ON Friday January 22, being the date on which the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force, there were celebrations worldwide. That is a date to remember in the years to come.

Here in Keighley, peace makers hung banners and rang bells. There were white peace poppies and the blue flag of the United Nations hung on the civic centre flagpole.

It is the first legally-binding statute banning the development, possession, use and threatened use of nuclear weapons. It is also now illegal for any nation state to allow nuclear weapons on its territory.

This applies to the countries signing the treaty.

The question must be asked why nine nuclear weapons states should hold to ransom the great majority of nation states.

Although resolutions banning nuclear weapons have been put to the General Assembly of the UN since its creation in 1945, none have succeeded until this day.

Over a number of years, the overwhelming evidence was that there was no way any nation could protect its people against the effects of any nuclear bomb. So it is for humanitarian reasons that this treaty has come into force.

Now the work begins, worldwide, to find ways forward of including the nuclear weapons states in the progress towards a nuclear-weapons-free world.

If the political will is there, we will succeed.

Sylvia Boyes, Keighley

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