IALANA Deutschland e.V.

Description

IALANA Deutschland e.V. is the German section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms. It was founded in Bonn in June 1989 by judges, prosecutors and lawyers who organized peace protests against nuclear weapon stationing in West Germany. It is a nonpartisan, independent association of jurists working for non-violent conflict resolution and for what it calls Friedensrecht, or peace law, based on the UN Charter and the German Basic Law’s peace mandate.

It is a registered nonprofit association, entered in the register of the Amtsgericht Marburg. It is based in Berlin, where it also runs the international IALANA secretariat. It prepares legal opinions and memoranda. It lobbies parliament and government on security and peace policy, and has taken part in international legal campaigns.

It supported the World Court Project of the 1990s, which led the International Court of Justice to rule in 1996 that the threat and use of nuclear weapons breach international law. It backed the Marshall Islands cases against the nuclear powers in 2014. It helped press France to halt nuclear testing at Muruoa in 1995, through a complaint to the European Commission. It drafted a model Nuclear Weapons Convention together with IPPNW and INESAP, and pushed for Germany’s 2008 acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

It organizes conferences and congresses on peace and international-law questions, and publishes position papers. It advises other NGOs and political bodies on peace-law issues. It takes part in the international peace movement, including opposition to the American airbase at Ramstein and to nuclear weapons stored at Büchel. From 1999 to 2017, together with the Vereinigung Deutscher Wissenschaftler, it awarded a biennial Whistleblower Prize to people who exposed serious wrongdoing at personal cost, including Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

It is financed through donations and membership fees, led by a board and a scientific advisory council, and networked with numerous German and international peace, disarmament and lawyers’ organizations.