By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – The rising nuclear threats over Europe and East Asia are increasingly ominous—particularly in the ongoing Russian-Ukraine military conflict and in the North- South political confrontation in the Korean Peninsula.
The appointment last week of a 21-member Panel of scientists, following a General Assembly resolution, has been described as “a response to a global environment in which the risk of nuclear war is higher than at any point since the depths of the Cold War”.
The move comes ahead of the 80th anniversary, in early August, of the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which claimed the lives of between 150,000 and 246,000, mostly civilians– and still remains the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week: “Nuclear weapons are wielded as tools of coercion and nuclear arsenals are being upgraded. A nuclear arms race is once again a very real possibility. The guardrails against nuclear devastation are being eroded.”
A more authoritative warning, in the current context, may come from the new “Scientific Panel on the Effects of Nuclear War.”
Guterres announced the appointment of “an independent scientific panel of experts tasked with examining the physical effects and societal consequences of a nuclear war on a local, regional and planetary scale in the days, weeks and decades following a (future) nuclear war.”
The panel will study the possible impact of a nuclear war on everything “from public health to ecosystems, agriculture, and global socioeconomic systems”. The last cross-sectional United Nations study of this kind was undertaken almost four decades ago in 1988.
The link to the list of scientists:
https://press.un.org/en/2025/dc3900.doc.htm
Randy Rydell, a former Senior Political Affairs Officer in the UN’s Office for Disarmament Affairs (1998-2014) and Executive Advisor to Mayors for Peace (2014-2025), told IPS: “The General Assembly deserves credit for creating this panel, an action well within its Charter mandates for commissioning studies and deliberating disarmament issues.”
Amid new threats to use such weapons, soaring nuclear-weapons budgets, and the lack of disarmament negotiations, he said, such a panel will help to educate the public, and hopefully their leaders, about the full scope of the horrific consequences from any use of such weapons.
“I hope it will encourage all parties to appreciate the need for disarmament as the most effective way — actually the only way — to eliminate such threats all together. By clarifying nuclear weapon effects using the most recent scientific tools, the panel can help to restore disarmament to its rightful place, high on the global and national public agendas,” he said.
The panelists are described as leaders in their fields, across a range of scientific disciplines, and come from all regions of the world. They will seek input from a wide range of stakeholders, from international and regional organizations to the International Committee of the Red Cross to civil society and affected communities. The Panel will hold its first meeting in September and will submit a final report to the General Assembly in 2027.
Jonathan Granoff, President, Global Security Institute told IPS the unleashing of the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons, by any of the nine states (UK, US, Russia, China, France, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea) with these devices, would result in consequences of such horror that our imaginative capacity would be vastly inadequate.
The Panel’s hard science approach might help open the eyes of our minds to this reality, he pointed out. “Not only would devastation of the web of human life be shocked, threaded, and possibly damaged beyond repair but we would be annihilating millions of other living forms — insects, plants, fish, reptiles, mammals, and birds”.
The arrogance of such injury to the animal kingdom to protect an invention of our human hands, states, is an arrogance rarely reflected upon. Objective scientific understanding of the specific effects of these weapons, hopefully, will compel greater cooperation in the efforts of nations to stop their spread, stop the current arms race making uses more likely, and re-enliven disarmament efforts, said Granoff.
“The value of more people and especially decision makers having trustworthy empirical knowledge as well as far greater public awareness might lead to a revival of the process that reduced arsenals, in the past recent decades, from over 70,000 to less than 13,000, a proof that progress can be made when the will for sanity, safety and realism prevail.”
The scientific dimension of nuclear weapons, he argued, is understandably difficult to comprehend.
“The UN in its 1991 report found the ‘(n)uclear weapons represent a historically new form of weaponry with unparalleled destructive potential. A single large nuclear weapon could release explosive power comparable to all the energy released from the conventional weapons used in all past wars.’” (quoting the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, UNITED NATIONS, EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WAR ON HEALTH AND HEALTH SERVICES 7 (2d ed. 1987)); see also DEPARTMENT FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS, UNITED NATIONS, NUCLEAR WEAPONS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY 7 (1991).
In 1995, the prestigious Canberra Commission, convened by the government of Australia, stated, “The destructiveness of nuclear weapons is immense. Any use would be catastrophic. . . . There is no doubt that, if the peoples of the world were more fully aware of the inherent danger of nuclear weapons and the consequences of their use, they would reject them, and not permit their continued possession or acquisition on their behalf by their governments, even for an alleged need for self defence,” declared Granoff.
Professor Zia Mian, Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University told IPS the University’s Program on Science and Global Security, back in 2015, launched a process to seek a UN General Assembly resolution for a UN study on the effects and humanitarian impacts of nuclear war.
In 2023, the Scientific Advisory Group of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in its report to the Second Meeting of TPNW states recommended a new UN General Assembly mandated study on the consequences of nuclear war, he pointed out.
The Group suggested a “global scientific study on the climatic, environmental, physical and social effects in the weeks to decades following nuclear war,” one that examined “whether and how the interactions of these different physical, environmental and social effects over various timescales might lead to cascading humanitarian consequences,” said Professor Mian, who is also co-director of the Princeton Program on Science and Global Security and co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Group of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The panel is tasked with publishing a comprehensive report, making key conclusions, and identifying areas requiring future research. The report will be considered by the UN General Assembly at its eighty-second session in 2027.
The last cross-sectional United Nations study of this kind was undertaken almost four decades ago in 1988 (Study on the Climatic and Other Global Effects of Nuclear War, United Nations publication, Sales No. E.89.IX.1).
Questions regarding the panel can be addressed to nweffectspanel@un.org.
Zia Mian, We Need a U.N. Study of the Effects of Nuclear War, Scientific American, October 28, 2024; Nuclear War Effects and Scientific Research: Time for a 21st Century UN Study, First Committee Monitor, Reaching Critical Will, New York, October 4, 2024.
INPS Japan/ IPS UN Bureau Report