[ICAN delivered the following statement during a special civil society session at the 2015 NPT Review Conference on May 1.]
Daniela Varano told NPT Member States “we can and we must move forward with a ban.”
The humanitarian initiative began here five years ago, when the NPT Review Conference expressed its deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. Since then, a fundamental shift has been under way. Concerns about the impact of nuclear weapons on people and the environment have become central to disarmament discussions.
There is a new sense of empowerment among the peoples and the governments of countries that reject nuclear weapons. Read more…
A nuclear war using only 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs against modern cities would cause prolonged global climate change and create an ozone hole encircling the entire Earth, according to data presented by Rutgers professor Alan Robock at an NPT side event sponsored by IPPNW on April 28. “Nuclear famine and the ban treaty: how prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons can prevent a climate disaster” examined the scientific and medical evidence supporting the conclusion that the number of nuclear weapons in the world must be reduced to zero without delay. Read more…
Will the NPT face the facts?
When the 2015 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) opens in New York next week, the 190 member states will have to come to terms with some hard facts.
The NPT is 45 years old, and while most observers agree that it has worked reasonably well over that time to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that did not have them in 1970, it has not achieved its most important goal—a world in which no countries have nuclear weapons. Read more…
Who are the nuclear scofflaws?
Given all the frothing by hawkish US Senators about Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons, one might think that Iran was violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
But it’s not. The NPT, signed by 190 nations and in effect since 1970, is a treaty in which the non-nuclear nations agreed to forgo developing nuclear weapons and the nuclear nations agreed to divest themselves of their nuclear weapons. It also granted nations the right to develop peaceful nuclear power. The current negotiations in which Iran is engaged with other nations are merely designed to guarantee that Iran, which signed the NPT, does not cross the line from developing nuclear power to developing nuclear weapons.
Nine nations, however, have flouted the NPT by either developing nuclear weapons since the treaty went into effect or failing to honor the commitment to disarm. Read more…
NATO and Russia—a tragedy unfolding
In 1984 a group from IPPNW Sweden met with the Norwegian general Tönne Huitfeldt, at that time Chief of the Military Staff of NATO. He was a man with great confidence in himself and in the military system.
“General Huitfeldt,” we asked, “when you work with your war scenarios in the NATO Headquarters, with the destruction of the world through a nuclear war looming as a possible outcome, are you not scared?” “Oh no, never,” he responded. “The Russians are as rational as we are. They will never let it go too far. I am never scared.”
Well, we were. And are. Read more…
Why ban nuclear weapons? Ask the French president
President François Hollande of France has explained to the world why nuclear weapons must be banned and eliminated. Not intentionally, of course. Not because he made the fallacious argument that nuclear weapons make France more secure in a dangerous world (although he did); not because he lumped every conceivable and inconceivable threat to France into a confusing hash and came up with nuclear weapons as the final answer to every one (although he did that, too); and not because he shamelessly contradicted himself on the fundamental point that France is a champion of nuclear disarmament but finds its own “nuclear deterrent” indispensible (all the nuclear-armed States suffer from that particular mental health problem, as Sue Wareham has diagnosed it elsewhere on this blog).
In fact, his speech on February 19 to the French military and political elite at Istres Air Force Base was more frightening than that. Read more…
By Dr. Michael Schober, Dr. Robert Mtonga and Maria Valenti
How can we foster more South-North projects on violence prevention that don’t cost a fortune? Can a grassroots project with a lot of volunteer enthusiasm but a low budget succeed in helping victims of violence?
Medical expertise coupled with commitment and creative thinking have always been hallmarks of our members’ work, and we are pleased to report that a recent IPPNW project that capitalizes on those traits will be published in the peer-reviewed Injury Prevention, a BMJ publication. You can read the abstract here. Read more…
A visit to Brussels: NATO, Russia, and the EU
For many years, I’ve joined other IPPNW members on regular visits to NATO Headquarters in Brussels. This tradition continued a week or so ago when some of us returned to Brussels to meet not only with NATO staff, but also with diplomats at the Russian mission and with staff at the EU Commission group responsible for proliferation and disarmament.
At all three meetings we presented IPPNW’s findings on nuclear famine and the climate disaster that would follow a limited, regional nuclear war, whether in Europe or elsewhere in the world. We had the impression that this research was not very well known either at NATO or at the Russian mission. Read more…
P5 steps up…or was that down…or sideways…
The P5 gathered in London this month to reaffirm that they need to be seen reaffirming from time to time their affirmation that a world without nuclear weapons is a topic of discussion to which they take an affirmative approach.
Meeting on February 4 and 5, the US, Russia, the UK, France, and China “reaffirmed that a step-by-step approach to nuclear disarmament that promotes international stability, peace and undiminished and increased security for all remains the only realistic and practical route to achieving a world without nuclear weapons.” Read more…
How to get out of the Nuclear Swamp
This week I read an email exchange that made me think. Actually, it worried me deeply. In one of the messages an old friend described the Nuclear Weapons Convention – an idea many of us fought for since the early nineties – as a “fairy tale” and a “distraction”.
The authors of these mails are not government representatives from nuclear weapon states or their allies, although you might be forgiven for thinking so. Both those descriptions have been used by states that want to brush aside the idea of a convention summarily, as if only for the very stupid or naïve. No, these were colleagues. Read more…
Bimal Khadka
Bjorn Hilt
Charles K. Johnson
Gunnar Westberg
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John Loretz
Lawrence Wittner
Maria Valenti
mollymcgint
Sue Wareham
Tilman Ruff
Tim Wright
Xanthe Hall
IPPNW peace and health blog 