The Use of Chemical or Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine or Anywhere Is Unacceptable!

The World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) acknowledge the profound adverse effects of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on the health and well-being of all people on the planet. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the immense public health threat these weapons pose. This threat exists independent of actual use.

The war in Ukraine, even only as a conventional war, is destroying the lives and livelihoods of the people of Ukraine, their economy and importantly their environment. This produces a massive, multi-generational public health disaster.

The use of nuclear or chemical weapons in this conflict will magnify that public health disaster by orders of magnitude, causing causalities at a scale rendering any medical and humanitarian responses totally inadequate. The suffering resulting would constitute a clear crime against humanity. Even the threat to use such weapons causes needless extra trauma to already severely traumatized people.

Accordingly, the WFPHA and IPPNW demand that all combatants immediately and explicitly rule out the use of weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.