UNFOLD ZERO mourns and honors Peter Weiss, human rights lawyer and nuclear abolition advocate
Posted: 7th November 2025
UNFOLD ZERO mourns and honors Peter Weiss, human rights lawyer and nuclear abolition advocate, who passed away on November 3, 2025, just one month before his 100th birthday.
Peter was co-founder and a longstanding President of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (USA) and was also the founding President of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms. In these roles he was a leader on a number of significant initiatives including:
- The political campaign and legal materials that achieved an historic International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on nuclear weapons in 1996 which affirmed the general illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons and the universal obligation to achieve complete nuclear disarmament;
- The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, drafted by the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy in 1997 (and revised in 2007) which was circulated successive UN Secretary-Generals as a guide to multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations (See Nuclear Weapons Convention).
- Advocacy that succeeded in moving the UN Human Rights Committee to affirm in 2018 that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is incompatible with the Right to Life(Article VI of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).
More than 600 organizations and and additional 1200 individuals from 99 countries endorsed the Nuclear Abolition Day Appeal to UN Member States to prevent nuclear war, end the nuclear arms race, reinvest nuclear weapons budgets in peace and the environment, and commit to achieving the global elimination of nuclear weapons no later than the 100th anniversary of the UN.
Left: Peter Weiss speaking at an event at the United Nations on the topic of Nuclear Weapons and Human Rights Law.
Right: Dr. Deepshikha Kumari Vijh, Executive Director of Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, presenting the Nuclear Abolition Day Appeal to the UN on September 26, 2025.
Right: Dr. Deepshikha Kumari Vijh, Executive Director of Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, presenting the Nuclear Abolition Day Appeal to the UN on September 26, 2025.
Legacy in human rights and peace law
Peter was a pioneer in the development of human rights and peace law and in building accountability through legal action.
He was personally impacted by crimes of atrocity at a young age as a Holocaust refugee who had family members, including his grandfather, murdered in Nazi gas chambers. As a military interrogator at the end of WWII, he helped prepare for the Nuremberg Trials of German business leaders.
He was active in the anti-apartheid campaign and a leader in Peace Now, an organization of Jews and others promoting peace and justice between Israel and Palestine. And he was a long-time Vice-President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), through which he played a leadership role in numerous cases including:
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Horman v. Kissinger (1977), in which CCR sued Henry Kissinger for the State Department’s complicity in the detention and death of American journalist Charles Horman during the 1973 Chilean coup. The case brought unprecedented attention to the U.S.’s role in the coup and helped declassify critical documents.
- Filártiga v. Peña-Irala (1980), an innovative and ground-breaking case which successfully used the US Alien Tort Act against Guatemalan military leaders responsible for torture – and as such provided the precedent case affirming the legal norm of universal jurisdiction for the crime of torture.
For more on Peter’s incredible contributions to human rights and humanitarian law, see International Human Rights Pioneer Peter Weiss Celebrates 90, Center for Constitutional Rights, December 8, 2015.
We send our condolences and deepest respects to Cora Weiss, his partner in marriage and human rights advocacy for more than sixty years, and all of the family of Peter and Cora. Yours sincerely
UNFOLD ZERO