“We may not have a second chance”
[IPPNW co-president Tilman Ruff delivered the following statement to the United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons leading towards their total elimination. Watch the video on IPPNW’s YouTube channel.]
Tilman Ruff prepares to address the ban treaty conference
UN New York 29 March 2017
These negotiations grew out the humanitarian initiative, advanced by ICRC president Kellenberger’s 2010 call to the Geneva diplomatic corps, and the subsequent recognition of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons in the consensus outcome document of the 2010 NPT Review Conference. Read more…
Actually banning nuclear weapons
Sue Coleman-Haseldine (r) and Setsuko Thurlow prepare to address the ban treaty negotiations at the UN
Ban treaty negotiations day 2:
ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn captured the spirit of the day during our debriefing meeting, when she said “Today it felt like we made the transition from arguing that we need a ban treaty to actually banning nuclear weapons.” Read more…
“The ban treaty will change the world”
[The following statement was read by Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow, on behalf of ICAN, during the first series of civil society statements at the ban treaty negotiations conference.]
Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow delivers impassioned opening statement on behalf of ICAN
Distinguished Delegates,
I am honored to be given this opportunity, as a survivor from Hiroshima, to speak at this historic occasion. Already 72 years have passed since my beloved hometown was utterly destroyed by one atomic bomb. Read more…
First day of negotiations “an historic and essential step”
Day 1 at the ban treaty negotiations:
ICRC president Peter Maurer addresses the conference by video
ICAN campaigners on the floor of Conference Room 4 counted 115 states participating, a really encouraging number that we hope to increase during the week. After high-level opening statements delivered on behalf of the Secretary General and Pope Francis, and from UN High Representative of Disarmament Affairs Kim Won-soo, ICRC president Peter Maurer, and atomic bomb survivor Toshiko Fujimori, the conference heard opening statements from 24 individual states and five regional groupings. A list of states who spoke and copies of their statements, when available, are on the Reaching Critical Will website. Read more…
[The following statement by ICAN was released at the opening of UN negotiations on a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.]
Today, negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons in international law began in New York. The treaty is being negotiated based on the recognition that the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons use is morally unacceptable and that the weapons themselves represent a significant risk to human security. Read more…
Family-friendly nukes?!?
Moms for Nukes launched at UN today
This morning’s opening of the historic negotiations on a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons has been a study in contrasts.
As States and civil society gathered in the UN General Assembly to hear powerful opening statements from representatives of the Secretary General, Pope Francis, the ICRC, Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, and the State leaders of the ban treaty negotiations, the UN ambassadors from three nuclear-armed States—the US, the UK, and France—stood outside the room to announce their boycott of the negotiations. Read more…
Stigmatize. Prohibit. Eliminate.
Those three words from the Humanitarian Pledge are the benchmarks of the four-year initiative that has made the ban treaty negotiations—which open today at the UN in New York—a reality.
The international conferences in Oslo, Nayarit, and Vienna were all about stigmatization. The medical, environmental, and humanitarian evidence presented at those conferences by IPPNW, the ICRC, climate scientists, UN relief agencies, and the leading international federations representing doctors, nurses, and public health professionals, went a long way toward accomplishing that objective. Read more…
IPPNW honors legacy of Bob Mtonga
The Dr. Robert Mtonga Memorial Scholarship
for peace through health
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPPNW) announces the establishment of the Dr. Robert Mtonga Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship was created to honor Dr. Mtonga’s memory and to carry forward his tireless work for peace, disarmament and health. Read more…
A new race for nuclear “superiority”?
The Trump tweet heard round the world. Meaning what, exactly?
If Robert Monroe has the ear of Donald Trump, US aspirations to seek a world without nuclear weapons, however ambivalent and distant they may have been under President Obama, could very quickly be replaced by an unrestrained quest for nuclear superiority.
Robert who? Read more…
The irrepressible Bob Mtonga
I needed all day for this to sink in. Getting past it will take a lot longer than that. Bob Mtonga was one of the most optimistic, dedicated, and irrepressible peace activists I’ve ever known. Nothing could get him down. Not all the armed violence in the world, not the need to scrape together whatever resources he could find in order to attend all the meetings everyone wanted him at, not the countless times he was rerouted from one airport to another and back again because immigration agents just make it so damn difficult for Africans to travel internationally. He’d eventually get where he was going, and would arrive with a smile on his face, and, if it was freezing cold (or just moderately warm, which is the same thing by Zambian standards), he’d borrow a pair of gloves and a scarf and maybe a sweater and proceed to warm everyone else up with his charismatic presence and an inexhaustible supply of proverbs, most of which I swear he made up on the spot to sound like ancient African wisdom. Read more…
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IPPNW peace and health blog 