The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) hosted a one day conference for the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons (HINW) on Monday, March 2nd, 2020.
This convening provided the opportunity for a lot of fact-based discussions, and in particular, considered the risk of nuclear weapons use has increased since the previous HINW conference.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) put together a brief article about the event on Monday that you can find here: https://www.icanw.org/hinw2020_experts_and_governments_meet_to_discuss_the_humanitarian_impact_of_nuclear_weapons.
The ICRC and IFRC will turn the results of the conference into a working paper on humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons that they will submit to the 2020 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference, which illustrates that the humanitarian impacts perspective is still going to be a central theme for many at the Review Conference.
There were about 30 governments attending the conference, including many NATO states. However, we know many nuclear-armed states and nuclear endorsing states are backtracking from acknowledging the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons at the upcoming NPT Review Conference, so it would be great if you all could remind your governments about this by sharing the article and ICAN's briefing paper on the NPT with them.
We will distribute more material from ICAN regarding the NPT in the coming weeks, including more in-depth papers, material for parliamentarians, cities, and much more that we hope can be useful for encouraging your governments.
