Major Accomplishments

When IPPNW mobilizes its vast network of medical organizations throughout the world in support of a campaign, a great deal gets accomplished. IPPNW physician-activists:

• Created an international medical movement to disseminate factual information about the consequences of nuclear warfare worldwide, receiving the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize for this effort.
• Promoted Soviet-American dialogue at the height of the Cold War by organizing Soviet and American doctors to bring a non-partisan anti-nuclear message to the people of both countries, reaching millions.
• Helped stop underground nuclear testing by influencing the Soviet Union to initiate and extend a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing from 1985-1987.
• Organized the International Citizens Congress for a Nuclear Test Ban in Kazakhstan, a key event that led to the 1991 closing of the Soviet Union's principal test site at Semipalatinsk.
• Helped lead an international lobbying effort in support of a nuclear test ban.
• Created SatelLife, a health development project that provides state-of-the-art communications technology to exchange critically needed medical information between the North and the South.
• Established an International Commission to Investigate the Health and Environmental Effects of Nuclear Weapons Production and Testing and worked with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research to document these effects.
• Worked with INFACT to organize medical professionals in the GE Boycott, which successfully moved the multinational corporation out of the nuclear weapons industry.
• Helped document with the Harvard Study Team the health effects of the Gulf War.
• Co-founded the World Court Project with the International Association of Lawyers
• Against Nuclear Arms and the International Peace Bureau that secured a landmark ruling from the International Court of Justice confirming the illegality of the threat and use of nuclear weapons.
• Helped spearhead the launch of Abolition 2000, a global campaign to build worldwide
• support for a signed agreement that sets a firm timetable for nuclear abolition.
• Participated in the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
• Organized with IPPNW-Russia and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines the first conference on landmines in Russia, a major manufacturer of landmines.
• Helped launch the Middle Powers Initiative to mobilize key non-nuclear weapons states to encourage theleaders of the nuclear weapons states to commit themselves to
• the elimination of nuclear weapons.
• Submitted a revised Model Nuclear Weapons Convention to the United Nations. The treaty was drafted by the Lawyers Committee for Nuclear Policy, the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, and IPPNW.

As this list of accomplishments shows, IPPNW successfully partners with other leading professional and grassroots organizations to further our goals of nuclear abolition and prevention of war.