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Civil Society Statement on Gender and Intersectionality to the 2024 NPT Preparatory Committee

23 July 2024

This statement was written and delivered by Ray Acheson, Director of Reaching Critical Will of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), to the Second Session of the Preparatory Committee for the Eleventh Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The statement was endorsed by an additional 16 civil society organisations.

For many years, WILPF has been articulating the ways that gender is relevant to nuclear weapons. We will keep talking about this for as long as it takes policies to change, but it’s also important to move beyond the limited engagement with gender that has so far been allowed in draft outcome documents and summaries of meetings. What we’ve achieved so far in the NPT space is not sufficient—not in terms of transforming understanding what gender considerations bring to the table, and definitely not in terms of achieving nuclear disarmament.

One way that gender is relevant for understanding nuclear weapons is the harm these weapons cause. The detonation of a nuclear weapon can have different impacts on people depending on gender. So far, research has mostly focused on the impacts of ionizing radiation on women and girls. But fire and blast of a nuclear weapon detonation also impact people differently, depending on how a society is structured. Impacts can differ based on how and where people live, who is responsible for childcare, who is at home and work, what foods are prepared and eaten, etc. The use of nuclear weapons would also have social and economic impacts through the destruction of cities, communities, and ecologies. These can affect people differently based on existing discrimination and oppression based on gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, socioeconomic status, and more. Understanding this is important not to prepare for the use of nuclear weapons, but to prevent it from ever happening again.

The impacts of nuclear weapons are also racialised. The nine nuclear-armed states have primarily carried out nuclear weapon testing on the lands, water, and bodies of Indigenous Peoples. Settler states and colonial governments have mined uranium for nuclear weapons primarily on Indigenous lands, oftentimes employing Indigenous workers without proper protection or information. Nuclear weapon development and radioactive waste storage are mostly imposed on Indigenous communities without proper consent.

This brings us to another way gender relates to nuclear weapons: diversity in discussions and decision-making. Women, non-binary and gender non-conforming, and LGBTQ+ people have been deliberately silenced in nuclear policy discussions. So too have the voices and experiences of those most affected by nuclear weapons. People who have been historically marginalised in nuclear policymaking need to be centred now, as it’s very clear that the “traditional” approaches have led us further and further away from a world free of nuclear weapons.

Real diversity is not just about adding bodies to meeting rooms, but also about creating space for non-dominant ideas, imaginations, and perspectives to inspire concrete changes in policy and practice. Disarmament work needs people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, races, classes, abilities, backgrounds, and experiences. Only by including people who are impacted in different ways from nuclear weapons, and from the structures of power, violence, and militarism that sustain these weapons, can we have any hope of making real change.

Nuclear disarmament needs to be decolonial. It needs to centre perspectives of the Indigenous communities harmed by nuclear weapons and have Land Back struggles, and Land, Water, and Forest protection at its core. Affected peoples from the Pacific, Australia, US, Canada, Namibia, Kazakhstan, and other sites of uranium extraction, nuclear testing, and radioactive waste imposition should lead policymaking on nuclear weapons.

We also need to have a serious discussion about how socially constructed norms about gender impact the approach that diplomats and government officials take to nuclear weapons. Gender norms perpetuate a binary social construction of masculinity, which is treated as powerful, strong, and rational; and femininity, which is treated as weak, naïve, and irrational. These kinds of gender norms have propelled a narrative that the willingness to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons is a sign of masculine strength and power. And these gender norms also assert that those who focus on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, or call out deterrence theory for the myth that it is, or work for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons, are emotional and inexperienced.

This phenomenon of gender norms guiding policy has not been adequately discussed or addressed in the NPT context, even though NPT meetings are full of examples of gendered talk about “deterrence theory” and “strategic stability,” and are also full of examples of the gaslighting and victim blaming used to ridicule and ignore those who demand disarmament.

We’re facing a time when nuclear threats are at all-time frequency, when bombs are being shared with more and more states, when modernisation programmes are enriching the pockets of war profiteers while bankrupting societies. The so-called leaders of the most heavily militarised states in the world are trashing the arms control agreements they made and refusing to make new ones, thumping their chests at each other as if they’re a group of drunk men in a bar, ready to burn the place down just to prove that they are the manliest. If it hasn’t been clear before, now is the time for a different approach to disarmament diplomacy.

We recommend the following actions be undertaken during this NPT review cycle:

  • NPT states parties need to move beyond vague calls for increasing the participation of women to concrete discussions about how gendered ideas and norms have precluded disarmament—and how to change this. Any outcome from this NPT review cycle should build upon past agreed language to acknowledge the gendered nature of nuclear weapon discourse and theory and to begin unpacking and un-privileging the current dominant perspectives.

  • States and organisations should ensure gender diversity on their delegations to NPT meetings. In this context, they need to look beyond the gender binary and take an intersectional approach to participation. In relation to this, language in statements and outcome documents should reflect the need for gender diversity, not just the equal representation of the men-women binary. For example, states should call for participation of people of all genders, rather than just men and women.

  • States should also work to ensure that survivors and those impacted by nuclear weapon production, testing, and use are included in discussions and in the creation of outcome documents. Delegations should consider funding sponsorship programmes and other measures to increase accessibility and inclusivity to ensure diversity in NPT meetings.

  • Delegations should engage with and support researchers—especially those from affected communities—focused on diversifying knowledge about impacts of nuclear weapons, including ionizing radiation but also other harms caused by nuclear weapons production, testing, and use. They should also amplify and implement recommendations related to addressing harms caused by nuclear weapons, including through reparations and restorative justice processes.

The statement is endorsed by the following organisations:

Alianza por el Desarme Nuclear
Article 36
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)
ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand
ICAN France
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)
Mines Action Canada
Nuclear Truth Project
Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG)
Peace Action New York State
Peace Boat
Peace Boat US
Peace Movement Aotearoa
Project Ploughshares
Secure Scotland
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)

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