UN arms research c hief warns that nuclear war risk is at highest since WWII
Nuclear war risk highest since WWII, UN arms research chief warns https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/nuclear-war-risk-highest-wwii-arms-research-chief-warns-190522010914869.html 22 May 19,
Senior UN security expert says all states with nuclear weapons have nuclear modernisation programmes under way. A top security expert at the United Nations has warned that the risk that nuclear weapons could be used is at its highest since World War II, calling it an “urgent” issue that the world should take more seriously. Speaking to reporters in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday, Renata Dwan, director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), said the arms-control landscape was changing – partly due to strategic competition between the United States and China – and noted that all states with nuclear weapons have nuclear modernisation programmes under way. Traditional arms-control arrangements were also being eroded by the emergence of new types of war, with an increasing prevalence of armed groups and private sector forces and new technologies that blurred the line between offence and defence, Dwan said. With disarmament talks at a stalemate for the past two decades, 122 countries have signed a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, partly out of frustration and partly out of a recognition of the risks, she said. “I think that it’s genuinely a call to recognise – and this has been somewhat missing in the media coverage of the issues – that the risks of nuclear war are particularly high now, and the risks of the use of nuclear weapons, for some of the factors I pointed out, are higher now than at any time since World War II”.
The treaty has so far gathered 23 of the 50 ratifications that it needs to come into force, including from South Africa, Austria, Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico. It is strongly opposed by the US, Russia and other states with nuclear arms. Cuba also ratified the treaty in 2018, 56 years after the Cuban missile crisis, a 13-day Cold War face-off between Moscow and Washington that marked the closest the world had ever come to nuclear war. Dwan said the world should not ignore the danger of nuclear weapons. “How we think about that, and how we act on that risk and the management of that risk, seems to me a pretty significant and urgent question that isn’t reflected fully in the (UN) Security Council,” she said. |
|
No comments yet.
-
Archives
- December 2025 (268)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (377)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
- January 2025 (250)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS




Leave a comment