The UN votes to proceed with nuclear weapons ban negotiations

UN members voted lopsidedly on Thursday in favor of starting the process for negotiating a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons. The vote for the resolution tallied this way, according to the Guardian newpaper's account: 123 countries for, 38 opposed, and 16 abstaining. Many of the world's nuclear powers voted against the effort toward banning nuclear weapons; China, however, abstained, and North Korea voted for the resolution “to convene in 2017 a United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.”

Over at the Huffington Post, Ploughshares Fund president Joe Cirincione provides a good summary of the UN vote and, though his sentiments in favor of the ban are obvious, notes the "real, honest debates among nuclear security experts on the pros and cons of this ban treaty." Other international news outlets also posted significant articles on the vote. If major national US news organizations had reports on Thursday's action—which the HuffPo headline accurately described as "historic"—they have evaded my efforts to find them.