01/31/2025 IPPNW Geneva Liaison Office is honored to host the European Regional Meeting in Geneva Friday 11 April to Sunday 13 April 2025. The reasons for choosing Geneva are its unique role as an international city of peace and to celebrate the opening of the Geneva Liaison Office. The meeting will host guests from civil society, academia and politics to speak, participate in panel discussions, and address your questions. We are excited about this opportunity for our members to collaborate and plan our critical next steps to reaching our ultimate goal: nuclear weapons abolition.

For the 29th UN climate conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and Medact sent official delegations to highlight human and environmental health. The IPPNW team emphasized that the climate crisis, militarisation, and nuclear weapons pose a severe threat to global health, stressed that the climate crisis exacerbates conflict and inequality, and called for addressing fossil-fuel dependence and militarisation through peace action, press conference and advocacy at COP29.

Although the current US presidential campaign has focused almost entirely on domestic issues, Americans live on a planet engulfed in horrific wars, an escalating arms race, and repeated threats of nuclear annihilation.  Amid this dangerous reality, shouldn’t we give some thought to how to build a more peaceful future?

Over the past decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely.  Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon.  Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway.  Instead, all nine nuclear nations (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea) have begun a new nuclear arms race, qualitatively improving the 12,121 nuclear weapons in existence or building new, much faster, and deadlier weapons.  Furthermore, the cautious, diplomatic statements about international relations that characterized an earlier era have given way to public threats of nuclear war, issued by top officials in Russia, the United States, and North Korea

One’s immediate thought on looking at any of the multitude of photos of the devastation of Gaza is a profound sense of sorrow and grief at the capacity of humans to wreak such destruction and suffering. There is mind-numbing despair at the plight of children who have lost everything—their parents, other family members, their own health, their education, their fun, their society, their future.

IPPNW was founded more than 40 years ago, and the main objective was to tell people—decision makers, physicians, students and the public about the devastating consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. At the height of the Cold War, the threat of a nuclear war was palpable and even young children had fears of the end of the world. Meanwhile, in many parts of the world, bomb shelters were built that were said to protect from atomic bombs, and children were taught to “duck and cover” under the school desks were they to see an explosion flash.

On 10-11 May 2024, The Vatican’s Fratelli Tutti Foundation brought twenty Noble Laureates and leaders together for the second World Meeting on Human Fraternity. Represented by three of our four Co-Presidents — Drs. Kati Juva, David Onazi, and Carlos Umaña — IPPNW participated in the meeting and the drafting of the Declaration, “We Reject War: Let diplomacy prevail over arms. We want Peace!”, ensuring that the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons was captured in the final statement.

[The following statement was adopted by IPPNW’s International Council (IC) at the conclusion of our June 2024 virtual IC and Board meetings.]

Today humankind faces the twin existential threats of climate change and nuclear war. The former is already making large parts of our planet uninhabitable; far greater climate action is critically needed. For nuclear war, which could kill billions and end human civilisation, prevention is the only cure.

International law―the recognized rules of behavior among nations based on customary practices and treaties, among them the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights―has been agreed upon by large and small nations alike.  To implement this law, the nations of the world have established a UN Security Council (to maintain international peace and security) and a variety of international courts, including the UN’s International Court of Justice(which adjudicates disputes between nations and gives advisory opinions on international legal issues) and the International Criminal Court (which prosecutes individuals for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression).