- End of September (around 30th): Peace-meeting in Aubagne, France. Workshops, Target X. Contact kathrin@connan.biz

- 20-22nd of October: "Think outside the bomb"-conference in Santa Barbara, USA. "Think outside the bomb" is a national network in the US working for
nuclear disarmament. This is a good opportunity for NWIP to make contacts with other anti-nuclear weapon groups in the U.S. for future co-operation
and perhaps do some workshops on the conference combined with dialouges with american students. (Idea) Contact thomas_silfverberg@hotmail.com or mail
Tony Guzman at tonyg@citizenalert.org directly, one of the co-ordinators for "Think outside the bomb". Check out their web-page at www.thinkoutsidethebomb.org

- End of October: delegation with IPPNW doctors and students to Iran for dialogue with decision-makers. Contact Hans.Levander@slmk.org

- End of October (other date might be possible): Possible participation in blockade at Faslane naval base in Scotland combined with dialogues/workshops with students and/or parliament members on U.K. Tridents. (Planning stage). Contact wenjing_tao@hotmail.com and check out web-page at www.faslane365.org

- 27-29th of October: MedSin (UK branch of IFMSA) conference in Bristol, UK. Workshops etc. (Planning stage). Contact Kiran at kccase00@hotmail.com and
check out their web-page at www.bris.ac.uk/depts/union/medsinconference/index.html

- December: delegation with IPPNW doctors to India/Pakistan for dialogue with decision-makers. (Planning stage). Contact Ali Khan Afridi (for email
adress mail thomas_silfverberg@hotmail.com)

- Next year: NWIP delegation to Archangelsk, Russia for dialogues with students. (Planning stage) Contact thomas_silfverberg@hotmail.com

- April/May: IPPNW European Student Meeting in Porto, Portugal

- Possibly next year: NWIP delegation to China and Japan for dialogues with students. (Idea) Contact wenjing_tao@hotmail.com or janheumann@gmx.de

- Upcoming: Possible future NWIP delegation to Israel. Contact Lucia at lucifan82@libero.it or Imke at imke_r@yahoo.de

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The Future of the NWIP
by Caecilie Buhmann

In the spring of 2001 Dr. Hans Levander presented his worldview to the students attending the IPPNW  European Student Meeting. It was a worldview seen through the eyes of a physician. Trying to diagnose the illness of our world and providing proper treatments. The world Dr. Levander presented to us is a world that cannot be saved – cannot be cured - solely by patching a wound. From a Physicians point of view we need to work in a preventative mode. When you want to influence the policies and events of tomorrow you need to think of the coming generation. This is the future generation, which will take over the world of today. The generation that might make the same mistakes that were made yesterday – or who might achieve change and find solutions. You need to talk to youth and you need to empower youth to make such changes…

The Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project is in essence about tomorrow. It is about lessons learned and new solutions. Over the course of the years we have established the 3 main pillars of the project. Namely, to make students ask questions, to provide them a path through the jungle of opinions, news and facts and to empower them to make a change.

Our first goal is to make students ask questions about the world we live in. Why? How? Who? – But not only that, we want to see the students question what they see and hear. Question the dogma of international relations, the policies of their countries and the limitations of the medical profession – and to form their own informed opinions. We do so by travelling to nuclear weapon states all over the world and meet with students in non-confrontational dialogue. We have been forced to make changes to the model conceived by the Oxford Research Group so that their ideas can accommodate our audience and the context in which we work,but the ideas are still fundamentally the same. We try to encourage discussion between students and do not lecture. We seek to bridge differences and to signal that all views are important. To change another person’s view, you need to be ready to change your own.

Over time we have found that there is a great demand for raising awareness of disarmament issues and linking health science with security policies. We have therefore introduced workshop modules, which fit the atmosphere, circumstances and audience at international conferences.

