Abolition 2000 Activities at the NPT PrepCom

Dear Abolition 2000 member groups and individual supporters,

At this year’s Annual General Meeting, (our 28th, held virtually, February 3, 2024), we agreed that it was important to have an Abolition 2000 presence at the NPT PrepCom in Geneva, July 22 – August 2. The PrepCom is coming up soon and we need your financial support!

Abolition 2000 has a tiny bare-bones budget and relies on individual donations and voluntary member group dues. We’re NOT asking for money to pay our travel expenses. Abolition 2000’s biggest expense is a modest stipend paid to our Secretary – 3,000 Euros ($3,250)/year. Our other expenses (minor) are web hosting, Zoom, and copies and printing for events like the PrepCom.

We’re fortunate to have Ivan Siluianov as our Secretary. Ivan, a UN Youth Champion for Disarmament, is a remarkable young man from the Russian Federation. He is currently studying in the U.S. as a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology pursuing a M.S. in international relations with concentration on emerging technologies and nuclear non-proliferation. In 2023, he founded “Youth Hotline,” an educational networking campaign for youth in Russia and the West on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. We need more young nuclear disarmament champions like Ivan!

Since 1995, Abolition 2000 has sustained a consistent, uncompromising demand for the global elimination of nuclear weapons. With the current dangers of wars among nuclear-armed states growing each day, our voice is more critical than ever. We will be representing you at the NPT PrepCom. Think about how much you would have spent on travel and accommodations if you had travelled to Geneva. Please consider donating a fraction of that amount or whatever you can give so we can keep Ivan on staff.

And, if you’re with a member group, please consider the value of the network to your group, and please pay voluntary dues in whatever amount you can afford.

Abolition 2000 Activities at the NPT PrepCom 

Abolition 2000 will be represented at the PrepCom by a delegation including Coordinating Committee members Jackie Cabasso and Alyn Ware, colleagues from member groups, and representatives of affiliated networks, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament and Mayors for Peace.

Jackie will be making a powerful civil society presentation to the participating governments on behalf of the Abolition 2000 Coordinating Committee. Titled, “Nuclear Disarmament Diplomacy Reset,” it concludes: “We are in a moment of civilizational crisis. Bring real diplomacy back into these halls. End your wars. Stand down your weapons of mass destruction. Fulfill your promises to rid us of nuclear weapons forever.” 

We will also have copies available of our 2023 Abolition 2000 working paper, produced by our Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) working group, “Abolition 2000 NWC Reset: Frameworks for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World.”

To remind diplomats, NGOs, and passersby that successful negotiations to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons took place even during the Cold War, on July 31, the 33rd anniversary of the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, we will display our amazing 3-D missile (see photos) outside the Palais des Nations. That afternoon we’ll have an informal Abolition 2000 convening inside the Palais. A number of Abolition 2000 member groups will be hosting or participating in side events at the PrepCom, and we’re preparing a flyer to promote them to NGOs and diplomats.

• You can follow what’s going on at the PrepCom at 2024 NPT Preparatory Committee (reachingcriticalwill.org). 
• There you can sign up for the NPT News in Review e-news, read statements and documents, and see a calendar of side events. 
• Many of these events will be live-streamed (audio only) at https://listen-live.unog.ch/en/ (look for (room XXIII). Unfortunately, these events will not be recorded. You can only listen to an actual meeting in real (Geneva) time.

Join Abolition 2000 Coordinating Committee members Jackie Cabasso and Alyn Ware live from the United Nations in Geneva at the end of the first week of the 2024 Non-Proliferation Treaty Prep Com. And meet Abolition 2000 Secretary Ivan Siluianov, who will be moderating from Atlanta, Georgia in the U.S. Jackie and Alyn will give a short update on the government deliberations – the good, the bad and the ugly – plus the main civil society proposals that are gaining traction.  

Friday July 26: 6:30pm Central Europe Time / 12:30pm Eastern Time USA / 9:30am Pacific Time USA

We have no illusions about what to expect (or not to expect) from the upcoming PrepCom, but as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the national nonpartisan association of America’s big cities, recognized in their recent resolution in support of Mayors for Peace, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, it will always be the right time to be thinking concretely and constructively about how we will eliminate them forever.”

Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF), in the United States, is Abolition 2000’s fiscal sponsor. WSLF is a non-profit tax-exempt organization under Section 501©(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Donations made to Abolition 2000 through WSLF are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Please click here and give as generously as you can.

We can’t thank you enough!

The Abolition 2000 Coordinating Committee,

Jackie Cabasso, California, USA
Joshua Cooper, Hawaii, USA
Regina Hagen, Germany
Vanessa Lanteigne, Canada
Andrew Lichterman, California, USA
Alyn Ware, Czech Republic and Aotearoa/New Zealand
Yosuke Watanabe, Japan
Dave Webb, United Kingdom