International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

"A campaign for abolition, based on moral principles, will be seen as a fanciful dream by many, but I trust not by this audience....You are members of a profession dedicated to the sanctity of human life, and this applies to individuals as well as to humankind. You will not submit to a policy which may result in the deaths of many thousands or millions of people, potentially threatening the very existence of the human species."

—Joseph Rotblat
PSR/IPPNW Summit For Survival
May 4, 2002

“Unless we are moving steadily toward nuclear disarmament, I'm afraid that the alternative is that we'll have scores of countries with nuclear weapons and that's an absolute recipe for self-destruction.”

—Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General,
International Atomic Energy Agency,
September 30, 2003

“As long as any state has nuclear weapons, others will want them....As long as any such weapons remain, there is a risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident...And any such use would be catastrophic.”

—Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission
June 1, 2006

The nuclear policies of the United States continue to dominate the beginning of the 21st century, but the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, the possibility of nuclear terrorism, and the erosion of the treaty frameworks that have slowed the spread of nuclear weapons have created new dangers and new obstacles to the goal of disarmament.

IPPNW has launched an International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) to mobilize a groundswell of global support for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The goals of the campaign are:

1. To create a renewed sense of urgency about the need for global nuclear disarmament by re-educating the public and policy makers about the medical and environmental consequences of nuclear war.
2. Working in coalition with other NGOs and civil society institutions, to obtain international support for the opening of systematic and progessive negotiations for a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention that would achieve the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

The 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference—which convened during the 60th anniversary year of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—had the potential to be a turning point in our effort to achieve nuclear disarmament. Making the NPT work was crucial to saving the painstakingly negotiated framework and the global democratic processes that make progress toward nuclear disarmament possible. IPPNW has participated in each of the NPT PrepComs leading up to the 2005 Review, and was an active partner in a series of NGO-based campaigns to ensure that non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament were recognized as two sides of the same essential coin.

NPT Documents

• IPPNW Assessment of the 2005 NPT Review Conference - 6/21/2005
• Report on the 2004 NPT PrepCom
• Report on the 2003 NPT PrepCom
• Report on the 2000 NPT Review

ICAN

The campaign aims to:

• Inspire enthusiasm for nuclear abolition among IPPNW members, NGO partners, activists, policy makers, the media, and the public;
• Build on successful IPPNW initiatives such as the student-led Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project (NWIP) and Target X, as well as affiliate-based campaigns to stop replacement of Trident in the UK and to remove US tactical nuclear weapons from NATO military bases in Europe;
• Raise the number and diversity of voices within the medical and health professions, and among the general public speaking out for abolition of nuclear weapons;
• Strengthen the call -- and the legitimacy of the call -- for a Nuclear Weapons Convention by generating an updated version of Security and Survival and the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention;
• Generate a suite of credible, digestible nuclear disarmament education materials, for both professional and public audiences, emphasizing prescriptions for steps toward the goal of abolition;
• Increase NGO collaboration and coordination of advocacy and media strategies, with the goal of creating strategic alliances among doctors, health professionals, and other elements of civil society to create a truly international campaign that results in a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

Dialogues With Decisionmakers and ICAN Policy Demands

The Dialogues With Decision Makers program, which has been organized for several years by SLMK (IPPNW-Sweden), Medact (IPPNW-UK), and other affiliates, brings delegations of physicians, medical students, and other nuclear weapons experts together with government officials and policy makers in nuclear weapon states to discuss the medical consequences of nuclear war and proposals for disarmament. During 2006 and 2007, IPPNW Dialogues will place a special emphasis on a series of ICAN policy demands:

All nuclear weapons are weapons of terror; they are immoral, illegal and their use can never be justified in any context for whatever purpose. The continued possession of nuclear weapons risks their use by accident, miscalculation or by terrorists and stimulates non-nuclear weapon states to acquire them. The goal of ICAN is a nuclear weapon-free world.

1. Negotiate Nuclear Abolition

   The abolition of nuclear weapons is achievable through a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). The majority of UN Member States call for immediate negotiation of this treaty, which would prohibit the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat, or use of nuclear weapons. The NWC would provide for the elimination of nuclear weapons in much the same way comparable treaties have banned landmines and chemical and biological weapons.

2. No New Nuclear Weapons

   The nuclear weapon states must immediately stop upgrading, modernizing, and testing new nuclear weapons. Producing new nuclear weapons provokes would-be proliferators, undermines the nuclear non-proliferation regime, and violates the legal obligations of the nuclear weapon states under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate disarmament in good faith, as stipulated by the International Court of Justice. The five original nuclear weapon states made an “unequivocal undertaking” in 2000 to “accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament.” The hypocritical claim that nuclear weapons are valuable instruments of policy and power projection in some hands but are intolerable threats when owned by others must be abandoned in theory and in practice.

3. Reduce the Likelihood of Nuclear Weapons Use

   Nuclear weapons must be taken off high alert to greatly decrease the chance of accidental use. Similar policy changes and practical steps to minimize the role and readiness of nuclear weapons can further diminish the risk of their use. Every nuclear weapon state should commit itself to a “No First Use” policy – a pledge never to initiate a nuclear exchange – as an interim step toward abolition and to reduce the stimulus to nuclear proliferation. Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones, which shrink the geographical space in which nuclear weapons can play a role, should be expanded globally.

Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project

The student-led NWIP, often in conjunction with Dialogues With Decision Makers, educates the next generation of medical professionals and policy makers about the consequences of nuclear war and the urgency of nuclear disarmament. NWIP trainings have already taken place in India, Pakistan, China, the US, Germany, and many other countries. Visit the IPPNW Medical Student Website for a complete account.

ICAN Partners

Mayors For Peace

IPPNW has endorsed the Mayors For Peace Vision 2020 Appeal and the parallel Urban Centers Are Not Targets (UCANT) campaign. An initiative of Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima and Mayor Iccho Itoh of Nagasaki, Vision 2020 sets out a timetable for the negotiation, adoption, and implementation of global nuclear disarmament by the year 2020. The Appeal has already been endorsed by the US Council of Mayors, the European Parliament, and hundreds of individual mayors and other municipal officials around the world.

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.