Delegates from 127 countries as well as several UN organisations, the International Red Cross movement, representatives of civil society and media attended the Oslo Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. The conference was preceded by a Civil Society Forum organised by ICAN (an International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons).
The Basel Peace Office was represented at the two events by Dr Andreas Nidecker (President), Laurent Goetschel (Board Member) and Alyn Ware (Director). A number of representatives of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (which is a cosponsor of the Basel Peace Office) also participated including PNND Co-President Bill Kidd (member of the Scottish parliament), Tarja Cronberg MEP (Chair of PNND European Parliament Section), José Roberto Rodríguez Quesada (Member of the Costa Rican National Assembly), Olle Thorell (Member of the Swedish Parliament), Vidya Shankar (assistant to PNND Co-President Mani Shankar from India) and the PNND Coordinators from Central Europe, Costa Rica, France, Germany, North East Asia and Sweden.
PNND and the Basel Peace Office ran a session for the parallel youth conference organised by Ban All Nukes Generation – training young advocates on how to engage with legislators and government officials. For photos see BANG! Workshop in Oslo.
PNND and Mayors for Peace ran a joint stall at the Civil Society Forum on 'Engaging your Legislators'. Conference participants were able to go online at the stall to find contact details of their legislators, and then send them an electronic message from the Forum calling on them to take action in support of nuclear abolition. There were also 'live legislators' at the stall (a mayor and two parliamentarians) to whom civil society activists could talk in order to hone their advocacy skills and build confidence to hold meetings with their own legislators back home. For photos see "Engage with your legislator" stall in Oslo.
PNND also held a side event in the Stortinget (Norwegian Parliament) on Mar 4, co-chaired by PNND Co-President Marit Nybakk and PNND Council Member Hallgeir Langeland, and featuring Ward Wilson, author of The Penny Farthing H-Bomb and 5 Myths about Nuclear Weapons (recently reviewed in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune). For photos see PNND Event in Norwegian Parliament.
Prior to the conference, PNND members in Belgium, Costa Rica, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and the United Kingdom lodged questions and/or motions in their parliaments calling on their governments to take note of the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons, and to give their full support for the conference. See www.facebook.com/pnndglobal for links to some of these parliamentary questions and motions.
The Basel Peace Office promotes the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons as an important component in building civil society action and political will to achieve a nuclear-weapons-free world. However, political will is insufficient if countries continue to rely on nuclear deterrence for their security. As such, the Basel Peace Office also is active in the Framework Forum and the Nuclear Abolition Forum, both of which are engaged in advancing frameworks for security without nuclear weapons.
See also:
- Meteors, nukes and human survival: a wake-up call from Oslo? by Alyn Ware, Pressenza, 18 February 2013
- Military Wisdom and Nuclear Weapons by Ward Wilson, IFQ, 1st Quarter 2013