Forty European students from Austria, Germany, Italy, Romania and Switzerland will attend and monitor discussions at the NPT PrepCom, the first committee for the 2015 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. These participants were selected through an open online process, that took into account gender and geographical balance.
NPT Youth – Youth Project for Nuclear Disarmament is a joint project developed by eleven European organizations, coordinated by BANg Europe, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Geneva and the MILMUN Association, and financed by the European Commission through its Youth in Action programme. The coordinating group is linked to Abolition 2000, the global network for nuclear abolition, made up of over 2000 organizations worldwide.
The young delegates will be in Vienna from 26th April to 7th May. Here, they will take part in the discussions with diplomats and civil society actors, present a speech on behalf of the world’s youth, raise awareness amongst the general public by taking actions in the streets and local schools, and present the views of the Youth and indigenous people’s aspirations for a nuclear-weapon-free world in the Vienna International Centre.
The youth delegation was prepared through the interactions with the international organizing committee on the online forum and through national preparation seminars, which were held in the five participating countries. At these meetings, the national groups emphasized the need for young people to encourage their politicians to eliminate all nuclear weapons in their lifetime. Finally, after the meetings, the participants began to understand the need for the leaders’ of the world to eliminate nuclear weapons.
For this reason, all participants will continue to inform members of civil society and leaders, after the PrepCom, about the dangers and uselessness of such terrible weapons, today.
Further information can be found at www.nptyouth.org.
The NPT Youth International organizing committee
Martin Hinrichs – Christian Ciobanu – Mirko Montuori
Contact: contact@nptyouth.org