Civil society organizations call on nuclear armed States to slash nuclear weapons budgets and reinvest in the SDGs.
UNFOLD ZERO and eight other organizations* submitted a paper to the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) yesterday calling on the nuclear-armed and allied states to implement nuclear disarmament commitments they made at the 2024 Summit of the Future by:
- Ending the production of nuclear weapons,
- Slashing nuclear weapons budgets to the level required for minimum nuclear deterrence,
- Reinvesting the tens of billions of dollars saved into meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and
- Providing a timeframe for achieving the global elimination of nuclear weapons no later than the 100th anniversary of the UN.
The UN General Assembly, in follow-up to the actions agreed at the Summit of the Future, has requested that the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) to undertake an analysis of the impact of the global increase in military expenditure on achievement of the SDGs.
The paper The UN Pact for the Future: Nuclear weapons spending and the Sustainable Development Goals in a turbulent world, critiques the phenomenally high levels of spending on conventional and nuclear weapons, and the negative repercussions for most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Weapons provide the main tools for the commission of armed conflict and other violence. The Institute of Economics and Peace has estimated that the economic impact of such violence has risen to US$19.1 trillion annually, which is 13.5% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product or the equivalent of US$2,380 per person (See Global Peace Index 2024). This is more than four times the amount required to meet the UN estimated funding gap for SDG implementation of US$4.3 trillion. In addition, armed conflict impacts directly on human health, public services and infrastructure, democratic engagement, human rights and the environment.
The paper recognizes that, as long as such wars are raging and tensions between states remain high, it will be difficult to convince governments to reduce spending on conventional weapons. For this reason, promoting peace, conflict resolution, common security and the rule of law between states will be vital to reduce expenditures on conventional weapons.
However, even in such times of high tension, significant reductions in nuclear weapons spending could be undertaken. This is because current nuclear weapons stockpiles and management programs, collectively costing over $100 billion per year, reach far beyond the nuclear weapons capabilities required for simple nuclear deterrence. US President Trump alluded to this on February 13, 2025 when he remarked from the Oval Office that “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
The Hastening Arms Limitation Talks Act, introduced in the U.S. Congress by Senator Ed Markey (Co-President of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament) outlines a legislative process for ending the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons and re-allocating budgets from these activities to better purposes, consistent with the SDGs. (See PNND Co-President Senator Markey announces legislation to HALT the global nuclear arms race, PNND, June 23, 2024).
In addition, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the UN Human Rights Committee have confirmed that there is a universal obligation under international law to achieve the global elimination of nuclear weapons. As such, nuclear armed and allied States are required under international law to develop alternatives to nuclear deterrence to ensure their security.
The UN Charter provides a common security framework for such alternatives. This includes obligations under Article 2 of the Charter for Member States to resolve their international conflicts through peaceful means, as well as an outline in Article 36 of the Charter of the array of approaches and mechanisms that Member States can use to do so.
One of the most important of these mechanisms is the ICJ, which was established under the UN Charter to assist Member States resolve their international conflicts peacefully through the rule of law.
The ICJ has had considerable success in doing so (see ICJ Success Stories), but is hampered in this role by the relative lack of acceptance of its compulsory jurisdiction – with only 74 countries currently accepting such jurisdiction. The UN Secretary-General has therefore called on all UN Member States to accept ICJ jurisdiction. A global civil society campaign, Legal Alternatives to War (LAW not War), and a likeminded group of countries aim to help achieve this goal of universal acceptance of ICJ jurisdiction (See Declaration on promoting the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, endorsed by 33 countries).
The organizations making this submission therefore call on UN Member States (particularly nuclear armed and allied States) to:
- Re-affirm the obligation to achieve the global elimination of nuclear weapons, and commit to achieve this by the end of the next SDG cycle (i.e. by 2045, the 100th anniversary of the United Nations).
- Adopt no-first-use and other minimal nuclear deterrence policies as the first step towards preventing nuclear war and limiting nuclear weapons systems to only those relevant to this purpose.
- Commence negotiations for the phased elimination of nuclear weapons under strict international control.
- End the production of new nuclear weapons – thus eliminating the budgets for new nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons budgets would be limited to management of current weapons, destruction of surplus weapons and destruction of all nuclear weapons under a negotiated nuclear abolition agreement. Resources saved should be allocated to SDGs (See Opportunity costs of nuclear-weapons programs).
- Non-nuclear States to end all public investments in nuclear weapons corporations, especially those that are parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
- Replace nuclear deterrence with common security, including through universal acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (See Common Security v. Nuclear Weapons: How to replace the current reliance on nuclear deterrence with sustainable security for all).
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* The organizations that submitted the paper are Aotearoa Lawyers for Peace, Basel Peace Office, Citizens for Global Solutions, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, Peace and Disarmament Collective Aotearoa, UNFOLD ZERO, World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, World Future Council and Youth Fusion.