Dear Abolition 2000 family,
As we lean into the new year, we invite and encourage you to participate in Abolition 2000’s upcoming activities. Please make a donation if you can. We’re counting on your financial support to continue to make our work possible.
📌 Endorse the 2026 Nuclear Abolition Day Appeal
The United Nations has declared September 26 to be the International Day for the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (Nuclear Abolition Day).
Every year on this date, the UN holds a high-level meeting of world leaders to discuss “urgent and effective measures” to achieve global nuclear disarmament. At the same time, civil society organizations organize events and undertake actions to support nuclear weapons abolition.
In 2025, for the first time, civil society organizations from around the world joined together to establish a common platform and joint actions for Nuclear Abolition Day. These included a social media action Stop Nuclear Weapons: Peace is in our Hands and an Appeal that was endorsed by over 600 organizations and more than 1200 additional individuals from 99 countries, and presented to the high-level plenary on Sept 26.
This civil society cooperation was so successful that the Nuclear Abolition Day core team has decided to repeat the actions in 2026. The Appeal has been re-opened for endorsement, with the plan to present it to the NPT Review Conference in April and again to the UN High-Level Meeting in September.
We encourage Abolition 2000 members to endorse the appeal, if you have not already done so, and to circulate it to your colleagues inviting them to also endorse.
📌 Mar 1: Nuclear Remembrance Day
Join the global 24-hour World Futures Day conversation!
March 1 is Nuclear Remembrance Day, the 72nd anniversary of the Bravo nuclear weapons test undertaken by the United States in the Marshall Islands.
The Bravo nuclear detonation had an explosive yield of 15 megatons—1,000 times that of the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima and nearly three times the six megatons that its planners estimated. The detonation vaporized some ten million tons of sand, coral and water that turned into a 100-mile-wide fallout cloud spewing radioactive debris on the inhabitants of Marshall Island atolls.
The radioactive fallout has had – and continues to have – a devastating trans-generational impact on the health and wellbeing of the Marshallese people, causing high rates of cancers, still-births, congenital defects and other health disorders. Evidence presented by the Marshall Islands to the international Court of Justice in 1995, led the court to conclude that “The destructive impact of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time.
March 1 is also World Futures Day. Every year on this day, The Millennium Project and five other international foresight organizations organize a global 24-hour conversation on humanity’s potential futures.
We encourage Abolition 2000 members to join the 2026 World Futures Day conversation, highlight the fact that March 1 is also Nuclear Remembrance Day, and encourage participants to support a nuclear-weapon-free future. An easy action for participants is to endorse the Appeal for Nuclear Abolition Day.
📌 From nuclear sharing (Belarus and NATO) to a European Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone
🔗 Online event. Thursday March 5.
⏰ 11am-12:30pm Eastern Time USA / 5pm-6:30pm Central Europe Time
The risks of a nuclear war by accident, miscalculation or intent have increased with various escalatory actions, including the deployment by Russia of nuclear weapons to Belarus and the lapse of the New START treaty. Join us on March 5 for a discussion on nuclear deterrence in Europe, nuclear sharing and the proposal for a European NWFZ.
The NWFZ proposal addresses the fact that most European countries rely on nuclear deterrence – through extended nuclear deterrence relationships. The proposal, inspired by the models of other NWFZs, does not call for states to unilaterally relinquish nuclear deterrence, but to do it mutually with others in the region. These are combined with security guarantees from the nuclear-armed states to respect the territorial integrity of States Parties to the NWFZ and to commit not to threatening or using nuclear weapons against them.
The event is held in conjunction with Nuclear Remembrance Day (the anniversary of the Bravo nuclear weapons test) and the anniversary of the revision of the Belarus constitution (rescinding the nuclear-weapon ban). It will draw from a submission to the UN Human Rights Council in November 2025 on the nuclear weapons policies of Belarus.
The event will include the launch of a transnational Marathon for nuclear Abolition and Peace (MAP).
📌 Support Abolition 2000 at the NPT Review Conference
Abolition 2000 is gearing up for the upcoming 5-year Review Conference (RevCon) of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which will take place at the UN in New York, April 27 – May 22, 2026. The viability of the treaty is under growing pressure, and given the bedlam in international relations being wreaked, in particular, by Trump and Putin, who knows what will happen by April?
We are currently working with a consortium of Japanese groups including Gensuikyo, Nihon Hidankyo, the Consumers Coop, and Gensuikin, who will be bringing more than 150 of their members to New York City for the RevCon. With our Japanese colleagues, the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, Peace Action, and others, we are organizing an international conference on April 26, which will be livestreamed. We will also be coordinating side events and streaming a “Live from the NPT” report during the RevCon. Stay tuned! Please let us know if you’ll be attending the RevCon and what your group is planning.
Please donate now and help Abolition 2000 have the most powerful and effective presence possible at the NPT RevCon. Abolition 2000’s biggest expense is paying a very modest stipend to our Secretary, Ivan Siluianov, of 3,000 Euros/year – about $3,500 dollars. Our other expenses are web hosting and Zoom (about another $1,000). If everyone reading this newsletter would donate just $10 – $25 dollars we would easily make our budget. Please give as generously as you can.
In solidarity,
The Abolition 2000 Coordinating Committee