Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Historically, arms control may apply to melee weapons before the invention of firearm. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants through international treaties and agreements, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.
The Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) was an American anti-war group, formed in 1957 to resist the US government's program of nuclear weapons testing. It was one of the first organizations to employ nonviolent direct action to protest against the nuclear arms race.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan Quaker organization. As a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization, FCNL and its network lobby Congress and the administration to promote peace, justice, and environmental stewardship. It was founded in 1943 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is a coalition of more than 1,300 international and U.S.-based organizations opposed to "our government's policy of permanent warfare and empire-building."
Women Strike for Peace was a women's peace activist group in the United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate against the testing of nuclear weapons. It was the largest national women's peace protest during the 20th century. Another group action was led by Dagmar Wilson, with about 1,500 women gathering at the foot of the Washington Monument while President John F. Kennedy watched from the White House. The protest helped "push the United States and the Soviet Union into signing a nuclear test-ban treaty two years later". Reflecting the era in which the group's leaders had been raised, between the First-wave feminism and the Second-wave feminism movements, their actions and pleas leaned towards female self-sacrifice rather than towards their own self-interests. However, they pushed the power of a concerned mother to the forefront of American politics, transforming the mother from a "passive victim of war to active fighter for peace".
Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg led a lifetime of research and advocacy on ways to reduce the risk of war, minimize the burden of military spending, and promote democratic institutions. Her career started at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 1968. In 1974 she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to found the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) as well as to launch the national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Randall Forsberg was accompanied by an important colleague by the name of Helen Caldicott while she was leading the Nuclear freeze movement in both Manhattan and Central Park. Both women were met with many challenges in their efforts to lead the Nuclear Freeze Movement. These challenges included gender discrimination and discreditation as influential leaders by the media. Forsberg's strong leadership in the nuclear freeze movement is thought to be very influential in the writing of foreign policy during the Reagan administration and is even credited with catalyzing the negotiation of the INF treaty between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality and intelligence of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, with a main focus on the United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Nevada National Security Site.
Milan Rai is a British writer and anti-war activist from Hastings. He is co-editor with anti-war artist Emily Johns of the magazine Peace News. Along with fellow activist Maya Evans, he was arrested on 25 October 2005 next to the Cenotaph war memorial in London, for refusing to cease reading aloud the names of civilians by then killed in Iraq in the course of the Iraq war.
The Washington Peace Center was a nonprofit organization founded and located in Washington, D.C., focusing on peace and social justice. It officially closed ceased operating in 2020 after.
David Cortright is an American scholar and peace activist. He is a Vietnam veteran who is currently Professor Emeritus and special adviser for policy studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 22 books. Cortright has a long history of public advocacy for disarmament and the prevention of war.
Women's Action for New Directions or WAND is a volunteer-run progressive non-profit organization in the United States with an objective of "build[ing] women's political power to advocate for peace and security."
Ceasefire Canada (Ceasefire.ca) was founded in 2003 by Steven Staples and Peter Coombes to prevent Canada from joining the U.S Ballistic Missile Defense program. Staples and Coombes were inspired by the success of web-based campaigns such as Moveon.org. Ceasefire.com was intended to be a web-based tool for citizen action on Canadian government policy. In 2007 Ceasefire.ca moved to the Rideau Institute under the direction of Steven Staples. Over the years it has been involved in a number of campaigns. It was involved in the campaign against the George W. Bush's Star Wars program, it helped push many Canadian politicians to oppose the war in Afghanistan, allowed US war resisters to stay in Canada, called for the ban on deadly cluster bombs, lobbied for the abolishment of nuclear weapons, and worked to prevent the weaponization of space. From its humble beginnings Ceasefire.ca has grown to a membership of 15,000 subscribers who receive online bulletins and take part in online letter writing campaigns. Also, over 1000 have become donors and help fund the organization's campaign work and research activities.
Council for a Livable World is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to eliminating the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. Its stated aim is for "progressive national security policies and helping elect congressional candidates who support them." The Council was founded in 1962 as the Council for Abolishing War by Hungarian nuclear physicist Leó Szilárd. Its education and research arm, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, provides research to members of Congress and their staff. In February 2016, John F. Tierney was appointed the executive director of the Council for a Livable World and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. For more than 50 years, the Council for a Livable World has been advocating for a more principled approach to U.S. national security and foreign policy.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
Gordon Clark is an American activist and politician. He has served as the National Executive Director of Peace Action, and was a 2008 Green Party candidate from Maryland for the United States House of Representatives in 2008.
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) was a socialist, New York City-based organization that promoted "a new, progressive and non-militaristic U.S. foreign policy," in contrast to existing foreign policy, which CPD characterized as "based on domination, militarism, fear of popular struggles, enforcement of an inequitable and cruel global economy and persistent support for authoritarian regimes." The hallmark of CPD's work was its efforts to seek out and work with dissidents and social justice movements worldwide, and to forge alliances between them and progressive movements in the United States. The organization had more than 100 endorsers, including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Daniel Ellsberg. With the death of Joanne Landy in 2017, CPD ceased to function.
The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
In international law, Nuclear Weapons Free Zones are areas in which a group of states has prohibited the presence of nuclear weapons, according to criteria set and recognized by the United Nations. On the international level, Canada is not a part of any Nuclear Weapon Free Zone as defined by the United Nations. Canada is a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation on Nuclear Weapons, a statute that has similar aims to those of NWFZs and even encourages the establishment of multinational NWFZs, but is not directly comparable. However, certain areas within Canada have voluntarily designated themselves as Nuclear Free Zones (NFZs) or Nuclear Weapons Free Zones (NWFZs). Generally, these nuclear weapons free zones and nuclear free zones are codified within Municipal and Provincial jurisdictions.
