UN General Assembly President Addresses High-Level Meeting on International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

Key facts

• The United Nations General Assembly held a high-level plenary meeting on 29 September 2026 in the Trusteeship Council Chamber, New York, to commemorate the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
• Dr. Khalilur Rahman, President of the eighty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly, delivered the remarks at the meeting.
• As of January 2026, the global nuclear warhead inventory stood at more than 12,000, of which about 2,100 to 2,200 are kept on high-operational alert on ballistic missiles.
• New START expired on 5 February 2026 without a successor, leaving no binding limits on strategic nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972.
• The NPT Review Conference ended without a consensus outcome, the third consecutive Review Conference to do so.
• Global military expenditure reached nearly $3 trillion in 2025, the eleventh consecutive annual increase.
• Global nuclear warheads have fallen from a peak of roughly 70,000 in 1986 to about 12,000 today, and South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons programme while Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine relinquished nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union's dissolution.
• The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, opened for signature three decades ago, has still not entered into force.
• Two years earlier, through Action 25 of the Pact for the Future, Member States recommitted to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.