Today, September 26, is the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. UN Secretary General António Guterres urges: “Let us act with urgency and courage and build a safer, more peaceful world for present and future generations...The only sure way to eliminate the threat posed by nuclear weapons is to eliminate the weapons themselves.”
Inter alia, this day “provides an occasion for the world community to reaffirm its commitment to global nuclear disarmament as a priority...Achieving global nuclear disarmament is the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations... today an estimated 12,187 nuclear weapons remain. Countries possessing such weapons have well-funded, long-term plans to modernise their nuclear arsenals.
“More than half of the world’s population still lives in countries that either have such weapons or are members of nuclear alliances. While the number of deployed nuclear weapons has appreciably declined since the height of the Cold War, not one nuclear weapon has been physically destroyed pursuant to a treaty. In addition, no nuclear disarmament negotiations are currently underway. Meanwhile, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence persists as an element in the security policies of all possessor states and many of their allies” (UN).
The horror of the Second World War, “culminating in the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, brought home the need to address the nuclear issue.”
The UN Secretary General’s disarmament agenda, “Securing our Common Future,” launched on May 24, 2018, “focuses on disarmament as a critical tool to maintain international peace and security, uphold the principles of humanity, protect civilians, promote sustainable development, and prevent and end armed conflict.”
The agenda outlines “a set of practical measures across the entire range of disarmament issues, including weapons of mass destruction, conventional arms and future weapon technologies.”
Countries are spending trillions of dollars on weapons of mass destruction while many of their citizens go hungry. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reminds us that “nuclear weapons are the most inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. That is why it is time to end them, before they end us.”
ICAN, a coalition of NGOs in more than 100 countries, promotes adherence to and implementation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
ICAN states: “Combined, Russia, USA, China, France, UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea possess an estimated 12,187 nuclear weapons, most of which are many times more powerful than the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima. Thirty-two other states are also part of the problem, with six nations hosting nuclear weapons (Italy, Turkiye, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Belarus), and a further 28 endorsing their use.”
The total nuclear warheads owned by Russia and the USA “count for nearly 90 per cent of nuclear weapons in the world.”
Nuclear weapons “have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences that span decades and cross generations; they breed fear and mistrust among nations, as some governments can threaten to wipe out entire cities in a heartbeat; the high cost of their production, maintenance and modernisation diverts public funds from healthcare, education, disaster relief and other vital services” (ICAN).
We should heed the words of Dr George Wald, Nobel Prize winner and antiwar figure: “Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.”
A 2025 editorial in the medical journal, The BMJ, entitled: Ending nuclear weapons, before they end us, warns: “A worldwide nuclear arms race is underway. Deployed nuclear weapons are increasing again...The world desperately needs leaders...to freeze their arsenals, end the modernisation and development of new, more dangerous nuclear weapons, and ensure that new technology such as artificial intelligence can never trigger the launch of nuclear weapons.”
In June 2026, the Vatican Publishing House released a new book by Pope Leo XIV entitled Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift. He says: “Peace is built through disarmament, not nuclear weapons.”
He quotes singer-songwriter and poet Bob Dylan, who wrote, figuratively, “addressing the atomic bomb, in one of his poetic compositions: ‘I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned an’ man-handled’. Today, the Church humbly brings a question to everyone’s attention: Must the human species continue to inhabit the Earth? The combination of the cyber domain and global rearmament impels one to seriously ask this question.” But, as Christians, he urges us to “look to the future with hope...May God guide us on paths of non-violence. May believers and people of good will never stop working as builders of peace. May every person make peace his or her life’s cause.”
