International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

What is ICAN?

Quick links: ICAN's priorities, ICAN Australia and ICAN Canada's priorities, ICAN's aims and overriding assumptions.

Launched in 2007, ICAN is a campaign initiated by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a federation of medical professionals in 60 countries.

They have joined with mayors, civil society groups, non-government organisations, churches and citizens to demand an end to nuclear weapons through a Nuclear Weapons Convention which will make nuclear weapons illegal, banning their development, possession, use and threat of use.

IPPNW received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for uniting doctors across the Cold War divide to raise awareness of the threats posed by nuclear weapons. Its prescription for survival was, and remains, the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.

ICAN focuses on the roots of the nuclear weapons problem - the continued possession of nuclear weapons by a small minority of countries who risk their use by design, accident, miscalculation or by terrorists, and whose weapons are an incentive to others to also become nuclear armed.

It's time to finish the job we started: the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Physicians first confronted the horrors of nuclear war in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's physicians played a key role in the debate over atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons and the health effects of radioactive fallout.

In the 1970's physicians began to discuss ideas to foster medical cooperation between physicians of the two superpowers in order to spearhead a worldwide movement away from nuclear disaster.

For these efforts, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

Nuclear weapons are not like other weapons - there is no other weapon that can kill hundreds of millions of people in a few hours and bring about the end of human civilisation.

Nuclear weapons are illegal, immoral and genocidal; they can destroy our cities, health, water catchments and our food chain, and they routinely deplete funds and attention from achieving human security.

Nuclear weapons have no legitimate purpose. To possess them and thereby threaten their use is utterly immoral. They are the ultimate weapons of terror.

Nuclear weapons are futile against any of today's real security threats. Nuclear weapons cannot address climate change, depletion of water & environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, overpopulation, pandemics such as AIDS or avian flu, failing states, non state armed groups or terrorists, organised crime, or trafficking in drugs, people and arms.

In fact, nuclear weapons budgets and policies make most of these problems much worse because they divert enormous financial and technical resources from where they are really needed.

In addition, the development of nuclear weapons directly adds to environmental degradation and mistrust, rather than cooperation, between nations.

ICAN's priorities:

1. Negotiate nuclear weapons 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 such a 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 undermines the goal of non-proliferation, and violates the legal obligations of the nuclear weapon states under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate disarmament in good faith.

The five original nuclear weapon states made an “unequivocal undertaking” at the NPT Review Conference 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.

3. Reduce the likelihood of nuclear weapons use

Nuclear weapons must be taken off high alert. This would greatly decrease the chance of accidental 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.

ICAN aims to:

• Launch an exciting and credible new initiative to inspire enthusiasm and inspiration for agitating for nuclear disarmament, with new slogans, visuals, demands, alliances, audiences and strategies
• Raise the number and diversity of voices within the medical and health professions and among the general public about nuclear weapons
• Build on what is already being done in IPPNW on nuclear disarmament, such as the Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project that involves IPPNW students travelling for dialogues with medical students in Nuclear Weapon States, and Target X, activities involving students in white coats informing the public of the effects of nuclear weapons, as well as the initiatives of various affiliates in generating publications and events about NATO nukes or the replacement of Trident in the UK
• 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 on the urgent imperative for nuclear weapons abolition using compelling arguments and facts for professional and public audiences. Using easily replicable information materials, activities and humour, all ICAN materials will emphasise solutions, prevention and prescriptions for steps towards the goal of abolition, carrying the legitimacy and authority of the medical profession to its maximum to advocate for a Nuclear Weapons Convention
• Increase non-government organisations' collaboration and coordination of strategies and messaging to encourage them to work with other experts in lobbying their government or generating media and education, and creating strategic alliances with NGO's between doctors, health professionals and others to create a truly international coordinated campaign coalition that results in a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

Overriding assumptions

First, unless public opinion is mobilised and nuclear abolition becomes a serious political and election issue, nothing much will change globally.

A broad citizens' movement is needed to challenge those countries that possess the world's most suicidal, genocidal and ecocidal weapons and to put nuclear abolition back at the top of the international political agenda.

Our second assumption is that it is vital that our work for disarmament remains positive and solutions focused rather than alarmist and fear-generating. While this is a gravely serious issue, we have learned that getting serious about nuclear weapons must involve laughter, horror and hope to overcome psychic numbing or complacency and to motivate action.