Wisconsin | July 23, 2023

If you would have asked 10 year-old, 15 year-old, even 19 year-old Jasmine what she would be doing after college, she would have laughed in your face if you said fighting to get rid of nuclear weapons. Growing up, nuclear weapons were never on my radar. Sure, I think I passively knew that they were really bad weapons, but my knowledge and care stopped there. 

It wasn’t until I landed an internship Sophomore year of college with Outrider Foundation that I was exposed to the immense horrors caused by nuclear weapons -- even without being used -- while writing content for the website. I continued to work at Outrider through college graduation. While writing a post about the third atom bomb that was planned to be dropped on Japan, I first learned about the hidden role of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the dawn of the nuclear age and decided I wanted to educate the public about the harms of nuclear weapons, and the need for nuclear abolition.

Still a bit unsure about what to do after college graduation and intrigued by pursuing an academic degree focused on nuclear weapons, I applied to the WMD Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies master’s program at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). I had hoped to deepen my knowledge on the consequences of nuclear weapons and learn skills to develop policies to reduce these threats. However, the reality of my time at MIIS was much more bleak. Racism, sexism and harassment aside, the program appeared to me to be little more than a funnel into three and four letter federal agencies like the FBI, CIA, and NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration). Thankfully I was still working with Outrider and had an outlet to continue learning about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, and to remind me that there was more to the nuclear field than careers that maintained the unjust and dangerous nuclear status quo.

As I continued to write content for the Outrider website, I was introduced to the eye-opening, groundbreaking work of Mary Olson and the gendered impacts of radiation exposure. I was writing a post about the health impacts of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when I came across Mary’s seminal paper that was a key factor in the creation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the first treaty to completely ban nuclear weapons (we’ll go back to that later). I distinctly remember feeling immensely impacted learning about how women, young girls and the elderly are extremely vulnerable to radiation exposure when compared to young adult men, who it turns out are used as the basis for radiation safety standards, to this day. These insights resulted in further cementing my determination to educate the public on all the harms of nuclear weapons that have been intentionally left out of conversations on these weapons of mass death. 

Flash forward four years, and I’m now a dedicated nuclear weapons abolitionist. I’ve gone through a plethora of experiences that revealed to me precisely what I did not want to do with my career -- anything that required me to be just another cog in the nuclear death machine. When I look back, I credit Outrider -- specifically the wonderful Tara Drozdenko, who’s now at Union of Concerned Scientists -- and Mary Olson for helping to open my eyes to the truth about nuclear weapons, and helping to guide me toward a path that allows me to educate and motivate others to do the same.

What I’ve noticed as I’ve facilitated webinars, trainings, guest lectures and such, is that learning about the disproportionate gendered impacts of radiation exposure often leaves a big imprint on people. Mary’s research has provided accessible, impactful analysis that I have personally witnessed influence people to learn more about nuclear weapons, and take action to abolish them. And, as Mary has shared with me, this influence made its way deep into the halls of the United Nations, where desire for a humanitarian nuclear disarmament treaty was growing.

Knowledge is Power

Earlier, I mentioned Mary’s analysis and expertise on the gendered biological impacts of radiation exposure played a key role in the creation of the TPNW, the first ever nuclear ban treaty. Well, for anti-nuclear activists, civil society members, and non-nuclear weapons states, Mary’s research couldn’t have come at a better time. By 2010, 40 years after the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) entered into force in 1970, non-nuclear weapons states, and human rights activists around the world were frustrated with the nuclear weapons states for making very little progress on their commitments under Article VI of the NPT to work to disarm. Much like a promise, couched in “someday,’’ getting rid of nuclear weapons remained in some distant realm--not in our lifetime.

Two years prior, in 2008, Mary Olson was recruited by  Civil Society nuclear abolition activists at the United Nations  to join a campaign to prepare for the 2010 NPT Review Conference at UN headquarters in New York. The goal was to include civil society  organizations working on nuclear energy  and uranium-impacted communities, including those in the USA, Australia, and elsewhere, to share their expertise and perspectives  at the 2010 NPT Review Conference. Indigenous communities were coming forward to share their stories, of all kinds, in preparation for the 2010 NPT review. The  effort was so impactful that  Mary was tapped as referee and editor for  19 co-authors from around the world to publish a paper that centered on the impact of uranium and its radiation on traditional Indigenous communities, and Article IV of the NPT which condemns these communities since Article IV provides the faustian bargain of supporting nations who will forgo  weaponization of fission in exchange for UN support of “peaceful” fission (nuclear energy) which is also deadly to the uranium communities.

