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Joint interfaith statement calls for world free of nuclear weapons

May 2nd, 2026, https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/54916

The following joint Interfaith statement on the occasion of the 11th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was released this week. 109 organisations signed the document.

We, as people of faith, join in solidarity with our voices to call upon the leaders of the world to rescue the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from crisis and to honour its deepest commitment: creating a world free from nuclear weapons.

On March 5, 1970, the NPT entered into force-emerging following the horrors of the previous decades. The Treaty rests on an extraordinary promise: non-nuclear-weapon states pledged not to acquire nuclear weapons, while nuclear-weapon states committed under Article VI to pursue negotiations in good faith toward complete disarmament.

Fifty-six years later, the Treaty’s most fundamental commitment remains unfulfilled. We see the NPT unraveling and a proliferation crisis brewing. The obligation to negotiate disarmament has been deferred, diluted, and in many cases openly dismissed. All nuclear-armed states are modernising their arsenals with new delivery systems and doctrines that lower the threshold for use. The moral authority of the Treaty depends upon the credibility of the disarmament commitment. That credibility is now in crisis.

The Urgency and Risk We Face Today

With the Doomsday Clock set to 85 seconds to midnight, we are now the closest we have ever been to catastrophe. Many who hold power today do not fully grasp how near we have already come to nuclear war. We have survived not because our systems are foolproof, but because we have been lucky. And luck, as the UN Secretary-General said, is not a strategy.

Underlying all of this is a spiritual crisis rooted in the normalization of violence and war as instruments for resolving conflict between peoples and nations. When armed force is treated as a first resort, when military spending eclipses investment in human development, when entire populations are taught to accept the threat of annihilation as a condition of their security, our moral imagination has failed. The acceptance of apocalyptic violence as the final arbiter of disputes among nations is not simply a strategic posture. It is a spiritual sickness-one that every faith tradition we represent has named, lamented, and called its followers to resist.

Our Faith Calls Us to Act

It is our conviction, held in common across our diverse faith traditions, that life is a precious gift. And alongside that great gift comes the responsibility to both care for each other and for this good Earth entrusted to us. Nuclear weapons represent a failure on both counts-a betrayal of our duty to protect one another and to safeguard the planet that sustains all life.

We affirm that genuine security is built on justice, on mutual care, on the recognition that no nation’s safety can rest on another nation’s annihilation. We pray that the future of your children and ours is safeguarded and the fear of annihilation becomes a shadow of the past.

And so we hold hope in this crisis-hope as a bold conviction that the choices of this generation can determine whether the consequences of nuclear escalation are carried into future generations or halted in our time.

Our Call to Leaders Around the World

We call on our leaders to reaffirm the spirit of the NPT as an urgent and binding commitment. We recognise the depth of the divisions among NPT member states. But we refuse to accept paralysis. We call for States to engage in real dialogue, moving beyond entrenched positions, to find the common ground of our shared survival. The challenges are numerous and complex. Yet, we hold hope that our leaders have the courage to prevent another nuclear catastrophe.

On the occasion of the 11th NPT Review Conference, we call on our leaders to honour two commitments above all. First, recommit to Article VI-not in rhetoric, but in action: with verifiable reductions, with a moratorium on new warhead development, with a return to negotiations that includes all nuclear-armed states. The grand bargain of the NPT cannot survive if one half of it is perpetually deferred. Second, center human security in nuclear policy. Decisions about nuclear weapons must be grounded not in the security of states alone, but in the shared security of all people

Faith, conscience and commitment to truly inclusive peace compel us to carry with us the voices of the hibakusha, the downwinders, and all global communities who have experienced and borne witness to the suffering that nuclear weapons inflict. We carry with us the hopes of our children, who deserve to inherit a world where the threat of extinction does not hang over every cradle.

We hold you in the Light. And we pray for you to be a beacon to your children and our children showing the path toward a better future. You have the power to begin creating a world free from nuclear weapons. We are asking you to use it.

Endorsing Organizations: (109)……………………………………………………………………………………………………https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/54916

May 5, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics