Japan Students Deliver 620,000 Antinuclear Signatures to U.N.

Jiji Press

17:41 JST, August 23, 2023

PARIS (Jiji Press) — A group of high school students from Japan visited the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday and submitted some 620,000 signatures calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons that were collected over the past four years.

The 22 so-called student peace ambassadors held talks with Carolyne Melanie Regimbal, chief of service of the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs, and exchanged opinions about the significance of peace activities by young people.

Reina Niiyama, a 17-year-old student at Mizusawa High School in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture, who submitted the signatures, said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other events have made her feel that she needs to know more about the issues of nuclear weapons and radiation exposure, which she had not been familiar with before.

“The important thing is to think about these issues as your own,” she said. “I want to keep sending out messages with a strong will about how inhumane nuclear weapons are, and I hope to move people’s hearts.”

The student peace ambassadors program was launched in 1998, with the cumulative number of antinuclear signatures collected topping two million.

Japanese student peace ambassadors visited the U.N. European headquarters after a lapse of three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.