“100 nuclear blasts = worldwide starvation”
IPPNW’s nuclear famine message was carried on signs during a march from Cambridge City Hall to Harvard Square, where they provided a backdrop to Ira Helfand’s impassioned plea for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Photo: John Loretz
IPPNW Co-president Ira Helfand explains the medical and humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons at a Hiroshima Day memorial gathering in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 6. Dr. Helfand asked the participants to sign a petition urging President Obama to make good on his pledge to pursue a world without nuclear weapons. Photo: John Loretz
Hiroshima Peace Declaration
[The Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, issued the following declaration today, August 6, 2013, the 68th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima.]
The city of Hiroshima lay in ruins after the US atomic bombing on August 6, 1945—68 years ago today.
We greet the morning of the 68th return of “that day.” At 8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945, a single atomic bomb erased an entire family. “The baby boy was safely born. Just as the family was celebrating, the atomic bomb exploded. Showing no mercy, it took all that joy and hope along with the new life.”
A little boy managed somehow to survive but the atomic bomb took his entire family. This A-bomb orphan lived through hardship, isolation, and illness, but was never able to have a family of his own. Today, he is a lonely old hibakusha. “I have never once been glad I survived,” he says, looking back. After all these years of terrible suffering, the deep hurt remains. Read more…
IDPD assists flood victims
by Arun Mitra, IDPD General Secretary
Sending medical supplies by ropeway over the flooded Ganges
The Uttrakhand state in the Himalayas, in North India, had flash floods in June. The disaster was so high that the government estimates deaths of about 4,000 people, while unofficial figures claim more than 25,000 people have died.
IPPNW’s Indian affiliate—Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD)—took a medical relief team to the disaster-affected area on 7 July and stayed there for a week. The situation was so bad that we had to climb up the hills 7-8 kilometers or cross the Ganges river on ropeways carrying medicines with us to reach the affected people. There were constant landslides and at one place we were stranded for nine hours. Somehow we were successful and have returned safe.
In context of this experience, our commitment for a nuclear-weapon-free world is further strengthened, as we will not be able to provide any relief should nuclear weapons ever be used.
Arun Mitra (right) led an IDPD team to flood-ravaged Uttrakhand
Assisting flood victims in Uttrakhand was challenging; medical and humanitarian relief for the victims of nuclear war would be impossible.
Stumbling in the dark, reaching for the light
IPPNW Co-President Tilman Ruff has written an important, very thoughtful essay on the links between nuclear weapons abolition and human rights for Right Now, an Australian not-for-profit media outlet.
Referring to the three existential threats to life on Earth—collision with another celestial body; environmental degradation, particularly global warming; and the use of nuclear weapons—Dr. Ruff writes that two of the three have human origins and require human solutions:
In addressing such momentous challenges, we need wisdom from all cultures, faiths and ethical traditions; lessons, insights, tools and perspectives from every field of human endeavor; and the recognition that whatever our core business, eradicating nuclear weapons is part of everyone’s business. Like respect for universal human rights, like addressing global warming on the scale and urgency demanded. Nuclear weapons are a critical human rights issue; the most urgent development issue; the paramount sustainability issue; potentially the most egregious violation of international humanitarian law; the most urgent environmental issue; the most profound ethical issue; the greatest blasphemy.”
“Were the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being drafted today,” he concludes,
one would hope that additional rights would be front and centre: the right to live free from the threat of indiscriminate, inhumane weapons, most of all nuclear weapons; the rights of future generations; the rights of people everywhere to access benign, renewable energy sources; and to be protected from preventable, indiscriminate, transgenerational radioactive contamination. These human rights urgently need to become prominent in the global human rights agenda.”
[Ilkka and Vappu Taipale visited Lambaréné Hospital in Gabon in July 2013, by invitation of the chair of the Lambaréné Hospital Executive Board, Lachlan Forrow. Dr. Forrow, a former executive director of IPPNW, is now Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The Taipales were deeply moved to see the museum hospital once run by one of the medical heroes of their youth, Albert Schweitzer, and refreshed their knowledge of Schweitzer’s relationship to the nuclear issue.]
By Vappu Taipale and Ilkka Taipale
Do young people know Albert Schweitzer?
He was the hero of the youth in the 50´s and 60´s, one of the great humanists of the world, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, an opponent of nuclear bombs. His hospital, Lambaréné, celebrated its centennial July 6-7, 2013 with a high-level applied research symposium on the triple epidemic HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. Read more…
Nearly a quarter century after the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the US government is still getting ready for nuclear war.
This fact was underscored on June 19, 2013, when the Pentagon, on behalf of President Barack Obama, released a report to Congress outlining what it called the US government’s “Nuclear Employment Strategy.” Although the report indicated some minor alterations in US policy, it exhibited far more continuity than change. Read more…
[On June 18, 2013, IPPNW Co-President Ira Helfand participated in an unprecedented debate about nuclear weapons in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. At an event organized by ICAN-Israel and the Israeli Disarmament Movement, Dr. Helfand presented the scientific findings about the global climate effects of a limited nuclear war, and made a compelling case for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The next day, he traveled to Ankara, where he gave a similar talk about nuclear famine and the medical consequences of nuclear war to the Turkish parliament. The following is Dr. Helfand’s report.]
by Ira Helfand
Must-see video!: Dr. Ira Helfand debates nuclear abolition with a member of Israel’s Likud Party in the Knesset.
Sharon Dolev, the ICAN campaigner in Israel, and the Director of the Israeli Disarmament Movement (RPM), ICAN’s partner organization in Israel, organized an enormously successful series of events to publicbize the nuclear famine report, build support for the upcoming Mexico conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, and promote a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East.
The centerpiece of the event was a discussion of these issues, including open discussion of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset. Read more…
What matters are the consequences
“Ich bin ein abolitionist.”
That’s what President Barack Obama could have said in Berlin, were he not still looking over his shoulder at an obstructionist Congress, rather than ahead to a not-too-distant future when a world that had banned and eliminated nuclear weapons would credit him with having led the way. Read more…
ICAN on Obama Berlin speech: nuclear weapon reductions will reduce risks, but prohibition treaty urgent
[ICAN has released the following statement in response to US President Barack Obama’s speech today in Berlin, calling for new reductions in nuclear arsenals, including a new round of negotiated cuts between the US and Russia.]
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) welcomes President Obama’s announcement in Berlin today calling for a world without nuclear weapons and the readiness to pursue further reductions in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals. However, the humanitarian consequences of any nuclear weapon use, increasingly the focus of global engagement on these weapons, demands their prohibition and elimination. Read more…
History made in the Knesset
By Ra’anan Friedmann, IPPNW Israel
IPPNW co-president Ira Helfand described the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons to members of the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem. (L-R: MP Tamar Zandberg, Dr. Helfand, MP Dov Hanin, Ra’anan Friedmann of IPPNW-Israel
A historical event took place today in Jerusalem—an official meeting of IPPNW and ICAN members with Israeli members of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) at the Knesset in Jerusalem. The unprecedented meeting was organized by Sharon Dolev, ICAN’s campaigner in Israel and director of the Israeli Disarmament Movement.
Dr. Ira Helfand gave a thorough presentation on the effects and outcome of a limited nuclear war on the world climate and human population, followed by a discussion of the nuclear situation in Israel with the parliamentarians.
This is a breakthrough. For more than 50 years the subject of nuclear weapons and nuclear activity in Israel was a non-discursive issue, forbidden to talk about but in secret chambers. For the first time, this important subject was raised from the shadows and discussed openly in the Israeli parliament.
We are looking forward to more and larger open discussions that might eventually change the nuclear situation in the Middle East.
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