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ICAN, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.
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​Dr. Carmen Wunderlich
22.1.2026

On 22 January 2026, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will mark the fifth anniversary of its entry into force. Although more than half of the world’s countries now support the treaty, with 75 ratifications and 25 signatories as of January 2026, some critics doubt that the occasion is a moment for fireworks. No nuclear warheads have been dismantled as a clearly demonstrable direct result, and no nuclear-armed state has joined the treaty. At a time when nuclear threats have once again become politically expedient, global nuclear arsenals are growing, and some nations are reconsidering their non-nuclear status, the very idea of genuine disarmament seems, to many, like naïve folly. 

Despite persistent criticism, the TPNW remains a significant effort, whose impact extends far beyond its legal status. Its deeper transformative potential lies in a deliberate, systemic effort to reconfigure the global nuclear order by centering the health and humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons while addressing three intersecting axes of exclusion: gender, generation, and geography. These are not mere categories of analysis. They are structural vectors of power that have long shaped who speaks, who is heard, and whose suffering counts in nuclear governance. This quiet but profound epistemic and structural reconfiguration of the global nuclear order challenges not only the legitimacy of nuclear weapons, but also the very foundations of who gets to define security, whose knowledge matters, and who decides how nuclear risks are allocated.

​​Consider gender: Throughout the nuclear ages, the discourse of nuclear deterrence has been based on deeply gendered notions of strength, rationality, and control, while the gendered consequences of nuclear weapons use and testing, such as the higher risk of radiation-induced cancer for women and girls, the risk of miscarriages, stillbirth, and harm to unborn children as well as social traumata and the burden of care placed on women in affected communities, remained peripheral to strategic discourse. Feminist activists, humanitarian organizations, and affected communities used the Humanitarian Initiative and the TPNW negotiations to push these silenced dimensions to the center, calling for a more inclusive representation of women and marginalized communities and insisting that nuclear governance take gender-specific harms into account. The preamble to the Treaty explicitly recognizes the disproportionate impact of nuclear weapons on women and girls, and highlights the importance of women’s participation in nuclear disarmament. Its provisions mandate gender-sensitive victim assistance, including medical care, rehabilitation, psychological support, and social and economic inclusion (Article 6 of the TPNW), thereby anchoring gender justice at the core of the regime rather than at its margins.

Generations:  Ultimately, the ban movement rests on intergenerational shoulders: the hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have played a pivotal role in advocating for the TPNW, sharing their personal experiences and testimonies to raise awareness about the devastating humanitarian consequences of nuclear use and to push for abolition. Likewise, nuclear test survivors have been crucial in the first three Meetings of States Parties (MSP), amplifying marginalized voices from test sites worldwide.  But the ban movement also mobilized a cohort of young people who question the inevitability of nuclear deterrence as a pillar of international order. Youth networks, often intersecting with broader climate and justice movements, foreground a framing of nuclear weapons in terms of the planetary legacy current decision-makers will leave behind. The TPNW itself created vital spaces for intergenerational dialogue, fostering mutual learning and building collective momentum across generations. A focus on transmitting intergenerational memory is also reflected in the Treaty’s preamble, which emphasizes the need for disarmament education to deepened awareness of nuclear risks for both current and future generations. The Treaty further acknowledges the transgenerational dimension of nuclear use and testing, whose human, environmental, and socioeconomic impacts often extend far beyond the first generation of survivors. Radiation exposure triggers long-term genetic and health effects, such as developmental disorders, genetic diseases, and premature ageing, that can also affect descendants. In many communities, these physical harms intertwine with social stigma and economic marginalization, perpetuating trauma across generations. The TPNW’s humanitarian provisions require that assistance be delivered “without discrimination” and in ways responsive to the particular vulnerabilities of different age groups, acknowledging, for instance, that children are especially susceptible to radiation exposure, while older persons may face compounded health and mobility challenges. To address these needs, TPNW states parties are advancing an international trust fund for victim assistance and environmental remediation, with establishment targeted at the first Review Conference at the end of 2026.

Geography completes the triad and exposes how deeply the nuclear order has been entangled with colonial and postcolonial hierarchies. The Humanitarian Initiative and the TPNW drew much of their momentum from states and communities whose lands and bodies have borne the material and physical consequences of nuclear testing, uranium mining and milling, or radioactive waste disposal – typically without consent, reparation, or meaningful influence over decision-making. Small island states in the Caribbean and Pacific, African and Latin American nations, Indigenous communities, as well as downwinders in North America and Europe used the treaty process to reclaim voice and agency in nuclear governance, insisting that their lived experiences of harm are not peripheral, but foundational to defining security and hence, should be taken into consideration as matter of nuclear justice. For these actors, the TPNW is not merely a legal instrument; it is also a political project of decolonizing nuclear order and contesting a geography in which some enjoy supposed security benefits while others live with the consequences of radioactive fallout and contamination. The TPNW process created a diplomatic and normative space where these experiences are not only documented, but authorized as foundational to defining what security and justice should mean in a nuclear context. Recent scholarship foregrounds Indigenous women's narratives and experiences of nuclear harm not merely as objects of analysis but as sources of knowledge in their own right. Specifically, Article 6 obliges TPNW state parties to provide assistance to individuals affected by nuclear testing or use and to pursue environmental remediation of contaminated areas under their jurisdiction or control, thereby addressing the long-term effects on the environment, society, and people.

The convergence of these gendered, generational, and geographic interventions has not reversed the traditional cartography of nuclear authority, but it has shaken it. The TPNW and the Humanitarian Initiative have created a permanent forum in which affected communities, critical scholars, civil society organizations, and marginalized states can challenge the dominant narrative of deterrence and co-produce alternative understandings of security anchored in humanitarian and environmental harm, justice, and long-term, intergenerational stewardship. The treaty’s transformative effect is to redistribute epistemic authority and political agency so that those historically treated as objects of protection or sites of experimentation become subjects who shape norms, set agendas, and hold power to account. That alone is a significant achievement, worthy to be recognized on the TPNW’s fifth anniversary. Yet the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons will remain aspirational until nuclear-armed states demonstrate genuine commitment to fulfill their disarmament obligations.

Author

Dr. Carmen Wunderlich, Senior Researcher, INEF