The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

“I can abolish nuclear weapons”

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was developed as a grass - roots, civil society, people empowered movement. It was always meant to be a playful campaign encouraging people from all walks of life and all countries to have fun while they worked on the intricacies of making nuclear weapons illegal.

Running through my head, I can hear the chant of high school students as they stood up and recited : “I can abolish nuclear weapons” then louder

“ICAN Abolish Nuclear Weapons”. I can remember the Can-Can dance and the people in kangaroo suits hopping around delivering literature about ICAN. Kangaroo suits were indeed appropriate as it was members of the Australian affiliate of IPPNW who developed the concept of ICAN.

The kangaroo-delivered literature detailed the immense amount of background work which had already been done and was already paving the pathway to the United Nations. Lawyers, Engineers, Scientists and Physicians had developed a document Securing our Survival (SOS) The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

That was 2007. In a brief 10 years later, The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was produced by the General Assembly of the United Nations, finally making nuclear weapons illegal. Central to attaining this treaty was the fact that civil society, under the guidance of ICAN, worked diligently to change the rhetoric, or the way we talk about nuclear weapons, from a military stance of “nuclear deterrence” to a tone of the “humanitarian” effects of nuclear weapons.

For ICAN’s efforts in bringing about this treaty, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The process was fascinating, and the work continues. You can find out more here: https://www.icanw.org/

The acronym ICAN, for International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was always meant to be a play on words. How many ways can you use “ICAN”? How many ways can you have fun while working on the very serious issues of surviving in a world with so many nuclear weapons?