An Appeal to Law:
IALANA Statement
On the Threat of War Against Iraq
November 24, 2002
Marburg, Germany
Since its inception in 1986, the International
Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) has been
devoted to the abolition of nuclear weapons and the maintenance
of the rule of law. We, the General Assembly of IALANA, deplore
the erosion of law and the resurgence of reliance on nuclear weapons,
as evidenced by the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review and the most recent
NATO Strategic Concept.
Neither terrorism nor weapons of mass destruction,
threatening though they are, justify the scrapping of Article
2(4) of the United Nations Charter or the total disregard by the
nuclear weapon powers of their duty to comply with the mandate
of the International Court of Justice to "pursue in good
faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear
disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international
control."
War, which under the United Nations Charter may
only be resorted to as a very last resort, after all means of
pacific settlement have been exhausted, is not a proper answer
either to terrorism or to the suspected presence of weapons of
mass destruction in any part of the world.
We commend the Security Council for not having
authorized the use of force in Resolution 1441 and call on the
members of the Security Council not to authorize war against Iraq
in violation of these time honoured principles. We call on the
United States of America not to pursue the course of war on its
own initiative. We call on all nuclear weapon states, official
and unofficial, to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear
weapons with all deliberate speed. We call on civil society to
insist that their governments sacrifice neither the rule of law
nor civil and human rights to a misguided concept of security.
These are indeed dangerous times. It remains to
be seen, however, whether the world community will in the end
suffer greater damage from the ravages of terrorists or from those
who, under the banner of anti-terrorism, would destroy the home
built for "we the peoples" by the United Nations Charter
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Marburg, Germany
November 24, 2002
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