-popularised in India by Anand Patwardhan the documentary film maker and peace movement activist after the 1998 nuclear tests by India.