Dewes grew up in a "conservative family" as one of eight siblings.[4] Her father was a veterinary surgeon.
She was head prefect at Hamilton Girls' High School.[5] After leaving school, she studied music at the University of Canterbury and became a music teacher at Epsom Girls' Grammar. Part of the school music curriculum was a song of lament about Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.[6] Playing that song to her pupils inspired her to become involved in the peace movement.[7] She joined a non-violent waterborne protest group called the Peace Squadron, aimed at preventing armed US warships from visiting Auckland Harbour.[1][4][6]
During the late 1970s, she and a growing number of New Zealanders rallied against the United States Government's policy of “neither confirming nor denying” the presence of nuclear warheads on their warships.[8] By 1983 public opinion had swung 72% in favour of banning warship visits.[9]
Not long after, Dewes enrolled in a peace studies program at the University of Bradford, whilst juggling motherhood with a teaching career and a number of official positions and voluntary roles.[4]
She is married to Robert Green, a former British Royal Navy commander, who partners with her in advocating for peace, disarmament and against nuclear proliferation.[10]
The senior journalist, Mike Crean, in an interview with Dewes after her New Year Honour,[4] explored that idea that the strength of her feelings came from her ancestors; for she had only recently found out that not only did her paternal great-grandmother work for peace among the northern Hawkes Bay Māori in 1870, but also her maternal grandparents had campaigned for temperance and women's suffrage in the late 19th century.[4]
She played a key role in the World Court Project that led to the 1996 historic judgement by the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, which unanimously ruled that a threat to use and the use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal according to international law.[1][4][13] She subsequently completed her doctorate at the University of New England in Australia, with a thesis entitled The World Court Project: The Evolution and Impact of an Effective Citizens' Movement.[14][15]
Along with her husband, she is co-founder and co-director of the Disarmament & Security Centre (DSC), which they established at their home in Riccarton. She was also a director of the South Island Regional Office of the Aotearoa / New Zealand Peace Foundation[16] and became Vice President of the International Peace Bureau in 1997.[6][15] As a member of the Government's Pacific Advisory Committee, she championed issues important to small Pacific Island states, including the knock-on effects of past nuclear detonations at Moruroa and Fangataufu atolls.[11] She lectured in Peace Studies at the University of Canterbury from 1986 to 1997, where she is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the College of Arts.[11][15]
From 2008 to 2012, Dewes was a member of the United Nations Secretary-General's advisory board on Disarmament Matters.[17] She and her husband were negotiators on the first legally-binding international treaty to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons.[2]
In 2019, Dewes donated the archives of the Disarmament & Security Centre to the Macmillan Brown Library at the University of Canterbury.[18] In the same year she and her husband were mentioned as potential Nobel Peace Prize contenders.[19][20]
^ abcCrean, Mike (10 January 2001). "Peace campaigner's life work honoured". The Christchurch Star newspaper.
^Dewes, Kate (25 February 2009). "Inspired by the Hibakusha". Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Retrieved 13 October 2019.
^McMillan, Stuart (1987). Neither confirm nor deny: the nuclear ships dispute between New Zealand and the United States. Wellington, N.Z: N.Z : Allen & Unwin ; Port Nicholson Press. pp. Chapter 5: Public Support. ISBN9780868614991.
