In this issue, the Review has chosen to feature the voices of hibakusha, those who survived the nuclear bombings in Japan.* These three hibakusha have shared their experiences with the hope that our readers will understand the horrors of nuclear weapons use. They have each suffered and witnessed the horrific suffering of others caused by nuclear weapons, and their families may continue to suffer medical problems for generations to come. Each calls for assurances that nuclear weapons will never be used again. These are their stories.

The Chugoku Shimbun is a daily newspaper based in Hiroshima, the city that experienced the first nuclear attack in human history. Founded in 1892, with a circulation of 620,000, the Chugoku Shimbun is one of Japan's leading regional newspapers. On 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb exploded above the city and citizens of Hiroshima. The bomb's powerful blast, heat rays and radiation annihilated the city, killing more than 100,000 people, including those who had succumbed to injuries and illness by the end of 1945. Those who managed to survive lost not only loved ones but also their homes, schools and workplaces. They endured the chaos of the postwar period and rebuilt the city. The Chugoku Shimbun has always stood beside the people of Hiroshima as a newspaper company that also endured the tragedy, and it worked hard to support the city's reconstruction in the aftermath of the atomic bombing. Furthermore, it has long pursued a variety of distinctive efforts to help realize a world without war and nuclear weapons.

This selection of photos is meant as an appeal from the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum to remember the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was compiled by museum director Akitoshi Nakamura based on the collection at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.1 Readers are invited to visit the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and spend some time viewing its collection of over 1,000 photographs and remnants from the city at that time to get a sense of what happened before and after the atomic bombing that summer seventy years ago, and how devastating the atomic bomb's destructive effects were.

In this interview, conducted after their visit to Hiroshima, President Peter Maurer and President Tadateru Konoe reflect on the human cost of nuclear weapons and present the perspective of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement on the Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Oslo, Nayarit, Mexico and Vienna, and the challenges ahead for nuclear disarmament.

In this article, the highly destructive potential of global nuclear arsenals is reviewed with respect to nuclear force structures, evolution of nuclear capabilities, modernization programmes and nuclear war planning and operations. Specific nuclear forces data is presented for the United States, the Russian Federation, Great Britain, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. Hypothetical, escalatory scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons are presented, including the calculated distribution of radioactive fallout. At more than seventy years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and twenty-five years since the end of the Cold War, international progress on nuclear arms control and disarmament has now nearly stalled, with the emphasis shifting to modernizing and maintaining large inventories of nuclear weapons indefinitely. This perpetuates a grave risk to human health, civil society and the environment.

This paper argues that pursuing negotiations in good faith on effective measures for nuclear disarmament is a legal obligation, not a foreign policy option. Drawing on the New Agenda Coalition paper of April 2014, which identified some pathways by which nuclear disarmament might be pursued, this paper identifies and analyzes international legal issues raised by each of those pathways. The paper concludes by explaining why legal analysis and discussion are important even in the absence of a settled political commitment to nuclear disarmament.

The potential use of nuclear weapons has long been a global concern. This article highlights the principal rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the conduct of hostilities applicable to nuclear weapons, and the issues and concerns that would arise were such weapons ever to be used again, in particular the severe and extensive consequences for civilians, civilian objects, combatants and the environment.

In recent years, increased attention has been paid to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. Based on what has been learned from extensive research on the humanitarian and environmental effects of nuclear weapons since they were first used in 1945, and the accompanying implications for IHL, it seems appropriate to conclude that the use of nuclear weapons in or near a populated area would amount to an indiscriminate attack and that there should also be a presumption of illegality with regard to the use of nuclear weapons outside such areas.

Mounting an effective international humanitarian response to a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) event, especially if the response is undertaken on an ad hoc basis, would be extremely difficult and would pose many risks to the responders. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has created a competency-based capacity to respond to at least small-scale CBRN events, including a deployable capability to undertake operational activities. This involves informed assessments of CBRN risks, timely and competent decisions on how to respond, and effectively mobilizing appropriate resources to implement these decisions, through the creation of an emergency roster. In addition to the acquisition of technical expertise and material resources, the creation of such capacity requires the application of central processes, ensuring systematic management of CBRN response (including risk-based decision-making), standing operational procedures, and availability of and access to the necessary resources. Implementation of the ICRC's CBRN response framework as described in this article should be considered by any agency or other stakeholder preparing for international humanitarian assistance in CBRN events – especially if such events are related to armed conflict.

