UNFOLD ZERO Newsletter

Posted: 17th July 2025

Nuclear abolition movement develops new approaches to meet today’s turbulent times

The past year has seen startling geopolitical changes reshaping the landscape of international relations, security relationships and nuclear weapons policies and practices.

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.

Geopolitical upheavals impacting on nuclear risk-reduction and disarmament

Recent geopolitical upheavals include the Trump administration’s foreign policy shifts, 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. These raise critical questions about the future of nuclear risk-reduction, nonproliferation and disarmament.

Abolition 2000 Annual General Meeting

The weekend event referred to above 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 from 100 countries (all continents/regions except Antarctica) have endorsed the Abolition 2000 founding statement, an 11-point (measure) plan for nuclear abolition. 141 representatives from 42 countries (all continents/regions except Antarctica) registered for the weekend event.

Reports from campaigns, working groups and affiliated networks

Abolition 2000 campaigns, working groups and affiliated networks reporting at the annual meeting included:

Youth Fusion, the global youth network for the elimination of nuclear weapons, played a very active role in the Abolition 2000 Annual Meeting, including in the intergenerational sessions on strategies to meet the new political environment and to build engagement of civil society including youth in nuclear disarmament.

Strategy sessions and proposals

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 hosted by the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs on July 8, 2025).

2000 candles for nuclear abolition laid out in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (opposite the United Nations in New York) as part of the 30th birthday celebrations of Abolition 2000 in May this year.