Dear Friend,

Right now in New York, countries are meeting for the final sessions of the Summit for the Future. This once-in-a-generation meeting is designed to meet the challenges of a changing world head first. The meeting has already adopted  a landmark Pact for the Future and Declaration on Future Generations, which contains 56 actions to address issues from sustainable development, to transforming global governance.  

In terms of nuclear weapons, Action 25 focuses explicitly on nuclear weapons and nuclear war and commits all states to “make every effort to avert the danger of such a war”. While, unfortunately, the Pact is not as clear or ambitious as it ought to be, UN Secretary General António Guterres called the Pact the “first recommitment to multilateral nuclear disarmament in a decade”. The Pact does bind all UN members to an agreement to “advance the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons” and as a global campaign we know we can work with that

These activities highlighted a number of actors complicit in the new nuclear arms race- from nuclear weapon industry profiteers like NIBM bank in Norway, to the companies like L3 Harris building the weapons. Our friends at Global Citizen raised these same concerns in an op-ed featured in Forbes magazine as well.

The next few days will continue to be very busy for ICAN and our partners, as we move towards the High-Level segment of the UN General Assembly and the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. As High-level Week begins tomorrow, we look forward to reporting back about progress on an enforceable pact for a future without nuclear weapons – the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The week of action may be over, but our work for a world without nuclear weapons continues.  We hope you will consider supporting those efforts by making a donation to power our actions around the globe. 

Thank you for all you do,

Melissa Parke
Executive Director
ICAN

Photos: ICAN | Aude Catimel
ICAN Norge | Maja Fjellvær Thompson