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International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

"The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was launched in September 2007 by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) to specifically address the need for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC).

ICAN has 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.

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

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

In the 1970s 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.

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.

A NWC would prohibit the development, testing, production, stockpiling, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as the production of fissile material suitable for making them. It would require all nuclear-armed countries to destroy their nuclear weapons in stages:

  • Take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
  • Remove nuclear weapons from deployment
  • Remove the warheads from their delivery vehicles
  • Disable the warheads by removing the explosive “pits”
  • Place the fissile material under United Nations control.
ICAN-UK gratefully acknowledges the support of the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation and the Poola Foundation (Tom Kantor Fund)."


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