Finally, it is terrifyingly clear to us that change in methods and means of communication are needed to reach the next generation. We are no longer dealing with people who remember the Cold War. We are dealing with highly educated university students who are bombarded with images and information daily from the Internet and news networks. We are dealing with a generation who have an attention span of 2 minutes before they move on to the next source of entertainment. We are dealing with a highly critical and social responsible generation who face thousands of competing demands for their time and work. We have therefore started exploring alternative methods of training. We do not want to be likened to self-important students presenting their academic papers for general acknowledgment. We do not want to be likened to professors who talk endlessly about distant topics in the auditoriums and we do not want to be likened to a generation of idealistic peaceniks from the past – the generation of our parents who talked and talked and ended up in executive positions.

The message we need to convey through our training and promotion materials, our presence and the Internet is that we are colleagues and concerned students with a social conscience who party and worry about exams and friends and parents. The only difference between the average university student, and us is that we recognize our responsibility to make change. We do not just listen to the horrors of the world. We act, we travel, we make friends and we learn in the process – and most importantly, it is fun, thought-provoking and each of us leave our mark in the process.

Our second goal is to provide students with a framework or a red line to follow through the meshwork and confusing constant stream of information they are faced with when trying to learn about nuclear warfare and disarmament. We do not try to educate scholars. It would take a whole Ph.d. and more to become an expert in missile defences, the non-proliferation regime or the threats of nuclear terrorism. But we do try to provide the students with a basic knowledge and an overview of what the topics are. We do try to put disarmament into a broader context, provide solutions and point the students in the directions they themselves can seek more information and shape their own view of the world.

We do so by providing “crash courses in disarmament” for student activists during delegations and conferences. By providing reference lists, fact sheets and information material and by linking the students with physicians of IPPNW and other resource persons who can help them in their quest to understand the world they live in. We work with the concepts of Peace Through Health and try to provide a comprehensive broad view of the world where health, peace, economy, development and environment are interrelated and not seen as separate entities. And most importantly we devote a large part of our training and writing to solutions and the battles the disarmament movement have won.

Our third goal is by far the most challenging. How do you empower students to take the action into their own hands? How do you empower students to find their own solutions? How do you empower students to take an individual and collective responsibility for making a change?

Over the 3 years the project has existed we have started, restarted and facilitated student networks in the nuclear weapon states. Again and again we see connections made being disrupted by personal disagreement, a feeling of hopelessness and inability to face the challenges ahead and simply the lack of time due to a demanding school schedule.

As time has passed the empowerment component of the project has started to take more and more of our time and be devoted more and more of our energy. We have produced materials on how to get projects started, we have strategic and motivational meetings with the students when we go on delegations and we do our best to facilitate discussions on the Internet and invite student from nuclear weapon states to join us on delegations.

But we haven’t found a perfect solution yet. We hope to keep improving in this area and believe that devoting more time for team-building and hands-on work during delegations, more time for strategies, finding funding for students from nuclear weapon states to join international delegations, meeting more regularly with the whole group and making better links between local physicians and students will be a first step on the way. We try to incorporate creative solutions in our work, to always look for alternative methods of building confidence and building a strong sense of community between students from all parts of the world.

The project has reached a crossroads. It has proved to be a valid and important component in the work of IPPNW and a powerful way to renew and at the same time sustain IPPNW and disarmament work. We have embarked on a process of encouraging new leadership of the project. With new leadership and new ideas the project can hopefully prove itself to deserve a permanent place in IPPNW and the quest for disarmament.

The lessons we have learned and the steps we have taken to improve the project are many. Some of the challenges we face in the coming phase of the project is not only to assure continuity and sustainability, but also to include students from other fields in our work, to reach out to other students than those with a background in health and to work not only with the generation of tomorrow, but also with that of today – decision-makers, physicians and other peace activists.

Too often I have seen students loose courage when faced with thick dry books about treaties or dooms-day visions of tomorrow. We need to change that. We do not believe it is impossible. We do not believe we are helpless. We believe in tomorrow and in the change students can bring. We believe in the fight for a new century, a healthier world and a new security built on confidence, trust, dependence and creative solutions.
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