* Nuclear disarmament lobbying group that excuses nuclear buildup by rogue countries while condemning the U.S & Israel
An alliance of more than 2,000 nongovernmental organizations in 95 countries, Abolition 2000 was established in April 1995 by Global Resource Action Center for the Environment president Alice Slater. Another key founding member was David Krieger, founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. The year 1995 was chosen for the founding because it marked the 50-year anniversary of America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
From its inception, Abolition 2000’s mission was to help achieve, for the sake of “our common security,” the “definite and unconditional abolition of nuclear weapons” from the earth by the turn of the century. When it subsequently became apparent that this target date would not be met, the organization settled on what it deemed a more pragmatic timetable: the year 2020.
Abolition 2000’s Founding Statement read as follows:
A secure and livable world for our children and grandchildren and all future generations requires that we achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and redress the environmental degradation and human suffering that is the legacy of fifty years of nuclear weapons testing and production.
Further, the inextricable link between the “peaceful” and warlike uses of nuclear technologies and the threat to future generations inherent in creation and use of long-lived radioactive materials must be recognized. We must move toward reliance on clean, safe, renewable forms of energy production that do not provide the materials for weapons of mass destruction and do not poison the environment for thousands of centuries. The true “inalienable” right is not to nuclear energy, but to life, liberty and security of person in a world free of nuclear weapons.
We recognize that a nuclear weapons free world must be achieved carefully and in a step by step manner. We are convinced of its technological feasibility. Lack of political will, especially on the part of the nuclear weapons states, is the only true barrier. As chemical and biological weapons are prohibited, so must nuclear weapons be prohibited.
We call upon all states particularly the nuclear weapons states, declared and de facto to take the following steps to achieve nuclear weapons abolition. We further urge the states parties to the NPT to demand binding commitments by the declared nuclear weapons states to implement these measures:
- Initiate immediately and conclude negotiations on a nuclear weapons abolition convention that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons within a timebound framework, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.
- Immediately make an unconditional pledge not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.
- Rapidly complete a truly comprehensive test ban treaty with a zero threshold and with the stated purpose of precluding nuclear weapons development by all states.
- Cease to produce and deploy new and additional nuclear weapons systems, and commence to withdraw and disable deployed nuclear weapons systems.
- Prohibit the military and commercial production and reprocessing of all weapons-usable radioactive materials.
- Subject all weapons-usable radioactive materials and nuclear facilities in all states to international accounting, monitoring, and safeguards, and establish a public international registry of all weapons-usable radioactive materials.
- Prohibit nuclear weapons research, design, development, and testing through laboratory experiments including but not limited to non-nuclear hydrodynamic explosions and computer simulations, subject all nuclear weapons laboratories to international monitoring, and close all nuclear test sites.
- Create additional nuclear weapons free zones such as those established by the treaties of Tlatelolco and Raratonga.
- Recognize and declare the illegality of threat or use of nuclear weapons, publicly and before the World Court.
- Establish an international energy agency to promote and support the development of sustainable and environmentally safe energy sources.
- Create mechanisms to ensure the participation of citizens and NGOs in planning and monitoring the process of nuclear weapons abolition.
A world free of nuclear weapons is a shared aspiration of humanity. This goal cannot be achieved in a non-proliferation regime that authorizes the possession of nuclear weapons by a small group of states. Our common security requires the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Our objective is definite and unconditional abolition of nuclear weapons.
At its annual conference in January 1997, Abolition 2000 adopted the Moorea Declaration, a signally vague statement of sympathy for “the particular suffering of indigenous and colonized peoples as a result of the production and testing of nuclear weapons.” “The anger and tears of colonized peoples,” continues the Declaration, “arise from the fact that there was no consultation, no consent, and no involvement in the decision when their lands, air, and waters were taken for the nuclear buildup, from the very start of the nuclear era. Colonized and indigenous peoples have, in the large part, borne the brunt of this nuclear devastation — from the mining of uranium and the testing of nuclear weapons on indigenous peoples’ land, to the dumping, storage and transport of plutonium and nuclear wastes and the theft of land for nuclear infrastructure.”
