International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Austria’s foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, announced on Wednesday that his country would join other UN member states in tabling a resolution next month to convene negotiations on a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons in 2017. Speaking in the…

September 9, 2016: North Korea today confirmed that it had conducted its most powerful nuclear test explosion to date, with an estimated yield of 10 kilotonnes, triggering a magnitude 5.3 earthquake. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) – a…

United Nations disarmament talks concluded in Geneva on Friday 19th of August with the overwhelming majority of nations signalling their intention to launch negotiations in 2017 for a global ban on nuclear weapons. One hundred and seven nations in Africa,…

Late on Monday 18 July, the British parliament voted in favour of building four new nuclear-powered submarines to carry US Trident missiles armed with modernized nuclear warheads for the next half century. The vote gives permission to the government to…

The new UN working group on nuclear disarmament, the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG), completed its second and most substantive session in Geneva today. 100 governments participated over the course of two weeks at the United Nations and many more contributed…

At the May session of the UN working group in Geneva, a small number of nations extolled the supposed “security value” of nuclear weapons and spoke out against a ban. ICAN protested at the diplomatic missions of some of these…

Back in February, the UN General Assembly authorised the formation of a working group to study legal measures for nuclear disarmament.  This week and next week the group convenes again before finishing its work in August.  The International Campaign to…

Preparations for nuclear war are ongoing. Nuclear-armed states have halted nuclear reductions, engaged in new modernization programmes and have blocked any nuclear disarmament negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament for the past 20 years. With escalating tensions between nuclear possessors,…

The overwhelming majority of Germans – a staggering 93 per cent – want nuclear weapons to be banned just as chemical and biological weapons have been banned, according to an opinion poll commissioned by the German chapter of the International…

As meetings continue at the Open-Ended Working Group in Geneva, Switzerland which has convened to advance in measures for nuclear disarmament, civil society organisations and campaigns have the chance to contribute.  ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), of…