The Nuclear Weapons Inheritance project was founded at the European Student Congress for IPPNW in the spring of 2001 in Sweden. The project was proposed by Dr. Hans Levander from SLMK and a group of about 10 students decided to follow up on Dr. Levander’s ideas of how to engage youth in disarmament work as an integrated part of reaching out to university students in nuclear weapon states.

 
Without prior experience, the first delegation of students went to Moscow to participate in an IPPNW Dialogues with Decision-Makers seminar. There we also had the chance to meet with Russian medical students for an afternoon. As a logical result of our limited experience with dialogues, the first attempt was an experiment. We had no knowledge of other projects reaching out to students through the dialogue method to raise awareness of sensitive political issues. In hindsight the whole first year of the project was a quest for slowly finding steady ground under our feet and through failure and success to develop the method we use today.

 
We soon became aware of the challenge awaiting us not only making contact with students in nuclear weapon states but even more so to inspire and motivate them to join the project and keep disarmament activities going in their countries on a regular basis despite lack of international presence. In the fall 2001 the group from Sweden had shrunk to only 4 students – Mary-Grace Hagan from the US, John Henriksson and Richard Fristedt from Sweden and myself, Caecilie Buhmann from Denmark. But the trip to Russia and invitations from IPPNW affiliates in France and the UK kept our spirits high. We had embarked on what has since then turned out to be a major project with huge potential and huge challenges. We were not ready to give up so easily. So in November 2001 we departed for France where we met with medical students at Université Paris IV on the East bank of the Seine. The participants were few and all discussions took place in French. I dare say that we ourselves felt at a disadvantage as the discussions took place in a foreign language that we hardly understood and thereby had no influence on. Afterwards we were disappointed. It had been so hard to make the arrangements and make the contacts and we had had such high expectations and then it was all over in less than 3 hours! But now after having seen the project develop I believe that the dialogue in Paris was crucial. It made it very clear to us how language difficulties, minimum turn-up of participants and proper preparations from the international team are crucial for a dialogue to be a success.

 
Shortly after, we went to London and participated in Dialogues with Decision-Makers and met with local medical students there. This allowed us to use dialogue technique as a tool again and we formed contacts that could be expanded in the UK with as well physicians as students. Today, MedAct who arranged the dialogues and MedSIN-UK students are our main contacts in England. In the spring 2002 – only few weeks before the IPPNW World Congress in Washington DC we travelled to South Asia. What had started as vague contacts to IPPNW physicians and students from IFMSA (International Federation of Medical Students Associations’) had turned out to be truly dedicated people who had arranged a marathon trip for us crossing forth and back between India, Pakistan and the Middle East. At that time relations between India and Pakistan were worse than they had been for years and all borders and air travel between the two countries was closed. We started on a warm day in Delhi from where we travelled by train to Ludhiana in Punjab. The Indian Doctors for Peace and Development had invited us to be speakers at their annual conference on peace and they promised us that several students would be present. We got separated from the physicians travelling with us on the train and I still vividly remember the chaos we were met by when arriving in Punjab. Hundreds of people moving in all directions, sellers shouting to get people’s attention, donkeys, horses, dogs, cats, rats… and us. Four western medical students, lost without the physicians who were herded towards a top class hotel. We were met by a group of students from Ludhiana and they transported us to a hostel on the university campus. We had dinner with the local students in the University canteen and over the course of the evening we made friends with these wonderful complete strangers who took such good care of us.

 
The next day we were the last event of a long day full of enlightened speakers – and we were nervous. There were more than 50 students from all of North India. Some even came from as far south as Hyderabad and they expected something good from us. How would the discussions go? Would we be able to make a point or would we be drowned in pro-nuclear protests? Would the physicians stay in the background and let the students speak? Would the students interact with us or leave us to speak to ourselves with a tired and disinterested audience? The questions were endless and we were at our wits end.

 
… And then it all turned out to be an outstanding success. The discussion went on forever. The physicians joined curious to see what happened. We didn’t agree on all points, but we did manage to introduce new perspectives on disarmament into the student world. We started the session by asking the students to raise their hand if they felt India needed nuclear weapons – and they all did. After the session many of the students joined us at the reception and said we had changed their views on nuclear weapons. They wanted to join IPPNW and the Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project. Shyam Mohan from Hyderabad went to the IPPNW World Congress in Washington DC and he together with friends and colleagues since then became spearheads of the NWIP in India.

 
Even though we were only 30 km away from the border with Pakistan we had to travel back to Delhi the next day. From there we caught the plane to Dubai in the Middle East and took another plane to Karachi. And then we were in Pakistan! We were met in the airport by local students and driven to their homes. It was very late – way past midnight – and we were exhausted after more than a full day’s travel. But we were not supposed to sleep. Instead we were informed that we would meet with 200 students at Ziauddin Medical College the next day. There, a general from the Pakistani army would join us and the session would be attended by the press! So as you can imagine we had a lot to do that night before we felt ready to face the crowds. The next day was the first of many to come over the next 3 years. We talked to crowds of curious students, attended formal meetings with deans, physicians, press and other important supporters of the local medical students and we had our first meeting with a truly large crowd. Shortly after we returned to Europe we all met again at the IPPNW World Congress. We held a workshop on disarmament and wrapped up the first phase of the project. We had given ourselves a year to decide whether the project had potential enough to continue and we agreed that it did.

 
It had been a year full of lessons. We had started to grasp how time-consuming and challenging it was to make and sustain student contacts in nuclear weapon states. We had learned much about disarmament and we had gradually acquired skills in debating and handling larger audiences, even though we still had much to learn. We had started what is today an extensive network of student activists in nuclear weapon states.

 
In April 2001 there were no students actively involved in disarmament in any of the nuclear weapon states. When we met in Washington there were students from Pakistan, UK, France, Russia and India and we had started to get contacts in the US. We decided that we needed to focus more on capacity building within the international as well as the national groups. We needed training, more experience and consolidation of contacts. But the method was useful. The aims of the project were realistic and necessary to address and we believed in our vision. With that we prepared ourselves for the next two years. Two years with increasing activities, many delegations and the expansion of our group. Two years which will be the focus of this report as we are preparing ourselves for another two-year phase after the IPPNW World Congress in Beijing.