Eighty-one years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what questions should the arms control community be asking itself? In this collection of reflections, ELN staff consider how the anniversary informs their work and what it means to keep the human consequences of nuclear weapons at the centre of debates on international security.
Thirty years ago today, the International Court of Justice drew a direct line between nuclear threats and the potential use of nuclear weapons. Now, as nuclear rhetoric returns to the centre of international politics, ELN Policy Fellow Jana Baldus argues the Court’s landmark advisory opinion remains an essential legal guide, and a call to action.
Despite failing once again to adopt a final document, the 2026 NPT Review Conference revealed both troubling fractures and surprising resilience within the Treaty regime. From geopolitical polarisation and competing visions of the NPT to constructive discussions on AI and risk reduction, Emmanuelle Maitre writes, the conference offered reasons for concern and cautious optimism.
After 16 years without a consensus final document, write Carmen Wunderlich and Leonardo Bandarra, the challenge facing the NPT is less about disagreement on specific issues than about growing doubts over the role and value of the review process within an increasingly complex nuclear order, and amid geopolitical shifts and the renewed prominence of nuclear deterrence in global security policy.
At a time of heightened nuclear risk, the credibility of the non-proliferation regime increasingly depends not on treating the NPT and TPNW as rival models, but on finding ways for them to function in a mutually reinforcing way. As Simabatu Mayele Sims Nono writes, reshaping the NPT-TPNW relationship can turn it from a source of fragmentation into a lever for stabilisation.
Amid mounting geopolitical tensions and deepening scepticism about multilateral diplomacy, diplomats, experts, and civil society representatives are gathering in New York for the 2026 NPT Review Conference to confront growing divisions over disarmament and non-proliferation. In these reflections, ELN staff who attended the RevCon examine the mounting risks facing the global nuclear order, and consider what they reveal about the future of the NPT regime.