GENEVA: Three Nobel Peace Prize-winning groups campaigning to eliminate nuclear weapons joined forces on Monday to urge the US and Russian presidents to meet and agree on significant denuclearisation.

The joint appeal came from Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo, which won last year’s Nobel; 2017 laureate the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN); and the 1985 winner, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

They sent a joint letter to the two leaders, ICAN said in a statement on Monday. “At this moment of extreme nuclear danger, we call on you to take urgent steps to de-escalate tensions and to engage in meaningful negotiations for nuclear disarmament,” they wrote to US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The two countries between them control 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons. The groups said they were prompted to write their letter following Trump’s suggestion after returning to power in January that he wanted the world to “denuclearise”, and the Kremlin’s expressed openness to the idea.

“The current climate surrounding nuclear weapons is the most volatile in decades,” they said, warning of potential “catastrophic consequences for all humankind”. The Nobel laureates called in their letter on the two leaders to follow the example set by their predecessors Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2025