Vatican:

The Vatican has deplored what it calls the “downward spiral of arms control and disarmament policies” at the First Committee of the UN 78th General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Speaking at the event, Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Cacci, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN, said that there is a need to have “renewed efforts to advance progress on nuclear disarmament at a time when the risk of nuclear war becomes a reality”.

The permanent envoy lamented that the global community “has collectively moved in the wrong direction, discarding important treaties on arms control, disarmament and transparency”. With the rise in international tensions since 2010, periodic talks for the review of the landmark 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) have come to a grinding halt.

After the 2015 Review Conference ended in a fiasco, the 2022 Review Conference came to an end again sans any agreement after Russia blocked consensus on the outcome of the document that was planned. In a statement, the archbishop expressed the disappointment of the Vatican “at the increased levels of polarization and mistrust at the First Session of the Preparatory Commission for the 11th Review Conference on NPT that is due in 2026.

The archbishop said, “at a time when flexibility was most needed, the lack of a chair’s summary will be detrimental in working towards consensus” in 2026. He also stressed the Vatican’s call to states to leave no stone unturned to reverse the downward spiral and to “rededicate themselves to renewing arms reduction mechanisms leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons”.