Since its foundation in 1981, MAPW has worked on a range of issues. Policies are developed, adopted and reviewed by our National Council as needed.
In 1987 MAPW developed this general policies prologue to explain the rationale of the policies taken by the organisation.
The Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia) acts in the belief that the arms race and the risk of nuclear war are currently the greatest threats to human health and welfare. Nuclear weapons threaten all the world’s people, rendering meaningless any distinction between combatant and non-combatant peoples and countries. The ecosphere that supports all life on earth is similarly threatened.
As physicians we are aware of the horrendous consequences of nuclear explosions and of nuclear war. We know that no meaningful medical response to nuclear war is possible. Nuclear war would be the final epidemic. The only viable course of action is to prevent these events from happening.
To this end, we insist that all nuclear weapons be urgently eliminated, and that the infrastructures which underpin deployment and use of these weapons be dismantled.
Nuclear weapons are not the only threat to the lives and health of the world’s people. The levels of destruction which can be created by modern weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, chemical, biological or conventional, are incompatible with the continued existence of human civilization. The institution of war itself must no longer be an option in the conduct of human affairs. Nuclear weapons are simply the most urgent and ominous aspect of the deeper problem of war.
MAPW (Australia) recognizes that justice is a basic prerequisite for durable peace, and that non military, social and political means are the best ways to maintain and promote national and international security. In the nuclear age, the only real security is shared, common security.