ICAN

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations working in more than 100 countries to achieve a legally binding global ban on nuclear weapons. It was launched in Vienna in 2007, inspired by the model of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and is headquartered in Geneva. Its founding partners included the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), and over the years its partner network has grown to several hundred member organizations.

ICAN's central achievement is its role in negotiating and securing the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), opened for signature at the United Nations on 20 September 2017 and entered into force on 22 January 2021. The TPNW comprehensively prohibits developing, testing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons. None of the nine nuclear-armed states have joined the treaty, and most NATO members have declined to sign, though several have attended TPNW Meetings of States Parties as observers.

For this work ICAN was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, cited by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for "its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons."

ICAN's strategy emphasizes the humanitarian impact framing of nuclear weapons rather than traditional arms-control or deterrence logic. It builds on the Humanitarian Initiative conferences held in Oslo (2013), Nayarit (2014), and Vienna (2014). The campaign also publishes annual reports tracking global nuclear weapons spending and financial institutions invested in nuclear weapon producers, and lobbies parliaments, cities, and pension funds to divest from the nuclear weapons industry.