Since 2009 Ursula has been a frequent contributor to the Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) network website (English/German), writing articles about militarization of societies, nuclear issues, gender, environmental threats and disarmament (her articles in English are linked below). For several years she has been a board member of ‘No-to-nuclear-weapons’, Oslo, and a board member of the Norwegian section of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She is on the advisory board of the Global network against militarization and nuclear power in space. Due to her work about minority rights, patriarchy and barbarism she considers weapons of mass destruction and robotics as major threats to human survival and to our planet.

Ursula Gelis

Ursula Gelis is a German public policy professional and free-lance journalist living in Oslo, Norway. She has studied in the Middle East and the US and has taught about totalitarianism, Jewish history and the nuclear age. She is currently involved in projects in Kazakhstan, addressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.  

 

Articles: 2016

Insights into the Chaos of Chernobyl:
Ursula Gelis interviews Anatolij Gubariev, who worked as a ’Liquidator’ in the destroyed nuclear reactor


Chernobyl 1986                   Photo: Oleg Veklenko

"It is estimated that between 600,000 and 800,000 people worked at the disaster area. "The exact number ... is unknown, because there was no exact registration, and they just returned to their normal routines after their assignment. That is, if they survived it."...

Read the interview  (12 p., 387 kb download)

12 page German original


Articles: Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan achieved independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Several hundred nuclear bomb explosions were carried out by the former rulers, inflicting diseases on more than a million Kazakh people.

 

Continuing her research and work on Kazakhstan's history and present concerns, Ursula Gelis offers these articles on our website:

Sharing as a Beneficial Principle: The International Forum of Women at the VII Astana Economic Forum, May 2014
(737 kb download)

Kazakhstan’s Religious Worlds. A Path of Coexistence
(2.3 MB pdf download)

Against ‘Sophisticated Barbarianism’: 25 years of the international anti-nuclear movement “Nevada-Semipalatinsk"
(2.2 MB pdf download)

Articles: war, the bomb, victim and survivors

2015

Challenging Patriarchy in Ghana
5MB pdf download
Since 2011 the oldest women’s organization in the world, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), has had a branch in Ghana. In April 2015  Ursula Gelis spoke with Ayo Ayoola-Amale and Olivia Anaman from WILPF Ghana as WILPF celebrated its 100 years of existence at a centennial conference in The Hague.

The Caretaker and the Plague - British Nuclear Weapons Testing in Australia
09.MB pdf download
"In 1947 the British government decided to develop their own nuclear weapons program. In August 1954, the Australian Cabinet agreed to the establishment of a permanent testing ground at a site that became named Maralinga in North West South Australia." The results are felt in many ways to this day...

’Responsibility to Protect’ – US Nuclear Terror on Pacific Islanders
692 kb pdf download
"If a government puts its own population at risk, how about mistreating non-nationals and people labeled ‘savages’? Was it resentment that a state proud of its scientific and military accomplishments embarked on the destruction of a Pacific paradise in Micronesia called the Marshall Islands?  Or could those isolated atolls guarantee military enterprises best kept unknown to the world?"


2012

Each year there are fewer survivors of the first use of atomic weapons in Japan. In 2012 Ursula Gelis  interviewed survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the so-called "Hibakusha."
I Had the Feeling I Could Survive the Atomic Bomb
Interview with Mr. Koichi Wada (85 years old) from Nagasaki. pdf 3 p. download

The Bomb Decides over Death and Future Life  Interview with Mrs. Kiyomi Iguro and Mr. Toyoichi Ihara, Nagasaki City Council member, survivors of the atomic bomb. (With thanks to interpreters Mrs. Sakae So and Mrs. Miyuki Matsumoto.) pdf 3 p.

The Bomb and the Empire Interview with Mr. Michio Hakariya from Nagasaki.
pdf 3 p.

My Family Was Used to Test the Atomic Bomb  Interview with Mr. Masanori Nakashima (82 years old) from Nagasaki. pdf 3 p.

and... The safety myth - Japanese nuclear power plants touching