UN alarms: “Nuclear War risk greater than ever

She called this a <x0 emergency matter”, that the world should take seriously. Renata Dwan, director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, said that all nuclear-gun states have nuclear modernisation programmes and weapons control landscapes are changing, in part due to strategic competition between China and the United States.

The traditional arms control agreements are also being destroyed by the emergence of new types of war, with the growing spread of armed groups and new technologies”, she told reporters in Geneva.

Disarmament talks have been suspended for the past two decades, as long as 122 countries have signed a nuclear arms ban treaty, “partly due to frustration and in part because they have understood the risks”, she said.

The Nuclear Arms Prevention Treaty was backed by the international nuclear arms evacuation campaign (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. The treaty has so far collected 23 of the 50 ratifications needed to take effect, including South Africa, Austria, Thailand, Vietnam, and Mexico.

The treaty is strongly opposed by the United States, Russia and other nuclear weapons states.