I wish to congratulate all members of JALANA to a quarter century of encouraging and determined work towards the abolition of all nuclear weapons and towards peace in the world. Your tireless legal, educative, and informative work against nuclear weapons with a clear and inspiring focus on the elimination of all nuclear weapons contributed to the neglect for nuclear weapons of millions of people and many people of the legal professions. Your thoughts, comments, and activities are of immeasurable value and a point of reference to international IALANA as well as to its affiliates.

Visiting Japan in 2015 and meeting with JALANA in the offices in Tokyo I experienced the determination, focus, and inspiration personally. During my stay with JALANA I learned more about JALANA’s legal expertise, the historical background of Japan and nuclear weapons as well as in recent history nuclear energy. And I became acquainted with warm-hearted, kind, and genuine modest, and humorous members of JALANA. This experience is still on my mind today and has been confirmed in many meetings around the NPT and the Ban Treaty negotiations as well as in Berlin. I wish JALANA to keep up this spirit and energy for the next 25 years.

With the challenges to come on nuclear weapons and peace in the world, for the sake of human existence, I wish JALANA to continue their work as successfully as for the past 25 years. The 1996 decision of the International Court of Justice on the general illegality of nuclear weapons and the 2017 adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of All Nuclear Weapons were landmarks in the struggle to abolish nuclear weapons. JALANA contributed tremendously to the success of these initiatives in the spirit of Hibakusha’s demand to never again have a “Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.

My thoughts are with you in your celebrations and I am looking forward to continue working with you as executive director of international IALANA, the German IALANA, and as a friend.