UN chief wants to get rid of nuclear arms ‘once and for all’

The world has been held hostage by these “devices of death” long enough, Antonio Guterres says.

Nuclear weapons must be consigned to history as they do not guarantee security, but only bring destruction, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said.

“Our world has been held hostage by nuclear weapons long enough,” he tweeted.

The weapons, which he described as “devices of death,” are unable to guarantee victory or security to the countries that possess them, the UN chief said. “By design, their only result is destruction.”

“Let’s ensure the end of testing forever, and consign nuclear weapons to history – once and for all,” Guterres said.

The secretary general also addressed the issue in a speech at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in New York in early August.

He warned that “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” as the conflict in Ukraine and tensions in other regions, the climate crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic have put the world “under greater stress than it has faced in our lifetimes.”

“Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only guarantee they will never be used,” Guterres said at the time.

Nuclear arms are currently held by the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “of the total inventory of an estimated 12,705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9,440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.”