In a speech at the University of Geneva on May 24, UN Secretary-General (SG) António Guterres launched a new ‘Agenda for Disarmament’ – Securing Our Common Future – designed to revitalize and refocus efforts to achieve the core objective the UN Charter to “save succeeding generations from the scourge ofRead More

In 1729, the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift made “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.” There was, Swift’s imperialist Protestant persona reasoned, a “fair, cheap and easy method”Read More

On 8 December 1987, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty eliminating all ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers. As the leaders shook hands in Washington, 2,692 such missiles were deployed across Europe, each armed withRead More

At nearly the eleventh hour – 10:47:53 A.M. – on Friday 7 July,  122 states, two thirds of the UN General Assembly, voted to adopt a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a dramatic step which may prove instrumental in determining the fate of the planet. The Netherlands, theRead More