In 1999, Abolition 2000 launched a “Mayors for Peace” initiative that aimed to bring mayors from around the world together in support of completing negotiations for nuclear disarmament by 2005.
In May 2001, Abolition 2000 adopted the Saffron Walden Declaration, which condemned not only America’s “immoral and illegal quest for global domination,” but also its “drive to weaponize and nuclearize space.” In a broad indictment of globalization, the Declaration identified the West’s “unsustainable levels of consumption” of “world resources” as the primary cause of a “rising tide of discontent at the economic inequity and lack of social justice among the vast majority of the earth’s people.”
By the spring of the year 2000, the Abolition 2000 network consisted of more than 2,000 member groups from over 90 countries around the world. Among Abolition 2000’s U.S.-based member groups were the 8th Day Center for Justice, Activist San Diego, the Alliance for Justice, the American Friends Service Committee, Americans for Democratic Action, the Catholic Worker, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Church Women United, Coalition of Women for Peace, Code Pink, the Compton Foundation, Earth Action, the Earth Day Network, the Earth Island Institute, Food Not Bombs, Friends of the Earth, Global Green USA, the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, Greenpeace USA, the International Action Center, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, the League of Women Voters, Mercy International, the National Lawyers Guild, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Pax Christi International, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen, the Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club, the Traprock Peace Center, the United Nations, the U.S. Peace Council, Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the War and Peace Foundation, the War Resisters League, Women Against Military Madness, Women’s Action for New Directions, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
For a complete list of Abolition 2000’s member groups as of the dawn of the 21st century, click here.
Abolition 2000 itself belongs to the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition.
Abolition 2000 has traditionally looked with less favor on the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. than on those of America’s enemies. In 2003, for instance, two Abolition 2000 leaders were among the signatories to a letter—addressed to the highest-level political leaders of the United States and several other countries—rejecting any “attempts to use force, sanctions, threats of sanctions, [or] regime change” in dealing with the nuclear aspirations of Communist North Korea. Asserting that America’s large nuclear arsenal invariably caused other nations to perceive the U.S. as an imperialist aggressor, the letter justified North Korea’s “understandable” desire “to defend itself” by developing its own nuclear capabilities.
In 2002-03, parallel reasoning informed Abolition 2000’s opposition to America’s preparation for war against Iraq’s Baathist regime, which was widely believed to be developing an illicit nuclear weapons program. Omitting any mention of Saddam Hussein‘s past campaigns of mass murder, the coalition instead was “gravely concerned … that the U.S. would again use nuclear weapons,” as it had previously done in 1945. “Even if Iraq is found to possess WMDs or their components, the U.S. approach is wrong,” said Abolition 2000, contending that such weapons “cannot and should not be eliminated through the use of force.” Moreover, Abolition 2000 characterized America’s policy towards Iraq as “selective and hypocritical,” in light of the fact that “the U.S. continues to support Israel, which has nuclear weapons as well as a long record of noncompliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions, and which has occupied Palestine for decades.”
In September 2004, Abolition 2000 concentrated its energies on “Boycott Bush,” a grassroots organizing effort to boycott U.S. products as a means of protesting America’s alleged violations of “international law.”
In its early years, Abolition 2000 established a number of Working Groups that, before long, were either inactive or had been subsumed into: (a) other working groups of Abolition 2000, or (b) initiatives of Abolition 2000 member organisations. Following is a list of such now-defunct Working Groups, coupled with Abolition 2000’s description of their objectives and activities:
The following Abolition 2000 Working Groups are still active:
The Seventh Generation Fund, the EarthWays Foundation, and the Lifebridge Foundation have awarded grants to Abolition 2000.