Carlos Umaña
Carlos Umaña is a physician and international advocate for nuclear disarmament. He is executive director and co-founder of the Alianza por el Desarme Nuclear (Alliance for Nuclear Disarmament), a Spanish coalition of 65 organizations working for Spain’s adhesion to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and for public awareness of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. He is immediate past Co-President of IPPNW, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985 Nobel Peace Prize), and a member of the international board of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (2017 Nobel Peace Prize).
A general practitioner by training, he is former Director of the Health Department at Costa Rica’s Ministry of Health and a former physician in the Costa Rican Social Security Administration (CCSS), where he worked in primary care and trained in gynecology and obstetrics. His academic background spans clinical and epidemiological research, gynecology and obstetrics, nutrition, and fine arts. He currently presides over IPPNW Costa Rica, founded the group Artists for Peace (2014), and co-founded the activist group Peace and Diversity (2018), among other involvements in human rights, environmental and animal-welfare causes. In 2018 he received the Alan Turing Award for LGBTIQ Visibility in the social-organization category.
Since 2013, his work has centered on raising awareness of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and on building social and political support for the TPNW. He has worked closely with governments at numerous intergovernmental conferences on nuclear weapons, including as part of the Costa Rican delegation to the United Nations, and has organized regional conferences and round tables bringing together policymakers, activists and peace networks.
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