H.E. Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa'olelei Luteru, Permanent Representative of Samoa to the United Nations and Chair of PSIDS New York, delivered for the first time for the Pacific Small Island Developing States a statement at the 10th Review Conference of The Parties to The Treaty on The Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The group statement highlighted the regions sufferring from the humanitarian and environmental impacts of past nuclear testing. More than 300 nuclear tests were carried out in the Pacific from 1946 to 1996—in the atmosphere, underground, and underwater. Efforts by Pacific countries to stop this testing; to “promote the national security of each country in the region and the common security of all”; and so far as lies within the region’s power, to retain “the bounty and beauty of [its] land and sea”; were key factors in the adoption of the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1985 and the establishment of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.