The Future We want is a Nuclear Weapons Free Planet The U.N. we need has World Citizen Diplomats.

It is abundantly clear that democracies as well as autocracies have failed to protect a fundamental human right: the right to life. Nuclear weapons States threaten the world with nuclear annihilation, prompting pushback from the Non-nuclear States to the extent of creating a new treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. Our best hope for peace, the United Nations, has been unable to influence them. But there is a remedy. A global peace system is already developing, often without any realization by the actors that they are evolutionary leaders who will take us to a nuclear free world. The global peace system already encompasses the right to a livable environment for all, a right not included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Those of us signing below are Rotarians, members of Rotary Clubs around the world, and Rotary Peace Fellows. Rotarians were among those who advocated for and were involved in the deliberations for the Charter of the United Nations and five Rotarians were among the first Presidents of the UN General Assembly. Addressing "Rotarians of the World" in 1945, RI President T.A. Warren wrote of the emerging United Nations: "If it is to be effective, the free citizens must now breathe vitality and unfaltering determination into it." An unprecedented statement from the 1940 Rotary International Convention in Havana contained the words "respect for human rights."

This resolution was provided to the framers of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rotarians bring this vision into the consciousness of members so that we can address the most serious of all world challenges in this decade. Some Rotarians have just begun to work for abolition of nuclear weapons; some of us have been working for decades. Some Rotarians had a direct impact on the dismantling of 50,000 nuclear weapons in the 1980s and 1990s under courageous and evolutionary leaders Soviet Union's Chairman Gorbachev and US President Reagan. Some of us are working to stop the spread of highly radioactive materials like plutonium and highly enriched uranium from being shipped, dumped into our neighborhood landfills, and recycled into household items.

Some of us are working to build solidarity among our members, principally business and professional people who understand that the impact of nuclear bombs anywhere is an immediate and urgent threat to people and the planet. We have imagined what a successful global peace system could be. We can build transparent...