Japan Press Weekly

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2023 May 17 - 23 [POLITICS]

Civil society: G7 is accelerating division of world into two camps

The G7 Hiroshima Summit ended on May 21. A-bomb survivors (Hibakusha) and the Civil Society "C7" Group, which consists of NGOs, held a press conference on the same day in Hiroshima, expressing their disappointment over the summit meeting outcome.

They criticized G7 countries for being bound by "nuclear deterrence" and questioned the raison d'etre of the G7 framework itself as it is accelerating the division and confrontations between countries.

Uchida Seiko, a cohead of the Pacific Asia Resource Center, pointed out, "The G7 is losing its influence in world politics and global economy. It can no longer resolve the global poverty, financial, and debt problems having been created by itself." She demanded that the G7 be disbanded.

Regarding economic security, she said, "The G7 intends to decouple the world economy from Russia and China by taking in the Global South (newly developing/developing countries) in order to build another major economic zone," and expressed her concerns that the G7 Hiroshima Summit could trigger the move toward polarizing the world.

Kawasaki Akira of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said, "I'm very disappointed." Regarding G7 leaders' Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament, he criticized their vision for justifying their nuclear weapons as deterrence for "defensive purposes", adding that the vision is trampling upon the Hibakusha demand for the abolition of nuclear weapons.