We, the citizens of South Asia and beyond, urge India and Pakistan in the 20th year of the 1998 nuclear tests to put an immediate end to the arms race and competitive belligerence, and negotiate nuclear disarmament at the earliest. Far from providing any security, these 20 years have only witnessed an exacerbation of tensions and heightened warmongering, lending a disconcerting instability to the entire region.

While military expenses and weapons have increased exponentially – making both, India and Pakistan among the largest importers of weapons globally – armed conflicts and violence by both, state and non-state actors have reached savage heights. The irony couldn’t be more glaring when the on the other hand, both countries have consistently slipped on most human development indices, including hunger, poverty, education, health, safety of women and children, minority rights, and social and legal justice.

As highlighted by several experts, any nuclear exchange by India or Pakistan will annihilate the entire region and impact the climate irreversibly, and will also have catastrophic global consequences. Millions of people in other countries of South Asia, having no say in the inhuman escalation, will face the impacts of a potential nuclear confrontation. South Asia, the world’s most populous, is the only region which has two nuclear-armed neighbours with a history of active conflicts, unending border skirmishes, and wars.

In the past few years, the emergence of religious extremism and war-loving populist nationalism, particularly during election seasons, in both countries, has made the situation more dangerous than ever. It was in the wake of such dangerous rhetoric and abiding conflicts that South Asia appeared in the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin Atomic Scientists that has now inched closest ever to midnight. Amid such rising tensions, India and Pakistan chose to remain outside the ambit of the historic Nuclear Ban Treaty, adopted by the UN last year.

We urge leaders of both countries to negotiate disarmament and peace in all seriousness, sign the international Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and introduce immediate risk-reduction measures, including dialogues both, at the level of government and civil society. For even a semblance of peace in the region, it is imperative that the jingoism and hate-mongering within politics and mainstream media be stopped with immediate effect. 20 years is long enough to learn from the futile nuclear insanity and bluster that both countries have hitherto engaged in!

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