The United Nations has started its Tenth NPT Review Conference

The UN conference to review the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was scheduled for 2020, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Treaty is reviewed every five years.

The NPT is an international treaty whose goal is to

• prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology,
• to encourage peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and
• to further the goal of disarmament.

It was opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. In 1995 it was extended indefinitely. It has 191 State Parties. Four UN member states that never joined the NPT are India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Sudan. Three of which India, Israel, and Pakistan are thought to possess nuclear weapons. North Korea accepted NPT in 1985 but announced its withdrawal in 2003.

The Treaty recognizes five states as NWS (nuclear-weapon states): the United States, Russia, France, China, and the United Kingdom.

It establishes a safeguards system under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 

Geopolitical tensions are at an all-time high as countries seek false security by stockpiling and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons that have no place on the planet.

Hiroshima, Japan, was the site of the world’s first nuclear attack. Almost 13,000 nuclear weapons are now held in arsenals around the world, while from the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula to the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”