ABOLITION 2000 -

A GLOBAL NETWORK TO ELIMINATE NUCLEAR WEAPONS

REPORT ON SECOND ORGANIZING MEETING,
NOVEMBER 4-5, 1995:


The second organizing meeting of Abolition 2000 was convened on November 5, 1995, in Den Haag, The Netherlands, by the NGO Nuclear Abolition Caucus. (See below.)
The first meeting was held in April, 1995, at the NGO Conference in New York during the United Nations hearings on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"Through our shared commitment to a nuclear-free 21st century we will seek ways to weave together the work of our various organizations and networks into a cooperative, effective, internationally coordinated campaign," reads the invitation to the November strategy meeting.
The theme of the weekend-long World Court Project-sponsored seminar was "REACH OUT!", to lots of different issue groups -- disarmament, environmentalist, human rights, labor, students, educators, scientists, etc. -- to seek hundreds/thousands of group endorsers, to sign the Abolition 2000 Statement.
AGREED: Abolition 2000 is a "tight network," a CLEARINGHOUSE for communications among like-minded groups, a computer network, which will also make quarterly mailings of information member organizations provide about related issues. A committee will come up with proposals about where clearinghouse should be, plan next meeting, send mailing in December with notes from this meeting plus requests for other people to be actively involved. Already hundreds of international, national, and local groups of all sizes have endorsed the statement.
There was heartening discussion of the need NOT to create hierarchies.
AGREED: No one can speak FOR the network, but anyone who endorses the Statement is part of the network, and is encouraged to seek endorsements from other groups and to share information with co-endorsers.
The next meeting will probably be in March, either in Brussels or at an Edinburgh peace gathering, unless many people show up in Den Haag again when the World Court rules on the question of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.
Temporarily the clearinghouse staff will be: Jackie, Xanthe, Janet, Reiner & Colin, and perhaps other volunteers from the organizations which convened the Abolition 2000 conference at The Hague: the NGO Nuclear Abolition Caucus, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, (IPPNW), International Peace Bureau (IPB), International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the World Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP), convened the conference. (INESAP invites linkage with European groups on the following websites:
INESAP (http://www.th-darmstadt.de/ze/ianus/inesap.htm) -- and
IANUS (http://www.th-darmstadt.de/ze/ianus/welcome.htm) -- (both Germany).)

Contact: Jackie Cabasso, World Court Project / Western States Legal Foundation, 1440 Broadway, #500, Oakland, CA 94612; telephone 510-839-5877; fax 510-839-5397; e-mail wslf@igc.apc.org.

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