SGI and ICAN: Friendship and Collaboration

Soka Gakkai International (SGI), an international partner of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) since 2007, would like to wholeheartedly congratulate ICAN on their receiving of the Nobel Peace Prize 2017. In so doing, we offered this brief reflective account, looking at the past decade and at how SGI and ICAN have worked together toward our shared aim of nuclear abolition, and at how we have developed “a partnership underlined by friendship.”

The partnership between SGI and ICAN can be traced back to a long-time friendship and cooperation between SGI and IPPNW, which in turn stemmed from a friendship between SGI President Daisaku Ikeda and IPPNW Co-President Bernard Lown. Amidst their discussions they had agreed to initiate a collaborative endeavor toward their shared goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons. In September 1989, following such agreement, SGI and IPPNW cosponsored an exhibition titled War and Peace at the UN Headquarters in New York, in cooperation with the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs, and this was the first collaboration between these two organization.

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