It was while viewing images from the Peace Museum at Hiroshima that she changed the course of her life. Touched as a mother and a human being, she determined to do something to end the escalating nuclear arms race. In 1979 she began to work with retired Christchurch magistrate Harold Evans and others on a scheme to have the United Nations International Court of Justice ("The World Court") declare nuclear weapons illegal. This goal had first been suggested in 1969 by Sean MacBride, a founder of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA). The problem was, of course, that the United Nations was dominated by a Security Council consisting mainly of nuclear armed states.