United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that society is on the precipice of “nuclear annihilation.”
The head of the U.N., while speaking at the opening of the 10th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons on Monday, said, “Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”
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Participants at the meeting met to review the 52-year-old treaty designed to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.
The conference is “an opportunity to hammer out the measures that will help avoid certain disaster and to put humanity on a new path toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” Guterres said. “It’s also a chance to strengthen this treaty and make it fit for the worrying world around us.”
In Guterres’s pitch for changes to the treaty, he called for the elimination of nuclear weapons because it’s “the only guarantee they will never be used,” saying it’s a goal that the world “must work relentlessly toward.”
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There are almost 13,000 nuclear weapons being held by countries across the globe “at a time when the risks of proliferation are growing and guardrails to prevent escalation are weakening.” The U.N. head also referenced the “simmering tensions” in the Middle East and Asia, noting that “the threat of nuclear weapons to enduring conflicts” is bringing “these regions toward catastrophe.”
The treaty went into effect in 1970, and 191 countries have signed it, including five nuclear powers.
