Dear Friend --

As you may know, ICAN campaigners all around the world are getting ready for the next big milestone for the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: its first Meeting of States Parties (1MSP) in Vienna next year! But planning a multi-day international meeting under the current circumstances requires some flexibility, and earlier this month it was confirmed that the 1MSP will be postponed until March 22-24 2022, from its original dates of 12-14 January 2022. 

The change is due to the ongoing pandemic, and to avoid overlapping with the likely new dates of the four-week-long Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, which has been pending since May 2020 and is finally set to take place in January next year. Due to the logistical challenges of having these meetings overlap while one takes place in New York and the other in Vienna, the states parties of the TPNW agreed to postpone the first MSP. Hopefully, this will also mean better travel conditions for more countries to attend, and more states parties! For the latest up-to-date information you can always check this page. 

So does this delay change anything for ICAN? Certainly not in terms of the substance of the meeting! The MSP will be a key opportunity for the states parties to commit to implement obligations that make this treaty unique, like providing assistance to victims of nuclear weapon use and testing, beginning to remediate contaminated environments and universalising the treaty. ICAN will be there to keep up the pressure, pushing for the strongest possible commitments.

As for our work as the civil society coordinators of the MSP, this date confirmation means we can now really shift into planning mode! Even with the current logistical and planning challenges ICAN is committed to ensuring that civil society, and particularly representatives of impacted communities, are given ample chance to participate in this meeting, and in the side events we organise around it. Whether it's through participative online experiences, global livestreams like the one we organised for the treaty’s entry into force, or by sponsoring participants directly, we want to make sure the citizens can have their voices heard!

If you would like to support our work to get ready for Vienna, please consider making a donation today

Donate to ICAN

And stay tuned for further updates as we get ready for Vienna!

Thank you for all you do.

Best,

Celine Nahory
Operations Coordinator
ICAN

It’s time to end nuclear weapons.

icanw.org