Beatrice Fihn

Beatrice Fihn
ICAN Coordinator Daniel Hogstan, Executive Director Beatrice Fihn and her husband Will Fihn Ramsay, after the Nobel Peace Prize announcement
Executive Director In office July 2014 - Present Employer International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons  Programme Manager In office January 2010 - June 2014 Employer Reaching Critical Will  Research Officer In office January 2009 - January 2010 Employer Geneva Centre for Security Policy  Investor Relations In office January 2008 - December 2008 Employer Diamond Capital  Disarmament Project Manager In office March 2006 - December 2006 Employer Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Beatrice Fihn has worked with disarmament issues and multilateral negotiations since 2006. She is currently the Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) where she is managing the campaign of 425 NGOs working together for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

Prizewinning

On 6 October 2017, following the Nobel Committee's announcement that ICAN had won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, Beatrice Fihn said Trump “puts a spotlight” on the dangers of nuclear weapons:

“The election of President Donald Trump has made a lot of people feel very uncomfortable with the fact that he alone can authorise the use of nuclear weapons,” she told reporters in Geneva, adding that “there are no right hands for nuclear weapons”.

Fihn, who called Trump “a moron” in a Twitter post just two days before the peace prize announcement, said the award sent a message to all nuclear-armed states that “we can’t threaten to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of security”.

One "impulsive tantrum away"

The destruction of humankind is one “impulsive tantrum away”, the Australian-founded winner of the Nobel peace prize, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, warned overnight on Sunday 10 December 2017 as the United States and North Korea exchanged threats over Pyongyang’s nuclear testing regime:

“Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us?” Beatrice Fihn said in Oslo after receiving the peace prize on behalf of ICAN.

“The only rational course of action is to cease living under the conditions where our mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away. Nuclear weapons are a madman’s gun held permanently to our temple.”

Disarming

Previously, Beatrice Fihn managed the disarmament programme at the 'Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom' and the 'Reaching Critical Will' project. She has written extensively on disarmament processes and civil society engagement. She has a law degree from the University of London.

 

A Document by Beatrice Fihn

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Speech to the European Parliament by Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN	Speech	7 February 2018	Donald Trump Nuclear weapon International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty Nuclear Posture Review EU Non-Proliferation Consortium	"Are you going to support the new Trump Nuclear Doctrine? Join the thinking of Russia, North Korea? Cheer on a new nuclear arms race? Or are you going to support the work for the prohibition and the elimination of nuclear weapons? You cannot do both."

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Munich Security Conference/2018	12 February 2018	14 February 2018	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 54th Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2019	15 February 2019	17 February 2019	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 55th Munich Security Conference, which included "A Spreading Plague" aimed at "identifying gaps and making recommendations to improve the global system for responding to deliberate, high consequence biological events."
Munich Security Conference/2020	14 February 2020	16 February 2020	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 56th Munich Security Conference, in 2020, "welcomed an unprecedented number of high-ranking international decision-makers."
Munich Security Conference/2022	18 February 2022	20 February 2022	Germany Munich Bavaria	Slightly less than 1/3 of the 664 of the participants have pages here

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Labour Built the Bomb	Article	10 July 2017	Bill Ramsay	The prompt for this short essay is not Labour's nuclear legacy: it is what took place in the UN General Assembly last Friday when the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty passed into international law.

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