International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is a coalition of non-governmental organisations working in dozens of countries to stigmatise, prohibit, and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons. It was launched in 2007 in Melbourne, Australia, and is now headquartered in Geneva. ICAN does not itself negotiate treaties; rather, it mobilises NGOs, parliamentarians, survivors, and sympathetic states to push the nuclear-disarmament agenda inside multilateral forums, particularly at the United Nations.

ICAN is best known for its central role in the diplomatic process that produced the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted at the UN on 7 July 2017 and entered into force on 22 January 2021. The TPNW is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons, including their development, testing, production, stockpiling, transfer, use, and threat of use. None of the nine nuclear-armed states, nor NATO members reliant on extended deterrence, have joined.

For its work, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, recognised 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." The prize was accepted by ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn and Hibakusha survivor Setsuko Thurlow.

ICAN's advocacy framework rests on the humanitarian initiative, a diplomatic current developed through conferences in Oslo (2013), Nayarit (2014), and Vienna (2014) that reframed nuclear weapons as a humanitarian and human-security issue rather than a strategic-stability matter. The campaign also tracks state positions, publishes the annual Don't Bank on the Bomb report on financial institutions investing in nuclear-weapon producers, and lobbies cities and parliaments to endorse the TPNW through its Cities Appeal.

For MUN delegates, ICAN frequently appears in DISEC and First Committee debates as a model of NGO-driven norm entrepreneurship.