“Disarmament over destruction”: UN chief’s appeal on the Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
On 26 September 2026, the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the threat of nuclear catastrophe is immediate and escalating, driven by rising tensions, mistrust and renewed military competition between powers.
In his message, Guterres stressed that nuclear weapons provide no lasting security and noted that recent multilateral disarmament efforts have failed to deliver results. He called on the states that possess nuclear arsenals to honour their disarmament obligations and to commit to the total elimination of these weapons, urging leaders to choose "dialogue over division, diplomacy over confrontation, and disarmament over destruction."
Civil society accompanied the date with a global mobilisation. Around 2,000 organisations endorsed the Nuclear Abolition Day Appeal, and online events brought together experts, Nobel laureates and artists across time zones. More than 12,000 nuclear warheads still exist in the world, and a high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly on nuclear disarmament is scheduled for 29 September in New York.
For the peace movement, the message is the same as ever, and more urgent than ever: the only guarantee that these weapons will never be used is their complete elimination.
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