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UNI Global Union was one of the leading global unions cooperating with Rengo, Japan’s trade union center, and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in an initiative to collect 10 million signatures on a petition submitted to the President of the NPT Review Conference.



UNI will hold its World Congress in November in Nagasaki — a city that has played a key role in the nuclear disarmament movement. There, UNI Congress delegates will hold a peace march and rally at the Nagasaki Peace Park on November 11.



On behalf of UNI, Takaaki Sakurada, chairperson for UNI Liaison Council Japan, spoke at the Trade Unions Seminar for Nuclear Disarmament. The seminar was co-organized by ITUC and Rengo and held at the United Nations Church Center. Sakurada reported on UNI’s active engagement in peace activities such as the organization’s signature drive for the petition against nuclear weapons and UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings’s participation in the 2009 Nagasaki Peace Convention and the General Conference of Mayors for Peace. Sakura emphasized how nuclear weapons can cause victims and their offspring to suffer for generations.



“A large number of survivors still suffer from the after-effects of the bomb's radiation,” Sakurada said. “What is crueler is the fact that their innocent children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren are fighting against the invisible fear of contracting leukemia and other radiation-related diseases.”



Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue also addressed the seminar, calling on local public administrations, citizens and various NGO’s including trade unions to unite and spread the disarmament message. It is difficult to make progress in intergovernmental negotiations because priorities tend to be weighed toward deterrence and national interests, he said. It is now 65 years after the war and to create agreements between countries while Nagasaki survivors are still alive, intergovernmental negotiations must have a solid deadline for a breakthrough.



Before the NPT Review Conference, Sakurada, Rengo President Nobuaki Koga and ITUC representatives, including Indian colleagues, jointly submitted the petitions to Libran Cabactulan, President of the NPT Review Conference, in front of the United Nations building in New York.



Sakurada appealed to Cabactulan, saying, ”This year, UNI will hold its World Congress in Nagasaki, an atomic bomb site, to call for the global abolition of nuclear weapons in the hopes of building a peaceful society where people can live safely and peacefully.”