Member Perspectives on 3MSP in New York City March 25, 2025

By Alfred Meyer

This blog post is intended to give you a sense of what citizen activism is achieving  — the TPNW grew out of a proverbial ‘small group of dedicated people wanting to change the world,’ and now it is an official United Nations Treaty meeting in the UN Headquarters in New York City, working to abolish nuclear weapons!

A brief review of how citizen activism at the United Nations supports the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, supports the greatly impacted communities of our one world and features opportunities for each of us to make a difference in today’s distraught world.

Physicians for Social Responsibility was represented by a delegation of seven observers facilitated by Magritte Gordaneer, NWA Program Staffer. Ira Helfand, Ann Suellentrop, Peter Wilk, Gwen DuBois, Todd Sack, John Reuwer, and Alfred Meyer among others representing PSR in numerous capacities were all inside the UN. Chapters were also represented, including PSR Los Angeles with a delegation including Denise Duffield, Bob and Kristin Dodge, Maral Hassanshahi, Alex Hassett, and Maylene Hughes.

Before the UN meetings, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons held a busy and well attended day — long campaigners meeting at the historic Riverside Church, where in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Impacted populations were featured in many side events at and near the UN, including indigenous American Hibakusha from the Trinity test, Japanese Hibakusha, Korean Hibakusha, Congolese uranium miners, Marshall Islanders, Kazakhs, and others. That is all of us when you stop to think about it!  

In one ground floor UN hallway there was a photo display about the nuclear test area in remote Kazakhstan, its impacts on the people and place, and a display of the paintings done by a man from that area who was born without arms due to radioactive fallout  — he paints exquisitely beautiful still life works by using his mouth to hold the paintbrush. 

One afternoon I found myself standing next to this very same person, the artist, a living and creative survivor of the nuclear holocaust we have unleashed upon our one world, planet Earth, a strong person who creates beauty out of horror. A chill came over me as I realized that we are all here, we are all affected by the irradiation of our environment, and that it is happening now as I write and now as you read. 

Many may consider themselves not as obviously affected as he is, but affected nonetheless, as we ‘all together now’ proceed into the unplanned, ungoverned, and unmeasured human and worldwide experiment of the irradiation of our biosphere. As noted in the 2006 BEIR VII report (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation Report) from the US National Academies of Science, all exposure to ionizing radiation is harmful to health with cumulative effects over one’s lifetime.

There are 94 signatory nations of the TPNW with 73 officially ratified states parties. 86 countries took part in the official 3MSP proceedings, which included issuing a political declaration and a package of decisions at the end of the week of meetings. 

As per TPNW provisions, representatives from civil society organizations from around the world were invited to observe the meetings, which took place at UN Headquarters in the Trustee Council, a large, two-story room with country and civil society official representatives on the main floor. 1,000 observers from 163 civil society organizations were at this year’s meetings.

At one end of this large rectangular hall, there is a balcony section with seating for several hundred civil society observers like us. On both sides there are staircases from the balcony to the main floor, so civil society access to official delegates is made easy, emblematic of the transparent and democratic nature of this treaty, which I commend to you as a good read, written in clear and direct language, advocating for the protection of the most vulnerable among us.

Civil Society also participated in more than 70 ‘side events’, programs hosted by various organizations from around the world (who could get US visas, that is) on a wide range of topics relevant to the treaty, such as human rights and environmental rights violations inherent in the uranium fuel chain.

Additionally, Denise Duffield, Associate Director of PSR Los Angeles moderated the side event on “The Role of Cities in the Promotion of Nuclear Disarmament” with mayors from Hanover, Germany and Rochester, New York, an alderperson from Chicago, Illinois, the Secretary General of Mayors for Peace from Japan, and an Italian activist. Cities are both the targets of and the presumed first responders to a nuclear blast. Target yes, first responder  — there is no such thing after an atomic blast.

Ira Helfand, PSR, IPPNW & ICAN, was a speaker at a side event on “Regional Pathways to Global Disarmament” which addressed creating nuclear weapons-free zones. PSR Board Member and Kansas City watchdog activist Ann Suellentrop had in hand her most recent op-ed piece about the Kansas City Plant where 80% of the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons are manufactured. 

IPPNW Australia hosted a side event on the impacts of nuclear weapons on children featuring their report which documents the true horror of nuclear weapons. The event featured a representative from the ICRC, Ira Helfand representing IPPNW, Tim Wright from ICAN, and Setsuko Thurlow who spoke on her experience in Hiroshima. 

There is much that each of us can do, in our local area, statewide, nationwide, and worldwide. In the US, Back From the Brink is a growing movement of city, county, and state bodies calling for implementation of 5 common sense policy changes regarding our current nuclear control protocols. Students for Nuclear Disarmament is driven by high school and college students. Don’t Bank on the Bomb focuses citizen engagement with their banking institutions to draw appropriate attention to this topic. The Nuclear Truth Project has two mottos: Challenge Nuclear Secrecy & Rights, Respect, Reciprocity, and providing safe places for those harmed by the nuclear enterprise.

The PEAC Institute brought high school students from Detroit and college students from Georgia to the UN, where they shared their creative energy at side events and learned about the nuclear enterprise that drives the nuclear weapons complex. Ward Wilson of Realist Revolt has a book to end this note on: “It Is Possible” a book explaining how indeed we can rid the world of nuclear weapons  — he makes a persuasive case, now we just need to do it!