Lack of progress in anti-nuclear talks
‘Despite the terrible lessons of 1945, humanity now confronts a new arms race. Nuclear weapons are being used as tools of coercion.’
The Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) has highlighted what it called ‘the lack of progress’ at last month’s international nuclear weapons non-proliferation discussions.
Writing about them in the NFPB’s latest newsletter, Philip Austin, coordinator of NFPB, said that this lack of progress was ‘in contrast to the framework created by the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ and there was a need for ‘real progress on nuclear disarmament’.
The discussions in Vienna were the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Held from 31 July to 11 August 2023 at the Vienna International Centre, they coincided with Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day on 6 and 9 August. In a message to the Nagasaki Peace Memorial on the anniversary of the 1945 bombing, António Guterres, UN secretary general, outlined the horrors of the attack. ‘We will not sit idly by as nuclear-armed states race to create even more dangerous weapons’ and ‘the only way to eliminate the nuclear risk is to eliminate nuclear weapons’, he said.
He pledged that the UN will continue working with global leaders to strengthen the global disarmament and nonproliferation regime – including through the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In July, he launched a New Agenda for Peace policy brief that prioritises disarmament.
‘Despite the terrible lessons of 1945, humanity now confronts a new arms race. Nuclear weapons are being used as tools of coercion,’ he said. ‘Weapons systems are being upgraded, and placed at the centre of national security strategies, making these devices of death faster, more accurate, and stealthier. All this, at a moment when division and mistrust are pulling countries and regions apart. The risk of nuclear catastrophe is now at its highest level since the cold war.’
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