Peace and Disarmament

Supporters from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) turned out in force to shame arms giant BAE Systems at their Annual General Meeting AGM), accusing it of supporting repressive regimes through arms sales and unethical business practices. Acute questioning combined with high farce…

On Friday last week, the NPT PrepCom finished in Geneva to reconvene in New York in 2014.  Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will gives a final review of the outcomes. The scene of the final day of the second NPT…

Doctrines, deployments, and the political value attached to “nuclear deterrence” are being challenged at the NPT conference.  As 78 nations co-sponsor a growing “humanitarian initiative”, the five NPT nuclear-armed states and some of their “nuclear umbrella” allies like Japan, Australia…

As the NPT prepcom enters its second week of work, Pressenza republishes today’s editorial from the daily news bulletin of Reaching Critical Will, prepared by Ray Acheson. “Treaty violations are not to be tolerated as inconvenient facts,” declared the US…

On April 18, 2013, DC’s Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton re-introduced HR-1650, the “Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act“ for the 11th time WASHINGTON, DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today introduced the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic…

The Security Council today approved a 12,600-strong United Nations peacekeeping operation to take over from the African-led mission in Mali on 1 July and authorized the blue helmets “to use all necessary means” to carry out security-related stabilization tasks, protect…

At the NPT prepcom in Geneva today, South Africa presented a statement on behalf of 74 states highlighting the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.  Pressenza publishes the statement in full here. Delivered by Ambassador Abdul Samad Minty, Permanent Representative of…

On Monday 22nd April, the NPT prepcom started in Geneva and will last for two weeks.  The Prepcom is part of the five-yearly cycle of meetings to review the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.  Every day Reaching Critical Will produce a newsletter…

Civil society will lead the way to press governments to ban fully autonomous weapons, Human Rights Watch said today at the launch of the global Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. These potential future weapons, sometimes called “killer robots,” would be…

For those working in the field of nuclear abolition, Ray Acheson from ‘Reaching Critical Will’, is a well-known, dynamic and tireless organiser who ensures that civil society gets the opportunity to present its case to the world’s diplomats in the…