Kazakhstan shows way to a safer world by its own example

Therefore, more than 30 years ago the Kazakhstan people made a fundamental choice in favour of a world free from nuclear weapons. On August 29, 1991, by his decree, the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Elbasy N.A. Nazarbayev, closed the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.

The thought of ridding mankind from the nuclear threat gave to the Kazakh leader the determination to follow the course laid out on that date, now exactly 30 years ago this August 29, 2021, putting the struggle to strengthen nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament at the very forefront of his foreign policy. Such reflections prompted N. Nazarbayev to the idea of publishing the Manifest “The Peace. XXI century”.

“Everything started with the fact that on August 29, 1991, was closed the world’s largest nuclear test site. After that, tests stopped in Nevada and at other test sites. We gave up the arsenal of nuclear weapons, which allowed us to become one of the leaders of the anti-nuclear movement,” Nazarbayev said.

The closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site and the subsequent international anti-nuclear activities of Kazakhstan became possible thanks to the so-called “Nazarbayev’s Formula of Peace and Consent”. This is how the republic designates the model of inter-ethnic and inter-religious harmony formed in the country.

Kazakhstan renounced nuclear weapons

Representatives of more than 130 nationalities live in Kazakhstan, who profess almost all major world beliefs, but the republic has managed to avoid conflicts and discord. The experience of inter-ethnic peace and harmony in Kazakhstan has been recognised at many international platforms, such as the United Nations, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia. The “Nazarbayev’s Formula of Peace and Consent” also includes peacekeeping activities.

Thanks to the initiative of N. Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan occupies a special place in the global anti-nuclear movement. After the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site on August 29, 1991, for the first time in world history a nuclear weapon test was delegitimised on the territory where it had been located and tested for decades. Subsequently, Kazakhstan renounced the possession of nuclear weapons and completely disarmed the world’s fourth-largest nuclear potentiality, which it rightfully possessed after the collapse of the USSR and gaining independence in 1991.

For Kazakhstan people, the closure of the nuclear test site has become a historical act of manifested freedom and wisdom, displaying confidence in the future thanks to the people of the nation showing the way to a safer world by their own example.

“This is the act of closing the Semipalatinsk test site as the initial act of the anti-nuclear movement in the world. It gave a great authority to Kazakhstan, and personally to Nursultan Nazarbayev as the leader of both movement and republic in general. The process of closing the rest of the nuclear test sites has begun from us. After us, in August 1992, the testing ground in Nevada has been stopped. While the USA and England were testing. Then France was forced to stop testing.  Finally, in 1996, testing of the Lop Nor test site was stopped both in the air and on the ground. Thus, 5 nuclear test sites have stopped,” said poet and politician Olzhas Suleimenov.

As an independent state, Kazakhstan’s position was very clear: Kazakhstan must become a country free of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the nation voluntarily renounced the world’s fourth-largest nuclear missile arsenal, which included more than 1000 warheads.

In May 1995, the last remaining nuclear charge was destroyed at the former Semipalatinsk test site, and Kazakhstan became not only de jure, but also de facto a non-nuclear-weapon state. In the same year, Kazakhstan and the United States began to eliminate the infrastructure for testing nuclear weapons at the Semipalatinsk test site. It was necessary to “seal” 181 adits, or entrances, and 13 wells. Works began in the spring of 1996 and ended in 2000. However, even after their completion, Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States continued to work to eliminate the consequences of nuclear testing activities on the territory of the test site to bring it to a safe state.

In March 2012, the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Elbasy N. Nazarbayev, took part in the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit, where the Kazakh leader, the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, and the President of the United States, Barack Obama, adopted a joint statement on trilateral cooperation at the former Semipalatinsk test site, in which they expressed their commitment to combating the threat of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, and announced the results of joint work at the test site, which led to a significant increase in the level of security there. Stating that the work was near completion, the leaders of the three countries regarded it as a highly successful example of trilateral cooperation, demonstrating a shared commitment to nuclear security and non-proliferation.

Semipalatinsk began to ban nuclear tests

The closure of one of the planet’s largest test sites became the first legal ban on nuclear testing in human history. Following the Semipalatinsk test site, other nuclear test sites in different parts of the planet were closed or mothballed. Thus, unique conditions were created for the ban on nuclear tests to become global. This decisive step taken by Kazakhstan in 1991 paved the way for the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

It is noteworthy that the historic Treaty was signed in Semipalatinsk in 2006, according to which the whole of Central Asia became a nuclear-weapon-free zone.

In 2009, at the initiative of Kazakhstan, the UN General Assembly declared each August 29 – the day of the closure of the Semipalatinsk test site – the International Day against Nuclear Tests.