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With a focus on the legacy of nuclear testing and climate change, the World Council of Churches (WCC) is planning a pilgrimage visit to the Marshall Islands on 16-24 November.

World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay met with Melissa Parke, the new executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

For the past 75 years, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has announced how close it believes the world is to a nuclear attack. On 24 January, it has announced that we are only 90 seconds to midnight.

A group of bikers from the Bike for Peace visited the World Council of Churches on 30 August as part of a commemoration in the Place de Nations. 

In a 27 January webcast hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC), speakers spoke candidly about encouraging signs and discouraging obstacles along the path to a nuclear weapons-free world.

On 20 September at the United Nations in New York, a treaty to ban nuclear weapons was formally opened for signature. At the time of writing, some 49 states have signed.

When Stephen Sidorak speaks about “A Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace to Japan on a Matter of Life and Death” his voice rings with passion, commitment and regret along with a yearning that nuclear weapons must never be used in anger again.

Seventy years after nuclear fireballs exploded over two Japanese cities, an ecumenical group of pilgrims has come to Hiroshima to listen to those who survived and renew the struggle against their own countries’ continued reliance on nuclear weapons.

Four weeks of negotiations on nuclear weapons came to a close on Friday 22 May, as the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ended without a formal agreement. Despite the outcome, a bright new prospect towards a world without nuclear weapons has emerged in the form of a Humanitarian Pledge, now endorsed by 107 states, which promises “to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.

The Chernobyl disaster of 25 years ago remains a human and environmental tragedy so severe the consequences will continue for centuries. Its anniversary this week is especially timely given the current emergency in Japan which echoes some of Chernobyl’s hard lessons. To learn them would honour those who suffer from the past and could save lives in the future.