Humanity is just “one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”, warned the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) on Monday (1st).
Geopolitical threats including the climate crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and armed conflict are putting the world at risk of a nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War, according to Antonio Guterres.
“Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” Guterres said at the opening of a conference on the United Nations nuclear treaty at his headquarters in New York.
In the second, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, and the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, were among those present at the 10th annual review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
“The climate crisis, glaring inequalities, conflict and human rights violations, and the personal and economic devastation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have put our world under greater stress than it has faced in our lifetimes,” Guterres said.
“Humanity is in danger of forgetting the lessons forged in the terrible events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” The secretary-general added that “geopolitical tensions are reaching new heights” and that “distrust has replaced dialogue”.
“States are seeking false security to stockpile and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on apocalyptic weapons that have no place on our planet.”
Nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons are now being held in arsenals around the world, Guterres added, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and crises in the Middle East and the Korean peninsula as areas where nuclear tones “are rotting.”
He listed five “areas of action” that are central to the treaty. This includes a firm commitment to reinforcing and reaffirming the 77-year norm against the use of nuclear weapons, working towards the goal of eliminating these weapons, addressing tensions in the Middle East and Asia, promoting the peaceful use of nuclear technology for medical uses. and others and fulfilling all outstanding commitments in the treaty itself.
“We need the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty more than ever. That’s why this review conference is so important. It is an opportunity to define the measures that will help to avoid a certain disaster,” he concluded.
Source: CNN Brasil

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