The 2026 Conference on Disarmament. High Level Segment.
Statement delivered by Mr. Espen Barth Eide,
Minister of Foreign Affairs Norway.
Check against delivery
23.02.2026
President,
The year 2024, the last year of which we have full data, recorded the highest number of conflicts since the United Nations was formed. It is also, maybe even more alarmingly, the highest number of interstate conflicts since 1987 when we were at the end of the Cold War. The source of this data is the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme.
And this also means that nuclear risks are again at the forefront. We have seen that gradual reductions in nuclear arsenals have come to a halt. We see recent strife between nuclear armed neighboring states. We see that bilateral arms control agreements expire. We see novel delivery systems are underway. And we see the proliferation pressure mounting.
This means that we are faced with a situation that was hard to imagine only a few years ago: Wars of aggression on neighboring states in violation of core UN Charter principles in breach of even explicit negative security guarantees and conducted like in the case of Ukraine by a nuclear weapon state, Russia, a party to the NPT, a Security Council P5 veto power. This is extremely serious for the work of the Conference on Disarmament.
All this is done with the aim of subjugating its neighbor and annexing its territory. This is a breach of maybe the most fundamental rule of international cooperation about invading and annexing other people's territory. All international cooperation between states is built on that core assumption that all states should respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other states. This is therefore not only about Ukraine. It is about upholding the key principle that makes international cooperation possible.
Russia has even this year, again for the second time, launched a nuclear capable intermediate range ballistic missile – the Oreshnik – striking Ukraine only 60 kilometers from Poland and the NATO border. In Swiss terms, this is the same distance as between Geneva and Lausanne, not very far. The message is loud and clear. This is not just one-off nuclear signaling. It is incredibly reckless. In fact, it is a deliberate part of a pattern, a pattern of weaponizing risks, a pattern of assault on our common rules and values.
This is not only paralyzing the CD but undermining the instruments that once compensated for this Conference’s inaction by violating Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), obstructing progress on the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), de-ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and invalidly suspending participation in the New START. This means that even once stable fora have now turned into arenas of geopolitical strife. That should concern all of us, not only those of us who live in Europe. This is a global challenge.
President,
We are, in other words, at the threshold of a new nuclear age — an age marked by distrust, diminishing cooperation, mounting arms competition and heightened risks. This reality must shape our work.
We cannot take past achievements for granted. We must be cleareyed: Russia’s relentless imperialistic aggression, China’s rapid nuclear expansion, their normalization of the DPRK’s nuclear capabilities and increasing proliferation pressures in many parts of the world.
And remember, even in the worst times of the Cold War, there were systems to hold some of this in check, even though most of those systems are long gone. To reaffirm a simple truth, non-proliferation remains as essential to disarmament as it is to security. Further proliferation is not the answer. It might seem an attractive response to immediate insecurity, but more nuclear armed states will ultimately lead to less security for all of us.
The NPT, its non-proliferation norm, and the safeguards system of the IAEA have been the bedrock of collective security for nearly sixty years. We need a strong reaffirmation of that foundation at the upcoming review conference, and we need to place risk reduction and arms control high on our agenda.
This is no small talk task when one state is weaponizing risk and two refuse to engage in trilateral arms control dialogue.
We support all initiatives for arms control dialogue. We are motivated by the chilling simple fact: Soaring nuclear risk threatens all of us.
Ultimately, mankind has a shared interest in ensuring that catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war never come to pass. Let's not forget the Reagan-Gorbachev formula from 1985: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
Risk reduction and arms control are well developed fields. There is a rich history to draw on. The CD represents a weight of institutional capacity to enable meaningful work if we want to if we want to use it. Let's try to use it and let's remember that progress requires ambition.
We cannot settle for preserving just what we have. We need to keep envisioning a world without nuclear weapons, even if it's a long-term goal, and how to get there. Transparency, verification and irreversibility remain key features of both the end state but also the way towards it and working through these issues is to take nuclear disarmament from the abstract to concrete results.
There is no simple way ahead. These are extremely important issues. We should learn from those parts of our common history where we disagreed but did agree that there should be certain limitations on certain types of weapons.
This is a lesson to be relearned in our times, and I very much urge this conference to be one of the fora where that can be relearned.
Thank you very much for your attention.