José Gabriel Feres, of the Chilean Humanist Party coordination team, and Pía Figueroa, co-director of Pressenza, went to the Chilean Foreign Office, on the 15th of September, to meet with the Director General of Chilean Foreign Policy, Ambassador Alfredo Labbé, to propose the need for Chile to have greater participation in the process of global nuclear disarmament.
In the meeting, the two humanists delivered a letter requesting that Chile presents a working proposal for a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty in the next UN General Assembly, an initiative stressed by the Ambassador.
He said that Chile will co-sponsor a petition that will be made by around 15 countries asking the UN General Assembly to re-open the Open-Ended Working Group with the aim of analysing and proposing to the Assembly the modalities in which negotiations for disarmament and a prohibition of nuclear weapons could be carried out from a humanitarian perspective, in addition to bringing into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Feres, one of those behind the idea to call for the meeting at the Foreign Office assured the Ambassador that together with the network of humanist organisations, contacts are being made with leaders in different countries that support this project, presenting the same document and request.
In this context, he said that on the 6th of August (the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb) this proposal was delivered to President Michelle Bachelet so that she could thereby instruct the Foreign Office, while highlighting the measures that the government has undertaken in this matter.
The meeting ended wishing the ambassador the best results in his efforts to reopen the Open-Ended Working Group that will allow for and advance in the road map towards the ban on nuclear weapons.
