Rachel Earlingon, CND’s Parliamentary Officer, outlines the urgency of CND’s presence at a United Nations conference this month.
The 2026 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference comes at a moment of profound global danger and of real responsibility for those of us committed to peace.
From 27 April to 22 May, governments are gathered at the United Nations in New York to assess the state of a treaty that was meant to move the world towards disarmament. Instead, we are confronting a reality in which nuclear-armed states are moving in the opposite direction: expanding arsenals, modernising weapons, and lowering the threshold for use.
Against this backdrop, CND’s delegation – Jeremy Corbyn MP, Parliamentary CND Chair and Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, Parliamentary CND Vice-Chair – have been working intensively to ensure that the voice of the peace movement is not only present at the conference, but heard. They have spent time building relationships across the diplomatic community, engaging with ambassadors, officials and civil society partners to challenge the dominant narrative that nuclear weapons bring security. Just as importantly, they have strengthened links with campaigners from across the world, recognising that grass-roots pressure remains essential if governments are to be pushed towards disarmament.
This dual approach matters. The NPT is not just shaped in formal sessions, but in the conversations that happen around them — in corridors, side events, and informal meetings – as well as the ongoing protests and lobbying taking place globally. Ensuring that our delegation is well placed in these spaces means we can both amplify grassroots demands and hold nuclear-armed states to account directly.
And the stakes could not be higher.
Earlier this year, the Doomsday Clock moved closer to midnight. The risk of nuclear weapons being used is now at its highest level since the Cold War. At the same time, the arms control architecture that once helped to contain that risk is collapsing. The expiry of the New START treaty has removed one of the last remaining limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, opening the door to a new and unconstrained arms race.
Rather than responding with urgency to reduce these dangers, nuclear-armed states are entrenching them. The UK government continues to present itself as committed to the NPT, but in practice is expanding its nuclear capabilities, from the replacement of its submarine based system Trident to the purchase of nuclear-capable F-35A fighter jets. At the same time, it promotes vague notions of ‘risk reduction’ while offering no concrete measures, timelines, or accountability.
This contradiction is not lost on the rest of the world. Non-nuclear weapon states, particularly across the global south, are increasingly frustrated by the double standards at the heart of the NPT. They are asked to uphold non-proliferation commitments, while nuclear-armed states fail to meet their legal obligation to disarm. That imbalance is now straining the legitimacy of the treaty itself.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the escalating tensions around Iran. While the United States and its allies frame Iran as the central nuclear threat, they ignore both the reality of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and the dangerous precedent set by military strikes on nuclear facilities. This has nothing to do with countering proliferation. It is the normalisation of military force in nuclear policy and it increases the risk for all of us.
What we are seeing, across multiple fronts, is a weakening of international law and a growing acceptance of nuclear weapons as usable tools of war. That is precisely what the NPT was meant to prevent.
But this is not a moment for despair, it is a moment for action.
CND’s presence at the Review Conference is about more than observation. It is about intervention: challenging hypocrisy, exposing the gap between rhetoric and reality, and insisting that disarmament is not an abstract goal but an urgent necessity. It is about standing alongside those governments and movements that are pushing for a different path – one based on diplomacy, accountability and the elimination of nuclear weapons.
For campaigners and supporters, the message is clear. The pressure we build at home strengthens the arguments we make internationally. Every conversation, every action, every demand contributes to shifting the political ground.
In the face of rising threats, our task is not only to resist, but to organise, to connect, and to act.