Global Zero is the nonprofit, nonpartisan international movement for the total elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Since its launch in Paris in December 2008, Global Zero has grown to include 300 political, military, business, civic and faith leaders and more than 450,000 citizens worldwide; developed a step-by-step plan to eliminate nuclear weapons; hosted four international Global Zero Summits; built an international student movement with 90 campus chapters in eight countries; and produced a major documentary film, Countdown to Zero, with the Academy Award-winning team behind An Inconvenient Truth.
Global Zero members understand that the only way to eliminate the nuclear threat — including proliferation and nuclear terrorism — is to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, secure all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons: global zero.
The movement combines grassroots and media outreach, cutting-edge policy analysis and direct dialogue with governments to make the elimination of nuclear weapons an urgent global imperative and to bring all nuclear weapons countries to the table to negotiate the phased reduction of arsenals to zero.
The international Global Zero Commission of 23 political and military leaders has developed a practical step-by-step plan — backed by hundreds of former heads-of-state, foreign ministers, national security advisers and military commanders — to achieve this goal over the next two decades.
The Global Zero Action Plan calls in its first phase for the United States and Russia to cut their arsenals to 1,000 total warheads each, all other countries with nuclear weapons to freeze their arsenals, and the international community to conduct an all-out global effort to block the spread of nuclear weapons. These steps would be followed by the first multilateral negotiations in history for stockpile reductions by all nuclear weapons countries.
At the Global Zero Summit in London in June 2011, Global Zero outlined its plan for getting to multilateral negotiations. The Financial Times and The Economist published positive editorials about the plan, the Financial Times concluding that, “Global Zero’s plan has shown the direction to be travelled; the world’s leaders must now start moving.” President Barack Obama, President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister David Cameron, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have endorsed Global Zero, with Obama declaring, “I want each of you to know that Global Zero continues to have a partner in my Administration and that we will never waver in pursuit of a world free of nuclear weapons.”