In 2010 the paper turned into a presentation for the UN General Assembly during the 2010 NPT Review Conference. A member of the Australian Parliament was originally supposed to present their findings, but they had to back out at the last minute, leaving Mary -- the backup presenter -- to take the stage as the first civil society person  ever to give a powerpoint presentation to the General Assembly. The co-authors put together incredibly beautiful slides featuring the uranium impacted communities and their active, colorful opposition to radiation exposure. 

The 2010 presentation left an immense impact on its audience. Because so many non-nuclear weapons states were fed up with the status quo of the nuclear powers doing what they pleased and not sticking to their commitments, the presentation helped win support for a strategy for  states to push for humanitarian language to be included in the 2010 NPT Review Conference report. 

The bubbling interest in establishing a humanitarian framework for nuclear disarmament continued to grow in the years that followed. From 2013 to 2014, diplomats and civil society members put together a series of conferences hosted in Oslo, Norway, Nayarit, Mexico, and Vienna, Austria focused on the short- and long-term humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. 

During this time, Mary was conducting her independent analysis on A-bomb survivor data and writing her initial  paper on the gendered biological impacts of radiation exposure. Sometime between the first and second Humanitarian Impact Conferences, someone involved in the Conferences discovered her paper, and invited her to the third conference in Vienna. When Mary was invited, she was told she would have only 10 minutes, and her host requested that she spend half the time on her findings, but first to cover a text-book case of the medical impact of using a nuclear weapon on human beings. Olson first tried to decline and refer the host to others, but he persisted. When faced with such a short time, Olson realized that she needed to create a visual language to convey her findings. She commissioned a set of silhouette figures: babies, children (male and female) and men and women -- she later requested elder figures too.  Her powerpoint for her talk at the Vienna 2014 conference reads like a comic book--one can understand her findings without knowing any math, or even knowing English. The findings are simple, and so was her presentation.

Her presentation slides and video of her talk are available.  

These Humanitarian Impact Conferences laid the groundwork for advanced nuclear disarmament discussions, most importantly through the Conferences’ outcome in the form of the Humanitarian Initiative. It was this Initiative that was expanded into a treaty proposal for the UN General Assembly to vote on in 2016 on whether or not to write an actual treaty  that would implement nuclear disarmament. The vote passed, and after months of negotiations, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was presented to the UN General Assembly to vote on adoption on July 17, 2017. The TPNW came into force on January 21, 2021 when the 50th nation ratified it -- but that was just the beginning of the journey.

In 2016, just after the UN General Assembly voted to proceed to draft the Treaty, Mary met with an ambassador in Brussels who informed her that her research and her paper were crucial in helping to pave the way for the TPNW. Previously, it was thought that nuclear weapons had a completely indiscriminate nature, meaning they impacted everyone everywhere equally. Therefore, it was nearly impossible to make the case for the humanitarian impacts of these weapons themselves (as contrasted with the aftermath of use) as a legal basis for their prohibition, like the extremely successful 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which completely banned landmines, horrific weapons that had been killing civilians for decades after they were planted in conflict zones like Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War and Europe in WWI and WWII. The Treaty on Mines had created a sort of template for how to bring a weapon that is  under the jurisdiction of the Security Council and military law, also into the jurisdiction of the General Assembly and the humanitarian law it administers. The template is that there is a disproportionate impact by the weapon on non-combatantants, children, women and elders--and through time. Nuclear weapons appeared only to be equal-opportunity in death and destruction.

However, Mary’s paper solved that problem. She re-analyzed data from the famous Lifespan Study (LSS) began in 1950 focused on the A-bomb survivors. The research question   focuses only on the radiation from the initial flash of gamma and neutrons from the detonation of the weapon itself.  The Lifespan study was  the long-term tracking health impacts of that immediate exposure in August 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through her re-analysis, Mary found that women, young girls, and the elderly are all more vulnerable to the harms of radiation exposure than their male counterparts. Her findings are based on cancer which may arrive decades after the event that triggered it--thus, harm through time is part of this equation. 

These monumental findings fit the template for humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, and created the basis for creating a nuclear disarmament treaty under humanitarian law, like the Mine Ban Treaty, and not military law like the NPT is. This was huge, because it meant that the TPNW, if adopted and entered into force, would be under control of the UN General Assembly, where each nation has one vote and there is no veto power and everyone has  an equal say in matters. 

