Nobel Women's Initiative

We are told by some governments that a Nuclear Weapons Convention is premature and unlikely. Don't believe it. We were told the same thing about a Mine Ban Treaty." (Jody Williams, co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work banning antipersonnel landmines. In 1997, after years of international civil society mobilization and government lobbying, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), led by Williams, achieved its goal of an international treaty banning landmines.)

There is no weapon in the world like nuclear weapons. In just one instant, a single weapon can destroy an entire city, or even a nation. They have no ability to differentiate between civilians and combatants. According to the Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, it would take just 50 of today’s nuclear weapons to kill 200 million people.

The impacts of nuclear weapons are far-reaching – they can devastate cities, health, water catchments and the food chain. They are the ultimate weapons of terror. What’s more, nuclear weapons detract financial and technical resources from today’s real security threats; climate change, depletion of water and environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, pandemics such as AIDS and failing states.

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According to the Brookings Institution, the US alone spent $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons from the early 1940s to 1996. This figure doesn’t include the cost to clean up leaking waste sites or the cost to store weapons-related nuclear wastes for many thousands of years.

As well, the development of nuclear weapons directly adds to environmental degradation, and fosters mistrust rather than cooperation between nations.

The first major nuclear weapons ban was the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty. Another land-mark treaty is the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Many more have been signed and ratified since and today the United Nations operates an international nuclear watch-dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The number of nuclear weapons has been reduced to approximately 27,000.

Still, nuclear materials and weapons continue to be manufactured and sold, and as long as nuclear weapons exist they are a constant threat to human security

Despite this treaty, there are few signs that the nuclear weapon states intend to eliminate their nuclear weapons. On the contrary, some nuclear weapon states are openly threatening to use their weapons. This threat drives more countries to seek to acquire their own nuclear weapons as a route to prestige and power.

The Nobel Women's Initiative supports the efforts of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN): a new campaign that focuses on the roots of the nuclear weapons problem. Their mission is to bring together health professionals, mayors, lawyers, parliamentarians and environmental and human rights advocates to work together to build a truly global, coordinated nuclear disarmament network with the aim of a treaty to ban the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons.

As ICAN states on their website, “The failure to take full advantage of the immediate post-cold war opportunity for nuclear disarmament is seriously regrettable, but the window of opportunity to rid the world of nuclear weapons remains wide open in light of the complete lack of utility of nuclear weapons, prevailing public opinion against their use and threat, the simplicity of the solution of removal, and the great potential benefits.”

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For more information visit:

• International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

• Reaching Critical Will (RCW)

• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

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