Costa Rica lead the redaction of the first draft text of a legally binding instrument at the United Nations to ban nuclear weapons, which was presented to the international community this week for review, said the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry.

According to Foreign Minister Manuel González, the presentation of the draft proposal is an important milestone resulting from years of efforts to prohibit these weapons of mass destruction.

“It is important to highlight the determination and commitment of civil society and hundreds of states, such as my country, which under the leadership of a Costa Rican woman, Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gómez, is contributing to the survival of humanity by forging a world free of nuclear weapons,” said González in a statement.

The draft includes elements that will be necessary to eventually ratify a convention prohibiting nuclear weapons worldwide.

It also includes provisions on general obligations related to the prohibition of nuclear weapons, declarations, safeguards, obligations related to assistance to victims and environmental remediation, and regular meetings of signatory states, said the Foreign Ministry.

Whyte, who chaired the working group that drafted the text, emphasized that the instrument is designed to strengthen and complement existing instruments, and in no way would undermine existing United Nations nuclear non-proliferation treaties that include the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

“The instrument should enable nuclear-weapon states to join the treaty at a later date. In that sense, the treaty should be simple, non-discriminatory, flexible, and designed to prevail over the long term,” explained Whyte.

The project is expected to be an acceptable starting point for negotiations, and it is hoped that 2017 will provide a historic opportunity to secure international consensus on the topic and lead to a binding convention to ban nuclear weapons.