Dear Friend --

Here at ICAN, we know that governments aren’t the only ones making decisions on nuclear weapons - there are big corporate interests involved too. Did you know that companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc have been awarded contracts for $116 billion to build these weapons of mass destruction? And that these companies, in turn, depend on your bank account and pension savings to make these weapons a reality?

That’s why a part of our strategy is to go after the money.

Download our new briefing paper on divestment and nuclear weapons >  

There are many examples where public pressure has made financial institutions pull support from inhumane, discriminatory and dangerous activities, from apartheid to cluster munitions to fossil fuels. Since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2017, we have a great legal basis to start pressuring nuclear weapons producers financially. 

Already, 77 financial institutions are excluding all nuclear weapons producing companies from their portfolios. To these banks and pension funds, it simply does not make ethical, moral, or financial sense to invest weapons that could kill us all. 

Throughout the coming year, ICAN and our partner organisations will work to get more financial institutions to pull out any investments from nuclear weapons production. We will do this through: 

• supporting research like the Don’t Bank on the Bomb reports; 
• educating the public about divestment and nuclear weapons producing companies;
• reaching out to and encouraging financial institutions to divest from these companies. 

But there are still many banks and pension funds that keep investing in these weapons, designed to indiscriminately mass murder civilians, and in 2020, we’re going to push them to do better. The world will mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2020 and we are working hard to get the TPNW to enter into force this year too.  In the face of the global pandemic, the billions of dollars being diverted from critical sectors like healthcare into nuclear weapons each year are unacceptable. So now is the time to take on the weapons industry and their complicity in building and maintaining an existential threat to us all!

If you want to learn more about divestment and how you can use it as an effective campaign tool, download this briefing paper. The paper will give you an overview of why divestment is important, what the arguments are, and what you can do to have an impact on this issue.  

Download the briefing paper

Later this year, we will be launching a campaign to encourage certain pension funds that should be doing better to do so, releasing a website to help you take action more effectively, and of course we will continue our work with our Netherlands-based partner PAX to release and share the Don’t Bank on the Bomb reports.

But in the meantime, every individual message, social media post, or comment to a bank, insurer and pension fund demanding they cut ties with nuclear weapons producers lays the groundwork for a successful campaign. Can we count on you?

Thank you,

Daniel Högsta
Campaign Coordinator
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

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