The past year has seen startling geopolitical changes within and between nuclear armed and allied states, reshaping the landscape of nuclear weapons policies and global security.
From the aftershocks of the Trump administration’s foreign policy shifts to new nuclear-sharing arrangements involving Belarus, Israel and USA’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, discussions of an independent European nuclear force, continued nuclear coercion by Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, and the rising potential for new nuclear states in Northeast Asia, the international community faces critical questions about the future of disarmament and nonproliferation.
Representatives from the global nuclear disarmament movement met online over the weekend (July 11-12) to share updates on existing nuclear risk reduction and disarmament campaigns, discuss the new geopolitical realities, and develop new approaches and initiatives to meet today’s turbulent times.
The event was the 29th Annual General Meeting of Abolition 2000, the open-entry, global network established in 1995 to build civil society cooperation for the achievement of a nuclear-weapon-free world.
The Abolition 2000 network encapsulates the diversity and geographic spread of organizations and individuals active on this issue around the world. Over 2000 organizations have endorsed the Abolition 2000 founding statement, an 11-point (measure) plan for nuclear abolition. Some of the measures called for in the statement have been achieved, with others still requiring increased political traction for implementation.
Abolition 2000 campaigns, working groups and affiliated networks reporting at the event included:
- Basel Peace Office,
- Global Network Against Nuclear Power and Weapons in Space,
- International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms,
- Mayors for Peace,
- Middle East Treaty Organization,
- Move the Nuclear Weapons Money,
- Nuclear risk reduction working group (including NoFirstUse Global),
- Nuclear Weapon Free Zones working group,
- Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament,
- Peace Depot,
- UNFOLD ZERO,
- United for Peace and Justice, and
- Youth Fusion
The event included two strategy discussions – one on nuclear weapons and security issues in the Asia-Pacific region and another on the Middle East, both of which led into intergenerational discussions on how to best broaden the nuclear abolition movement and engage youth in particular.
New proposals discussed and advanced at the event included:
- Production and use of a warning stamp/label “Nuclear weapons violate human rights” for attaching to nuclear weapons documents and other manifestations of the nuclear arms race;
- Developing a Vision 2045 campaign which would develop a timebound strategy for achieving a global prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons by 2035 and the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2045;
- Establishing a network of nuclear disarmament activists from the nuclear armed and nuclear weapon hosting states to share and build effective strategies addressed to these governments;
- Building a platform to support civil society action and cooperation for the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which takes place on September 26 (this initiative was advanced at a special hybrid meeting of nuclear disarmament organizations from around the world at a meeting hosted by the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs on July 8, 2025).
For more information on the above initiatives, please contact the Abolition 2000 secretariat secretariat@abolition2000.org.