Remarks by the President of the General Assembly
H.E. Ms. Annalena Baerbock
High-level Meeting on International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
Friday 26 September 2025, 10 am
[As Delivered]
Dear Excellencies,
We did not create the United Nations 80 years ago because peace was the neutral state of humanity.
From the moment we learned to fashion spears and blades, humanity turned tools into weapons.
As those weapons grew more sophisticated, our wars grew more brutal—culminating into the total destruction of the last century.
At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in two blinding instants, humanity confronted a horrifying truth: we had acquired the ability to erase civilisation itself.
That is why we need, this is why we build, this Organization. Our United Nations.
Not only for the aspirations of multilateralism and cooperation, but as a guardrail against our most destructive instincts.
A north star to guide us away from the hells of our own making.
Yet 80 years later the scourge of war has not been eradicated.
Despite all treaties, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more states have acquired nuclear weapons, while those that already possess them have expanded their arsenals.
In theory, the world accepts that a nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won.
Yet that has not stopped some from building ever larger arsenals—or even from repeatedly coming to the brink of using them.
During the Cold War, false alarms, misread signals, and reckless standoffs nearly unleashed catastrophe, most famously during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Now the danger is more complex.
What if terrorists acquire these weapons?
What if artificial intelligence accelerates decision-making, leaving no room for human restraint?
The risk of miscalculation today may be greater than at any point since 1945.
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Managing these risks, especially in areas of disagreement, is precisely one of the tasks for which the United Nations was created.
And as I said in my opening speech, it’s not because we do not know our compass.
It is not because our compass does not work.
We do have effective frameworks for reducing nuclear dangers, shaped by this organization.
- the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,
- the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty,
- and the Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone treaties.
These are concrete guardrails.
They build habits of restraint and keep doors open to deeper reductions.
But as I also said in my opening speech treaties alone are not enough. Member States – each Member State – have to live up to them.
Especially those who possess these monstrous weapons.
The most simple thing would be to commit to policies of no first use.
And rather than pouring resources into new arsenals, we should invest in the biggest security threat for all humankind, of this century: the climate crisis.
Just imagine if we were to use all the money invested into nuclear weapons today for fighting exactly this: the climate crisis; the injustice of social divides.
And we should also think about the potential of newer forms from this technology, directed to serve humanity constructively – and safely.
Used wisely and under regulation, nuclear technology can for example diagnose and treat cancer, monitor oceans and the atmosphere.
But also, these civil technologies must also be kept safe.
Because civilian facilities—reactors, laboratories, universities, hospitals—could also be turned into targets of war.
Again, with dramatic consequences.
And therefore, we have to join to protect them, wherever and whenever, to be better and safer together.
Excellencies,
We do not live in heaven.
We live in the world we are living in.
Therefore we must be pragmatic.
Nuclear weapons exist.
Indeed, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons exist.
And whether we like it or not, deterrence and balance still feature in delicate security architectures.
But they are not ends in themselves.
While we cannot be naïve about the world as it is, neither can we give up on the world as it should be.
It’s in our hands.
And as I underlined at the opening of the General Debate, to give up because we have tried and failed would be to let evil prevail.
Our efforts must persevere, not because of any certainty that we will win, but because we know it is the right thing to do.
And we know that the right thing to do is to disarm; to reduce the risk or likelihood of nuclear weapons ever being used.
Durable security rests not in ever-growing arsenals, but in disarmament, in non-proliferation, and—one day—in abolition.
Excellencies,
Two weeks ago, when together with the Secretary General and the Japanese representatives, I rang the Peace Bell for the International Day of Peace, I recalled my visit to Nagasaki.
Back there I met schoolgirls, who told me why they are fighting for a nuclear weapons free world.
Because they didn’t experience the horrors of bombing themselves.
But they inherited them through generations from their grandparents, some of whom were killed by the nuclear bombs, and others had to live with the consequences for life.
Those great-granddaughters of the victims have become fierce advocates for peace.
They know, with unsentimental clarity, that humanity holds the power to erase civilization in a single reckless act.
For their sake—and for the memory of those reduced to shadows in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—let us resolve that their great-granddaughters and their great-grandsons will grow up one day in a world free of nuclear weapons.
I thank you.