Can You Imagine A Nuclear Weapon Free World? ICAN!
Felicity Hill
A louder and deeper taboo needs to be created around nuclear weapons, and a stronger case needs to be made for solutions to today’s multiple nuclear problems. ICAN – the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons - a multi-faceted global campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, will demonstrate the feasibility of abolishing nuclear weapons and verifying their elimination.
As physicians, IPPNW is uniquely qualified to make a medical and moral case for the abolition of nuclear weapons. We need to start by getting our own house in order and increasing the number and activity of doctors and health professionals. As they have before, IPPNW affiliates can provide renewed medical leadership and professional credibility needed to support the political and legal aspects of the campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Starting with a focus on the health effects and moral stigmatization of nuclear weapons, ultimately we hope that ICAN will spark partnership and collaboration with many other NGOs towards the goal of disarmament.
ICAN has several overriding operating assumptions. First, unless public opinion is mobilised and nuclear abolition becomes a serious election issue, nothing much will change globally. A broad citizen’s movement is needed to challenge the nuclear weapons states’ possession of 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 feargenerating. 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 and motivate action.
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;
- 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, a public activity involving students in white coats informing the public of what would occur if a nuclear weapon was dropped, as well as the initiatives of various affiliates in generating publications and events about NATO nukes or the replacement of Trident in the UK;
- raise the number and diversity of voices within the medical and health professions, and among the general public about 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;[1]
- 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, a means to politically organize the technical process of nuclear disarmament;
- increase NGOs collaboration and coordination of strategies and messaging to encourage NGOs and other experts to work together to lobby their government or generate media and teachable moments and create strategic alliances with NGOs between doctors, health professionals, and other constituencies to create a truly international coordinated campaign coalition that results in a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
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[the editors:] M. Datan, A. Ware, M.B. Kalinowski, J. Scheffran, V. Seidel, and J. Burroughs, Security and Survival. The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999. Section 2 of the book contains the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention drafted by IALANA; INESAP, and IPPNW. The complete text is available at www.inesap.org/books/security_and_survival.htm. The text of the mNWC is also available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish at www.inesap.org/publ_nwc.htm.
