The purpose of this article is to examine the contents and significance of a humanitarian apporach to nuclear abolition, which has recently been discussed as a new apporach to nuclear abolition. I will discuss its background and contents and some theoretical issues such as the relationships between international humanitarian law and buclear weapons as well as between international humanitarianlas and international disarmament law. I conclude that the new apporoach is based on the change in and widening of the concept of security and that this new approach could be very useful for making progress toward nuclear disarmament.