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ICAN-UK was set up in 2007 to raise awareness of the need for a comprehensive nuclear weapons abolition treaty and build popular support for the government to begin work on such a multilateral agreement.

ICAN-UK works with leading NGOs to promote negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention through education, parliamentary lobbying and nonviolent action.

ICAN-UK gratefully acknowledges the support of the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation and the Poola Foundation (Tom Kantor Fund).

Click here to follow ICAN-UK on Twitter.

ICAN-UK's Aims:

The negotiation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention

The abolition of nuclear weapons is achievable through a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). The majority of United Nations member states call for immediate negotiation of such a treaty, which would prohibit the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat, or use of nuclear weapons.

A NWC would provide for the elimination of nuclear weapons in much the same way comparable treaties have banned landmines and chemical and biological weapons.

The UK Government should pursue multilateral negotiations with a view to concluding a Nuclear Weapons Convention by the year 2020 to ensure the elimination of nuclear weapons world wide.

No new nuclear weapons

The UK (and other nuclear weapon states) must immediately stop upgrading, modernizing, and testing new nuclear weapons such as Trident.

Producing new nuclear weapons undermines the goal of non-proliferation, and violates the legal obligations of the nuclear weapon states under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate disarmament in good faith.

The five original nuclear weapon states made an “unequivocal undertaking” at the NPT Review Conference in 2000 to “accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament”.

The hypocritical claim that nuclear weapons are valuable instruments of policy and power projection in some hands but are intolerable threats when owned by others must be abandoned.

No use of nuclear weapons

To prevent the use of nuclear weapons and to ensure that any nuclear attack by anyone for any purpose would be treated as a crime against humanity.

Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones, which shrink the geographical space in which nuclear weapons can play a role, should be expanded globally.

The goverment should also adopt domestic and foreign policies which fulfill the needs of human security.

ICAN's history

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was launched in September 2007 by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) to specifically address the need for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC).

ICAN has joined with mayors, civil society groups, non-government organisations, churches and citizens to demand an end to nuclear weapons through a Nuclear Weapons Convention which will make nuclear weapons illegal, banning their development, possession, use and threat of use.

Physicians first confronted the horrors of nuclear war in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s physicians played a key role in the debate over atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons and the health effects of radioactive fallout.

In the 1970s physicians began to discuss ideas to foster medical cooperation between physicians of the two superpowers in order to spearhead a worldwide movement away from nuclear disaster.

IPPNW received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for uniting doctors across the Cold War divide to raise awareness of the threats posed by nuclear weapons. Its prescription for survival was, and remains, the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.

ICAN-UK members

Medact is the UK affiliate of IPPNW and co-ordinates a group of UK NGOs to take the ICAN campaign forward. ICAN-UK's Core Members are:

Abolition 2000 UK www.abolition2000uk.org

Article 36 www.article36.org

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament www.cnduk.org

Greenpeace UK www.greenpeace.org.uk

Medact www.medact.org

Movement for the Abolition of War www.abolishwar.org.uk

Oxford Research Group www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk

Pax Christi (British Section) www.paxchristi.org.uk

Scientists for Global Responsibility www.sgr.org.uk

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom UK www.ukwilpf.org.uk