ICAN: Swiss should set an example on nuclear weapons

"If Switzerland cannot say, 'under no circumstances will we use nuclear weapons', how can we expect North Korea to do that?" 

This is the question posed by Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear WeaponsExternal link (ICAN), speaking to swissinfo.ch from the WEF annual meeting in Davos. For Fihn, it’s high time that Switzerland signed and ratified the United Nations’ international nuclear disarmament treatyExternal link, adopted in July of last year and supported by some 50 nations – especially considering global nuclear threats that have caused the so-called Doomsday Clock to move two minutes closer to midnight.External link

United States President Donald Trump, who arrived at the WEF meeting on Thursday, has famously boasted that his “nuclear button” is much bigger and more powerful than that of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. The two men have been swapping threats over the use of nuclear weapons for the past year, putting other countries’ governments on high alert.

This situation, combined with leaked documents from the Trump administration seen by the anti-nuclear weapons group, lead Fihn to believe that world powers must take urgent action to address the nuclear threat.