International human rights law is an as-yet underused branch of international law when assessing the legality of nuclear weapons and advocating for their elimination. It offers a far greater range of implementation mechanisms than does international humanitarian law (IHL), and arguably strengthens the protections afforded to civilians and combatants under IHL, particularly in non-international armed conflict. Of particular relevance are the rights to life, to humane treatment, to health and to a healthy environment, associated with the right to a remedy for violations of any human rights.

This article describes the genesis of the humanitarian initiative and the political context in which it has developed in the course of the joint cross-regional statements and the three international conferences on this issue in Norway, Mexico and Austria. It examines the key substantive conclusions that have emerged as a result of this debate and assesses their relevance for the global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. It concludes that these facts and findings warrant an urgent reassessment of the so-called security value of nuclear weapons and a nuclear deterrence-based notion of stability and security.

This article examines the progress of the humanitarian initiative to reframe the nuclear weapons discourse internationally. The initiative seeks to shift debate away from theories of strategic stability and towards a focus on the impact of nuclear weapons themselves. This effort has now gathered significant support at an international level, and its implications are increasingly recognized by both nuclear-armed and non-nuclear-armed States. The initiative has been underpinned by the deliberate logic of humanitarian disarmament. A treaty banning nuclear weapons, around which momentum is gathering, would be an achievable, legally coherent and logical next step developing from the initiative.

The international community has been struggling to reach agreement on the non-proliferation and elimination of nuclear weapons since they were first used in 1945. Encouragingly, recent global debate has, for the first time, focused on the devastating humanitarian consequences that the use of nuclear weapons will have not only for nuclear weapons States but for all humanity. The fact that the risks and overwhelming humanitarian consequences of a nuclear event are so high, combined with the inability of the global community to adequately respond to the needs of victims, has compelled policy-makers to consider new ways to work towards the prohibition of the use of nuclear weapons under international law. This article examines how the “humanitarian initiative” has reframed the nuclear weapons debate away from the traditional realm of State security, deterrence and military utility, and towards the grim reality of the humanitarian impacts that would confront humankind if nuclear weapons were ever used again.

The current initiative on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons has offered States the opportunity to reinvigorate the disarmament debate. While Africa has taken this opportunity to engage on nuclear disarmament, the impact of its efforts remains to be seen. The purpose of this article is to recall the value of African engagement, and to identify the important role that South Africa could play in leading the African continent in its call for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The people of the Pacific region have suffered widespread and persisting radioactive contamination, displacement and transgenerational harm from nuclear test explosions. This paper reviews radiation health effects and the global impacts of nuclear testing, as context for the health and environmental consequences of nuclear test explosions in Australia, the Marshall Islands, the central Pacific and French Polynesia. The resulting humanitarian needs include recognition, accountability, monitoring, care, compensation and remediation. Treaty architecture to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons and provide for their elimination is considered the most promising way to durably end nuclear testing. Evidence of the humanitarian impacts of nuclear tests, and survivor testimony, can contribute towards fulfilling the humanitarian imperative to eradicate nuclear weapons.

The participation of nuclear India in the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons conferences has generated curiosity in the global community. The world is bewildered to know that India simultaneously possesses nuclear weapons and participates in the humanitarian impact initiative. Even observers of the humanitarian impact movement often wonder what contribution India makes to the movement. Some historical insight into India's nuclear policy solves the puzzle. The humanitarian impact aspect of the nuclear debate has been an ingredient in India's policy because of India's strategic culture. The components of the Humanitarian Pledge are echoed in India's nuclear policy, and India maintains that a world without nuclear weapons will be more secure.

This paper discusses non-State actors’ motivation and capacity to develop and use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) improvised weapons in attacks, as well as the possible consequences of such use. Six types of groups have been identified as potential CBRN weapons users that may increasingly be able to acquire relevant CBRN weapons-related knowledge, skills and possibly materials. As technical barriers still form a gap between the theoretical possibility and the operational reality, any potential future CBRN attacks would most likely be crude, low-level attacks, including chemical or radiological materials. CBRN attacks carried out by non-State actors in the future are likely to be more disruptive than destructive.

In recent weeks and months, the issues of nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation have assumed a new urgency on the world stage. Energetic diplomatic efforts are heralding long overdue progress on nuclear weapons issues in the post-Cold War era.

This year is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – events that have left an indelible mark on humanity's conscience and consciousness.