IPPNW to share in 2010 Haas peace award

IPPNW, the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and the International Peace Bureau (IPB) will receive the John and Chara Haas Award for International Peace and Social Justice on November 8, 2010, at the Nuclear Futures Conference in Philadelphia.

The Haas award, sponsored by the Project for Nuclear Awareness, is being given to the three organizations for their work on the World Court Project and “for their joint efforts to establish global consensus on the illegality of nuclear weapons.”

The World Court Project was a worldwide campaign that resulted in an historic 1996 advisory opinion about the illegality of nuclear weapons from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ concluded that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal under International Humanitarian Law, and that states have an obligation to conclude negotiations on a global nuclear disarmament agreement to bring about their elimination.

According to PNA executive director Ed Aguilar, this year’s award is being given to the World Court Project “and those who participated as well in the drafting of the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention…to commemorate and honor the fact that the NWC and its basis in the ICJ Opinion of 1996 have been endorsed by the UN Secretary General and many nations since 2008, and in the NPT Review this May in New York.”

The previous recipients of the Haas Award, which honors those who have spent a lifetime in the cause of peace, safeguarding the environment, and in helping to reduce and end nuclear weapons, were author Jonathan Schell (2008) and Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission chair Hans Blix (2009).