(en Francais, Bâle accueille un forum international sur la sécurité coopérative et un monde exempt d’armes nucléaires)
Cover photo - The Basel Town Hall (Rathaus), venue for the Basel OSCE Forum.
From July 4-5, mayors, parliamentarians and civil society representatives from around Europe will convene in Basel to highlight the importance of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and to advance the cooperative security framework for a nuclear-weapon-free world.
The Basel OSCE Forum is one of a number of activities promoting the OSCE leading up to the OSCE Ministerial Meeting in Basel on December 4-5, 2014.
The OSCE provides a cooperative security framework to address key issues facing European countries, including inter-State conflicts, arms control, confidence-and-security-building measures, human rights, national minorities, democratization, policing strategies, counter-terrorism and economic and environmental activities.
Plutonium core of a nuclear weapon – the size of an apple – can destroy a city
Nuclear disarmament is instrumental to such security. As President Obama said in Prague in April 2009, ‘One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.’
17,000 nuclear weapons – costing over US$100 billion per year to maintain – remain in the arsenals of the nuclear-armed States. Many of these are deployed in Europe. As long as nuclear weapons exist, there is an ever-present reality that they could be used by a terrorist organisation or by a government – by accident, miscalculation or intent.
The elimination of nuclear weapons is a global good of the highest orderUN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
The Basel OSCE Forum will focus on the cooperative security framework to eliminate nuclear weapons globally under effective international control, and to address security issues which give rise to nuclear deterrence doctrines.
In July 2013 the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly agreed by consensus to support the Open Ended Working Group – a recently established United Nations initiative to take forward multilateral negotiations to achieve a nuclear weapons free world – and to also support the Inter Parliamentary Union resolution calling on all parliaments to take action for nuclear disarmament (See OSCE Parliamentary Assembly supports new UN process for nuclear disarmament). .
The Basel OSCE Forum will be organised by the Basel Peace Office and hosted by Guy Morin, President of the Basel-Stadt Canton and a leading member of Mayors for Peace, a network of over 6000 cities worldwide seeking the elimination of nuclear weapons through a verified and enforceable treaty by 2020.
Basel OSCE Forum Program:
Friday July 4: Basel Rathaus (Town Hall)
14:00: Basel and the OSCE
15:30: OSCE and the integrated security agenda: Links between disarmament, environment, human rights…
16:15: Humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons
18:00: Public Meeting
20:00: Conference Dinner
Saturday July 5: Rochart Hotel
9:30: The cooperative security framework for nuclear abolition
11:15 The role of legislatures and parliamentarians/mayors
12:30 Concluding comments
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Departures or visit to Basel peace-related sites:
For more information contact info@baselpeaceoffice.org +41 788 912 156