Research and Publications

Securing Our Survival - The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, by IPPNW, IALANA, and INESAP; 2007

"Securing Our Survival (SOS)" outlines the rationale for the comprehensive prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. The book contains an updated text of the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, which demonstrates that nuclear disarmament is practical, verifiable, enforceable, and achievable.

In the preface to SOS, Judge Christopher Weeramantry, former Vice-President of the International Court of Justice, says “The principal agenda item in our program for human survival in this 21st Century must be the elimination of nuclear weapons.... [E]liminating the bomb can only be achieved through a Convention subscribed to by all
powers, nuclears and non-nuclears alike.”

Published by IPPNW, the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP); 2007

PDF version at ICAN website
Print version also available

Nuclear Weapons, A Continuing Threat to Health, by Douglas Holdstock, Liz Waterston; Lancet 2000; 355:1544-47

32,000 nuclear weapons, with a destructive force equivalent to several thousand megatons of conventional explosive, are still deployed. The risk of nuclear war by accident may have increased and new threats include war between newly declared nuclear-weapon-states and the construction by terrorist groups of crude but effective devices. Health workers have drawn attention in the past to the likely major health consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. An opportunity for their global elimination under a nuclear weapons convention arises with the current review conference in New York of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty--a crucial event for efforts to bring about a world free of nuclear weapons.
[PDF version also available]

In 2001, IPPNW's Swedish affiliate, Svenska Lakare mot Karnvapen (Swedish Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons), initiated the project "Instead of Nuclear Weapons," inviting papers from a number of peace research institutions. The submitted papers, presented at a symposium in Moscow on March 25, 2002, are available in print or as a downloadable pdf file.

For more information about the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), contact John Loretz, Program Director, IPPNW, 727 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139; 617-868-5050, ext. 280.