Photo by Darren Ornitz | ICAN.
Youth Movement
It was an honor to join the hundreds of civil society activists in New York for the Second Meeting of States Parties (2MSP) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that took place during Nuclear Ban Week–the last week of November. The movement and campaign to abolish nuclear weapons has never felt more alive to me as it did witnessing strikingly smart and incredibly dedicated young people from around the world participating in and leading the conversations.
Unlike here in the US, the global nuclear disarmament movement is demographically young and never misses the chance to prop up all of those diverse voices. I saw dedicated and diverse young people leading the charge in New York. Some say that the issue is too complicated for youth – or even just for everyday people – to understand. But what I saw in New York disproves that. The topic can be taught and the people need to be educated on it. So how do we reach out of this disarmament bubble and engage more voices?
Breaking Barriers
That question was a common thread I saw throughout the week, and it was especially highlighted in the Youth MSP. The meeting, hosted by Youth for TPNW, gathered over 100 youth civil society delegates from around the world to engage in discussion on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This year, the meeting posed an important conversation on barriers and enablers in the nuclear weapons space. How do we break out of the silos and fora we are stuck in and reach more audiences? And beyond raising awareness, how do we get more people invested and involved?
The main barrier is a lack of education on nuclear disarmament.
It was hopeful to see throughout the week all of the people who are developing disarmament education curricula (including at a side event hosted by SIPRI for this exact cause). One theme of this kind of education is a very humanitarian approach. Meet people where they are, educate on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear bombs, be careful of how the language around “deterrence” normalizes the nuclear threat. And most importantly, don’t think that nuclear disarmament can only be taught in upper level education. The point, as everyone in this discussion seemed to recognize, is to break out of this silo and spread education everywhere.
A New Narrative: Normative Change
Social media is one approach. With the ability to instantly reach people from across the world with this message, social media literacy is a powerful tool to add to an activist’s toolbelt. It should be taken seriously, especially for outreach to youth audiences.
One of the strengths of social media is to tell a story. The main take-away I saw from Nuclear Ban Week is that everyone needs to know the real and wholly unacceptable story of nuclear weapons, not the propaganda that nuclear-armed states depend on. And to do this, we need to purposefully and actively bring nuclear disarmament out of the common frameworks it is discussed in. We need to break down these communication silos and bring this conversation to everyone, because it affects everyone, not just those studying international law.
There are so many opportunities to engage this discussion in other spaces because it is so broad and intersectional. We just need to be active about it. Nuclear disarmament can be brought into gender fora, and the gender provisions of the TPNW provide a clear pathway for this. It can be brought into financial spaces–looking at how much money is wasted on weapons that are never meant to be used. And it can be brought into racial justice spaces as the effects of nuclear weapons and testing have been so disproportionately harmful.
Throughout Nuclear Ban Week, side events brought the conversation to all of these spaces and more– using its intersectionality to push the needle for normative change. The more we engage this discussion– the more we can redefine what is acceptable, thus forcing the institutional processes behind them to change.
Climate Focus
One area of particular excitement and discussion during the week was the environmental space. Nuclear weapons and the climate crisis are inextricably linked and so clearly exacerbate each other. The nuclear abolition discussion needs to be brought to the climate space, and the good news is we are actively doing so! The Warheads to Windmills Coalition in the US works toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons so that we can use those wasted resources on the climate crisis. There is a growing understanding of the interconnectedness of these two movements, and it has never been more important.
On Thursday of Nuclear Ban Week we held a live link-up with the UN’s 28th Climate Change Conference to discuss and expand on the intersections between nuclear weapons and the environment. It was a critical moment for building connection and understanding between these parallel movements. Then on Friday we launched our book, Warheads to Windmills: Preventing Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear War, which educates on the realities of these issues, details just how interwoven they are, and provides tools for how they can help each other.
Keep Pushing
If we can continue to meet people where they are and explain the issue in terms of the things they already care about, we can demystify the complexities of the nuclear conversation. It’s crucial to use and spread materials like the Warheads to Windmills book, and other intersectional efforts in this process. The abolition of nuclear weapons needs to be grounded as a reality for all, and the propaganda campaign of “deterrence” needs to be dismissed from the norm. Excitingly, the states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons for the first time ever adopted a decision to challenge the “false narratives of nuclear deterrence” (from ICAN).
We need to keep finding new spaces to push the truth of nuclear weapons, new areas to change minds. At one event it was even suggested to engage the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the UK’s largest nature conservation charity, in this conversation by appealing to them on the threats nuclear weapons pose to their beloved birds. Nuclear Weapons are threatening virtually every space, so they can and should be brought into discussion in every space.
