Hi  --

Today, I’m writing to you from The Hague, where ICAN is attending the Assembly of States Parties of the Rome Statute, the treaty that set up the International Criminal Court (ICC), meeting with governments and delivering a statement to all states parties.

The ICC is a key tool to ensure accountability for grave international crimes and provide an international system of justice. The ICC is where those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity are prosecuted, and this body is very relevant for preventing the use of nuclear weapons.

Given their immense and indiscriminate destructive power and their wide-ranging catastrophic humanitarian consequences, the use of nuclear weapons would constitute a war crime and possibly a crime against humanity as defined under Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute. But the nuclear armed states and nuclear allied states try to obscure this fact by hiding behind theoretical conversations about deterrence, abstract defence policies, and nuclear sharing agreements.

But any government who participates in the use of nuclear weapons would be responsible for committing war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, and the individuals responsible for such actions would be held responsible in The Hague eventually.

That’s why ICAN is here, to make sure we send a strong message to all governments and their political and military leaders – threatening to commit war crimes is unacceptable and illegal and those responsible will be held accountable. This is a key part of our strategy to delegitimize nuclear deterrence and prevent countries from using nuclear weapons by raising the threshold and cost. 

Read more about our work at ICC today here >>

We’re doing this right now, because we have a really strong legal basis for our case. When the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force in 2021, the legal landscape around nuclear weapons changed. Nuclear weapons are now clearly illegal under international law and any use of this weapon needs to be named as a war crime together with the use of biological and chemical weapons.

And of course throughout 2022 Russia's threats have shown that nuclear weapons use and threat of use are not hypothetical theories to be discussed by academics, but a concrete threat to commit a war crime that is happening right now. This means that all governments here in the Hague know that the use of nuclear weapons could be something this court will need to face one day.

We have been able to expand our work this year in this way because of the many donations we’ve received from supporters like you. But we’re not stopping here, we’re already raising funds to expand our stigmatisation work into additional areas to strengthen and complement our efforts, like our new fund that will power a series of public actions against nuclear weapons in 2023.

If you want to support the growth of our campaign and new, additional projects, you can make a donation to our ICAN Rapid Action Fund for 2023. Our goal is to raise CHF 50’000 by the end of the year to enable activists all over the world to organise public, visible actions against nuclear weapons.

We’re grateful for your support.

Beatrice Fihn
Executive Director
ICAN 

It’s time to end nuclear weapons.

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