The Public Conscience
Your Affirmation is not a petition. It is a personal expression of your basic values which, through the Public Conscience, has standing in law. These include the basic principle that we should never harm the innocent and that everyone’s life is of equal value and should not be snuffed at random. They are evidence of your principled rejection of nuclear weapons.
The Public Conscience is a real concept in International Humanitarian Law. It was referred to in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, well before nuclear weapons were thought of. Among other things it codified the law applying to the use of weapons in war. The people who drew up the Conventions knew that new weapons would be developed and they found a formula which applied the law to them:
"In cases not covered by this Protocol or other international agree-ments, civilians and combatants remain under the protection and authority of the principles of inter-national law derived from international custom, from the principles of humanity and from the dictates of public conscience."
This is why the World Court Project UK refers to itself as The Public Conscience in Action; and that is why we made so much effort to encourage individual citizens around the world to endorse individual Declarations of Public Conscience.
These declared that nuclear weapons are immoral, to present to the World Court before it considered the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons in 1996.
