December 19, 2024 1:00 PM–2:30 PM EST   
at CEIP in Washington, DC and Live Online 

As the United States approaches the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in February 2026, there are critical questions about the future of nuclear arms control, strategic stability, and global nonproliferation efforts. 

Join the Arms Control Association and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) for remarks from U.S. Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer on the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce nuclear dangers and adapt U.S. nuclear weapons and nonproliferation policy to an uncertain world, as evidenced by the rapid changes occurring in Syria. Finer will take questions from the Arms Control Association’s Executive Director Daryl Kimball. 

Following Finer's address, a distinguished panel will examine the implications of the looming expiration of New START. Madelyn Creedon, chair of the 2023 Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, Adam Mount, senior fellow and director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, and James Acton, co-director of Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy program, will explore key considerations surrounding U.S. nuclear forces and requirements, arms control, and nonproliferation policy.

Jon Finer is the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor for the Biden Administration. Finer was Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning for former Secretary John Kerry at the U.S. Department of State. 

Daryl G. Kimball has been Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA) and publisher and contributor for the organization’s monthly journal, Arms Control Today, since September 2001. 

The Honorable Madelyn Creedon served as Principal Deputy Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) within the Department of Energy from 2014 to 2017. She also served in the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs from 2011 to 2014, overseeing policy development in the areas of missile defense, nuclear security, combatting WMD, cybersecurity, and space. 

Adam Mount, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, where his work covers U.S. nuclear strategy and force structure, conventional deterrence, and progressive foreign policy. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

James M. Acton holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Registration Link

For Immediate Release: December 13, 2024      

Media Contact: Daryl Kimball, executive director (202-463-8270 x107)       

(Washington, D.C.)—Since 2007, the independent, nongovernmental Arms Control Association has nominated individuals and institutions that have, in the previous 12 months, advanced effective arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament solutions and raised awareness of the threats and the human impacts posed by mass casualty weapons. 

"In a field that is often focused on grave threats and negative developments, our Arms Control Person(s) of the Year contest aims to highlight several positive initiatives—some at the grassroots level, some on the international scale—designed to advance disarmament, nuclear security, and international peace, security, the protection of civilians in war, and/or the rule of law," noted Daryl G. Kimball, executive director. 

"These nominees and their outstanding efforts during the past year illustrate how many different people can, in a variety of creative and sometimes courageous ways, contribute to a safer world for the generations of today and tomorrow," he added. 

This year's nominees are listed below and a link to the online ballot is available at ArmsControl.org/ACPOY. 

Voting will take place between Dec. 13, 2024, and Jan. 13, 2025. Follow the discussion on social media using the hashtag #ACPOY2024. 

A full list of previous winners is available at ArmsControl.org/ACPOY/previous. 

The 2024 nominees are:

• The UN Delegations of Ireland and New Zealand and 48 co-sponsoring states for successfully advancing United Nations First Committee resolution, L.39, which mandates an updated, independent scientific study on nuclear war effects. The resolution, "Nuclear War Effects and Scientific Research," was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 24 December by a vote of 136-3-29. It will establish an independent panel of scientific experts tasked with reviewing and commissioning relevant studies and publishing a comprehensive report that includes future research needs relating to the impacts of nuclear war.
• The Opinion Editors at The New York Times for their ground-breaking “At the Brink” series, which has helped to raise greater public awareness about the devastating impacts, massive costs, and growing dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The special series of interactive essays, which was launched in March 2024, are reported and written by William J. Hennigan and overseen by opinion page editor Kathleen Kingsbury.
• Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) and members of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group for their leadership to challenge the rationale for and the exploding cost of the Sentinel ICBM program. In his role on the House Armed Services Committee and as co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, Garamendi took the Secretary of Defense to task for Sentinel cost overruns and called for more effective congressional oversight of the increasingly costly program. In August remarks at the U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium, he urged a fundamental reexamination of the program.
• Filmmakers of new nuclear-age documentaries that highlight the devastating and long term human and environmental health effects of U.S. and Soviet Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing: First We Bombed New Mexico, Silent Fallout, and I Want to Live On: the Untold Stories of the Polygon. For more information on the impact of these and other new films, see this essay published in Arms Control Today. 
• Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg for convening the Vienna Conference on Autonomous Weapons Systems and for the Austrian Foreign Ministry’s leadership to advance a United Nations General Assembly resolution on lethal autonomous weapons systems that highlights the urgent need to open negotiations on a new treaty to ban them. The resolution which (79/L.77) won the support of 166 countries, creates a new UN forum to discuss the serious challenges and concerns raised by weapons systems that select and apply force to targets based on sensor processing rather than human input.
• The governments of the United States, Argentina, and Japan for taking action through the UN to reinforce global support for the 1967 Outer Space Treaty via resolution 79/L.7, “Weapons of mass destruction in outer space.” The resolution that won the support of 167 states follows reports that Russia is pursuing a nuclear-armed space object. It reaffirms the obligations of the Outer Space Treaty (OST), which prohibits the placement of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in outer space.
• The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Technical Secretariat for its activities in the context of the Technical Assistance Visit(s) to Ukraine that investigated allegations that riot control agents have been used in Ukraine “as a weapon of warfare” against soldiers on the battlefield. The use of chemical agents in this manner is strictly prohibited under Article I of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
• Savannah River Site Watch, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and The South Carolina Environmental Law Project for filing a National Environmental Policy Act lawsuit challenging the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plan to produce 80 plutonium cores for nuclear weapons per year. A U.S. district court ruled that NNSA violated the law by not properly considering alternatives.
• Fumio Kishida, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa of Japan, for their leadership in nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, including hosting a rare UNSC session focused on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament issues in March, which produced a Friends of the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) initiative, and for sending 50 young people to Hiroshima as part of their Youth Leader Fund for a World Without Nuclear Weapons program in August.
• Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and others for pressing the Biden administration to comply with longstanding U.S. laws and its own policies, which require suspension or limitation of U.S. arms transfers to states, including Israel, that fail to allow humanitarian assistance to civilians in conflict or that engage in acts that violate international humanitarian law. Sanders and other lawmakers argued that Israel’s conduct in its war in Gaza clearly violates these standards, which require a suspension of offensive military assistance. They advanced resolutions of disapproval to block continued U.S. arms transfers to Israel, which were defeated by the Senate on Nov. 20. Under pressure from Sen. Van Hollen and others, the administration issued a new national security memorandum (NSM-20) requiring regular reporting from states receiving U.S. military assistance to ensure they meet these legal standards. However, in December, Biden signaled he will not restrict U.S. arms transfers to Israel despite Israel’s failure to permit increased deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza as top U.S. officials had demanded.

Last update: January 8, 2025