This is important because if the TPNW were written in accordance with military law, it would have been voted upon by the Security Council, where it would have inevitably failed considering the makeup of the Council, where the five permanent member states -- the U.s., Russia, France, China, and the U.K. -- are all nuclear armed. However, since the TPNW, with the help of Mary’s research, was written in accordance with humanitarian law, it meant the General Assembly -- where non-nuclear weapons states who were long frustrated with the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament had as much of a voice as the Security Council Members -- was responsible for voting on the adoption of such a treaty. Therefore, when it came time to vote on adopting the now fully-formed TPNW in July 2017, 122 nations voted to adopt this landmark treaty, officially laying the groundwork to build a new world, free from the threat of nuclear weapons.

The Power of the People Can Build A Whole New World 

Mary’s story highlights the dire need for more diverse perspectives in the nuclear community, because it’s this diversity that fosters innovation for a more just and liberated world. Not only did Mary’s paper provide a new framing for a nuclear ban treaty to actually succeed in a system largely controlled by nuclear powers -- it also brought much-needed attention to the invisible harm being inflicted on women, young girls, and the elderly. This data allows us to add our voices to the urgent calls to better understand the complexities of radiation so we can create more effective regulations to safeguard the population against preventable exposure. 

As someone working in the nuclear abolition field, it's been extremely heartening to see the international community rallying together to universalize the TPNW and build a just, equitable, sustainable, abundant, liberated world free from nuclear weapons. 

However, it’s been equally frustrating to witness the complete invisibility of this treaty in the Western world, especially here in the U.S. Nine out of ten people I speak to have no idea such a treaty even exists. The propaganda campaign by the nuclear powers to pretend as if the TPNW never happened and doesn’t exist, and then to discredit it as naive or harmful to the nonproliferation regime (when it’s their own actions that threaten the nonproliferation regime). This isn’t done out of genuine concern for the state of nuclear nonproliferation affairs, but out of fear of the future of the nuclear status quo that allows nuclear powers carte blanche to do as they please and thwart all responsibility. Avoiding the existence of the TPNW is no longer an option.

Today, the  world hasn’t been brought this close to the brink of nuclear conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis (see the Doomsday Clock). So it’s absolutely terrifying that the TPNW is left out of the majority of conversations on nuclear weapons, from the streets to the nuclear community to the halls of power. While the Treaty can definitely be improved in some aspects, it’s a more than efficient starting point to pick up where the NPT left off and take meaningful steps toward nuclear abolition.

All our efforts should have the end goal of universalizing the TPNW and creating a comprehensive nuclear abolition regime. We cannot afford to wait for someone else to do the work for us -- we have to all work together to spread the word about the dangers of nuclear weapons, and uplift the TPNW as a mechanism for building a new, just, equitable, sustainable, abundant, liberated world. The current systems of oppression are reinforced by the existence of nuclear weapons, which sit at the center of the military industrial complex that pays the salaries of many of the leaders meant to protect us to prioritize profit  and power over us, the people.

Mary’s paper presented another, perhaps more subtle message, to its readers. The findings that illustrated the disproportionate harms endured by children, women and the elderly also reminded us of the importance of centering the most vulnerable among us when shaping policy. When we don’t, so many are silently tagged as “expendable” and left behind to suffer and die. This doesn’t work for any species when those who are disproportionately harmed are key to reproduction and health.

When we center the most vulnerable among us, we find that the Reference Man used to determine what is considered an “ acceptable” dose of radiation exposure is completely useless for anyone who isn’t a young, fit, white male of military age, and that a Reference Girl would be better fit to establish a more effective radiation regulatory model. When we center the most vulnerable among us, we get the TPNW, a Treaty that was created with significant input from impacted communities, which opened the door for provisions on environmental remediation and victims assistance for impact communities. 

The future is nuclear-free; we know this since nuclear weapons have the potential to end life--denying everyone the future. Therefore the future is a universal TPNW. The future is Reference Girl and centering the most vulnerable. Mary, the Gender and Radiation Impact Project, and so many other intelligent, passionate, caring individuals have been working tirelessly for years to usher in this future. 

This is a call for you to join us, to not just imagine this world, but to build it with us. 

Jasmine Owens is a nuclear weapons abolitionist writer, educator, and organizer. Her work and her passions focus on centering our collective humanity in the fight for a more just and equitable world, starting with the abolition of nuclear weapons.

To read more from Jasmine, check out her recent piece on needed distinctions between nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.