“I will not be discouraged”
By Lars Pohlmeier, IPPNW Germany Chairperson and IPPNW Delegate to the 3rd Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW
Now it is time for my personal impressions. I attended my first UN conference in 2000, as a participant in the NPT delegation. It was the first Review Conference after the unlimited extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Large demonstrations were organized—about 40,000 people marched through Manhattan. I was wearing my yellow IPPNW sports jersey with “Abolish Nuclear Weapons” written on it. That’s why I can always be easily identified in the photos.
Read more…The following statement was delivered by Julianne Hauschulz of IPPNW Germany and Jean-Marie Collin of ICAN France, on behalf of ICAN Europe Partners, to the third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). United Nations Headquarters, NYC | 7 March 2025.
Our organisations, European partners organizations of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), are alarmed by the dangerous and proliferating rhetoric from some of our heads of states and governments in favour of a Franco-British nuclear umbrella. This dynamic undermines decades of European commitments to nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and international law, exposing a deep hypocrisy. On one day, these states claim to uphold the international security architecture, namely the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); on the next, they openly debate nuclear armament. Their efforts to condemn others’ nuclear threats ring more hollow by the day. Needless to say, if the projects go ahead, they will decrease security for Europeans and, in fact, for all states.
Read more…Our prescription for survival
The following statement was delivered by Walusungu Mtonga and Stella Ziegler, IPPNW’s International Student Representatives, to the General Debate of the third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). United Nations Headquarters, NYC | 5 March 2025.
Distinguished delegates, esteemed colleagues, and honored guests,
We stand before you today as Board Members of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a global network of health professionals united in the mission to prevent nuclear war and safeguard human and planetary health. We are medical students and members of the generation that is rising up to reject the deadly inheritance of nuclear weapons.
Read more…Two different American approaches to the world
The recent whirlwind of Trump administration foreign policy measures―many reversing those of the Biden administration―illustrates the fact that Americans have sharply different opinions about their relationship to other nations.
Read more…We helped people grasp what a nuclear war would really be like
[On January 28, Dr. Eric Chivian, one of IPPNW’s founders in the 1960s, spoke at Harvard University’s Countway Library at an event entitled “Prescriptions for Peace: Physician Activism in the Nuclear Age, 1961-1985.” The event accompanied the launch of the Center for the History of Medicine’s “Prescriptions for Peace” exhibition on physician anti-nuclear activism, 1961-1985. The audience also heard from Harvard Medical School student Katie Blanton, MSc, whose undergraduate thesis, “The doomsday doctors: medical activism in the nuclear age, 1960–2000,” won Harvard’s Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly research and excellence in the art of teaching.]
In the early 1960s, when Physicians for Social Responsibility was born, there was already a strong anti-nuclear movement in the US, organized by such groups as SANE Nuclear Policy, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and many others. Leading scientists like Linus Pauling and many of those who helped make the first nuclear weapons–Leo Szilard, Bernie Feld, Phil Morrison, Vicky Weisskopf, and many others were also deeply involved. I was very lucky to have known Bernie, Phil, and Vicky well.
These efforts were successful in many ways, but what physicians in PSR and IPPNW were able to do that these efforts were not able to accomplish, was that we helped people grasp what a nuclear war would really be like, so that they knew that these weapons were so catastrophically destructive that they could never be used in wartime, that it was a dangerous illusion to believe that civil defense was possible, that there could be any effective medical response whatsoever for the survivors, and that humanity could ever recover from a nuclear war.
Read more…The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a way to avert nuclear catastrophe
Will the world ever be free of the menace of nuclear annihilation?
There was a promising start along these lines during the late twentieth century, when―pressed by a popular upsurge against nuclear weapons―the nations of the world adopted a succession of nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. Starting with the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, these agreements helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war.
Read more…IPPNW action at COP29 for disarmament, climate justice and health
For the 29th UN climate conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, IPPNW and its UK affiliate, Medact, sent official delegations to highlight human and environmental health. The IPPNW team emphasized that the climate crisis, militarisation, and nuclear weapons pose a severe threat to global health, stressed that the climate crisis exacerbates conflict and inequality, and called for addressing fossil-fuel dependence and militarisation through peace action, press conference and advocacy at COP29.
Read more…Resistance to the International Criminal Court by the world’s most powerful nations
The International Criminal Court’s recent issuance of arrest warrants to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza has stirred up a considerable backlash. Dismissing the charges as “absurd and false,” Netanyahu announced that Israel would “not recognize the validity” of the ICC’s action. US President Joe Biden denounced the arrest warrants as “outrageous,” while the French government, after agreeing to support them, reversed its stance.
Read more…A government for the world
Donald Trump’s latest rollout of his hyper nationalist “America First” policy underscores the world’s long-term slide toward catastrophe.
Within nations, when conflicts inevitably erupt, there are laws, as well as police, courts, and governments that enforce the laws.
On the global level, however, the situation approaches international anarchy. Although the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court sort out the issues, they are relatively powerless when major crises occur. They issue laudable statements based on international law, while the most powerful nations frequently defy them and go on their merry, marauding way.
Read more…
“I don’t see a pandemic finishing us off, and climate change itself would (to quote Keating) ‘do us slowly’. The one sure path to extinction is nuclear war.” – Professor Peter Doherty AC, Nobel Laureate, communication to the author, 9 Sep 2024.
Two days after Donald Trump’s election last week, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that this year will be the warmest on record and the first year more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, likely more than 1.55°C above. Yet exactly when global leadership on climate action is needed most, the world’s second-largest emitter has a climate-denying, corrupt, criminal president-elect with no regard for facts, committed to leaving the Paris Agreement and ramping up fossil fuel extraction and use.
Read more…
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