Tectonic Geopolitical Changes: Which Way to Peace & a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
On the Eve of the NPT Review Conference International Civil Society Demands an End to Wars & a Nuclear Weapons-Free World
Join us in an international conference on
Sunday, Apri 26, 2:00-6:00 at Scandinavia House,
58 Park Ave. in New York.
With a limited number of seats still available,
At a time when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock has been reset at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest ever to annihilation; when the viability of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)is under increasing threat and we live in Antonio Gramsci’s “time of monsters,” when the old world is dying and the new one struggles to be born; an international coalition of nuclear disarmament and peace organizations will gather on the eve of the 11th NPT Review Conference.
Our call: Stop the Wars. Halt preparations for nuclear war. Honor the NPT’s , Article VI commitment to good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons and disarmament steps agreed to at previous NPT Review Conferences. Prevent nuclear weapons proliferation.
At 10 a.m. on Sunday April 26, hundreds of activists, including Japanese and U.S. nuclear weapons victims (Hibakusha) will gather at the New York City Public Library and march to the Isaiah Wall, across from the United Nations, to call attention to the rising dangers of nuclear war and to demand that the NPT Review Conference make progress toward the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world.
That afternoon delegates from the world’s nuclear weapons movements will gather for a conference at Scandinavia House in Manhattan to share analyses of the growing nuclear dangers amidst catastrophic wars, tectonic geopolitical changes, and great power confrontations. The conference will focus on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and will challenge the misbegotten illusions of “deterrence theory” – the preposterous notion that nuclear weapons modernization and renewed arms racing can serve as the foundation for peace and national security. Together we will build strategies and campaigns to bring humanity back from the brink of the nuclear abyss.
The agenda and list of confirmed speakers follows below.
The conference will be livestreamed.
Agenda and Speakers –
Welcome & Introduction – Joseph Gerson
Humanitarian Consequences and the Urgency of Abolition –Nihon Hidankyo TBA
Nuclear powers, arms racing and proliferation
- Jeremy Corbyn – Your Party Parliamentary Leader
- Ray Acheston – Director, Reaching Critical Will
- Phon van den Biesen – Scientific Council of the Centre for Environmental Law at the University of Amsterdam
- Tadotishi Akiba – Former Mayor of Hiroshima
Challenging Nuclear Deterrence
- Zia Mian – Princeton University
- Jackie Cabasso – Western States Legal Foundation
- Gloria Bozyigit – Austrian Mission to the United Nations
- Josefin Lind – IPPNW Sweden
Where we go from here
- Alicia Sanders-Zakre – Head of Policy, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
- Daniel Hall – Capitol Hill Representative and Faith outreach coordinator, Back from the Brink
- Yayoi Tsuchida – Associate General Secretary, Gensuikyo
- Gil Kim – SPARK (Korea)
Closing
- Kevin Martin – President, Peace Action
Initiating Organizations include: Abolition 2000; Back from the Brink; Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security; Gensuikyo (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Weapons); Nihon Hidankyo (Japanese Confederation of A- & H- Bomb Survivors Organizations; International Peace Bureau; International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; Peace Action New York State; Massachusetts Peace Action; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung;
Western States Legal Foundation; World Beyond War
