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Hiroshima atomic-bomb survivor Katsuko Tanaka, center-left, joins nuclear-disarmament advocates and experts at the “Nuclear Between Disarmament and Proliferation” forum during Sant’Egidio’s International Meeting for Peace in Assisi, Italy, Oct. 26, 2026. Credit: Community of Sant’Egidio

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
ASSISI, Italy, Nov 11 2026 (IPS)

Eight decades after atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world is confronting a new and potentially dangerous question: What happens when decisions involving human life increasingly pass from people to machines?

Community of Sant’Edigio

That concern ran through discussions at an international peace gathering in Assisi, where religious leaders, nuclear disarmament campaigners and technology specialists examined the risks of nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence — two very different technologies united by the possibility of catastrophic harm.

The meeting, organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio from Oct. 25 to 27, marked 40 years since Pope John Paul II brought representatives of the world’s major religions to Assisi to pray for peace.

This year’s theme, “Unarmed and Disarming Peace,” carried particular urgency. Nuclear arms control has weakened, military spending has reached record levels, and artificial intelligence is rapidly entering defense systems whose consequences remain difficult to predict.

The question was no longer simply whether humanity possessed the means to destroy itself. It was whether governments and societies retained the judgment to prevent those means from being used.

Katsuko Tanaka, Hibakusha from Hiroshima (Left). Credit: Beppe Raso/ Soka Gakkai

The Warning From Hiroshima

The human consequences of nuclear warfare formed the moral foundation of a forum devoted to disarmament and proliferation.

Katsuko Tanaka, also known as Toshiko Tanaka, a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor, recalled the bombing of Aug. 6, 1945, when she was six years old.

Her account recalled a catastrophe that killed indiscriminately and left survivors carrying physical and psychological wounds for decades.

Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura of Nagasaki, in his published remarks, drew on the legacy of Takashi Nagai, the physician and atomic bomb survivor who devoted his later life to peace.

Together, their perspectives challenged the language of nuclear deterrence, which measures security in terms of military capabilities rather than the lives potentially lost.

Susi Snyder, the Director of Programmes at ICAN. Credit: Community of Sant’Egidio / Assisi 2026

Susi Snyder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, addressed the growing danger posed by the modernization of nuclear arsenals and the erosion of arms control.

The expiration of the New START treaty between the United States and Russia in February, followed by the failure of the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference to reach consensus, has reinforced concerns about the future of nuclear restraint.

Attention is now turning to the first Review Conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, scheduled to begin in late November.

But disarmament advocates face a persistent obstacle: The governments possessing nuclear weapons largely remain outside the treaty.

Teaching a Generation Without Memories of War

Credit: Simone Giara per Senzatomica

For the Italian Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist organization engaged in nuclear abolition campaigns, education has become an essential part of the response.

Alessja Trama, representing the Be The Hope Foundation, an organization affiliated with the Italian Soka Gakkai, described in her prepared remarks the work of Senzatomica, an initiative that has organized exhibitions and educational activities on nuclear weapons in communities across Italy.

The campaign traces its inspiration to a 1957 declaration by Josei Toda, the second president of the Soka Gakkai, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Its premise is that remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki must lead to public responsibility, particularly among younger generations who have no personal connection to the war.

Yet even as campaigners seek to reduce the threat from existing weapons, advances in artificial intelligence are transforming the nature of military power.

When Human Judgment Becomes Optional

At a separate forum titled “Humanity in the Age of Technology,” Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia warned that technological capabilities were advancing faster than the institutions meant to govern them.

Tiziana Catarci, an Italian artificial intelligence researcher, raised a critical distinction: placing a human in a decision-making process does not necessarily mean that person exercises meaningful control.

An operator may formally approve a machine-generated recommendation without fully understanding how it was produced or being able to challenge it.

Embedded gallery image from the Soka Gakkai Italy article ‘Ad Assisi la speranza come scelta di pace: la Soka Gakkai ai forum sul nucleare e sulla tecnologia’. Credit: Beppe Raso

In military operations, that gap could become deadly.

Catarci called for stronger oversight of AI systems and the prohibition of autonomous weapons capable of making lethal decisions without meaningful human control.

Embedded gallery image from the Soka Gakkai Italy article ‘Ad Assisi la speranza come scelta di pace: la Soka Gakkai ai forum sul nucleare e sulla tecnologia’. Credit: Beppe Raso

Yoshiyuki Nagaoka, executive director of the Office of Public Affairs of Soka Gakkai, approached the problem through Buddhist teachings on the dignity of life.

Nagaoka noted that AI is increasingly being embraced as a source of advice in everyday life in Japan, with some people turning to it for guidance when making deeply personal decisions about their lives.

One example he cited was the case of an elderly woman who turned to generative AI for advice about the medical treatment of her terminally ill husband.

For Nagaoka, the issue was not whether AI could provide useful information. It was whether reliance on such systems might gradually weaken the human willingness to make difficult moral judgments.

He warned particularly against delegating decisions about killing to autonomous weapons, advocating international rules to prohibit systems that independently select and attack human targets.

His argument extended beyond warfare to healthcare, where statistical predictions cannot replace compassion, personal choice and professional responsibility.

A Technology That Can Also Help

Other participants cautioned against viewing artificial intelligence solely as a threat.

Matt Vasey of the Gates Foundation argued that AI could improve access to healthcare, education and agricultural knowledge, especially in communities historically neglected by technological development.

But he also warned that people could voluntarily surrender moral responsibility to systems designed to make decisions easier.

Cisco executive Gianpaolo Barozzi emphasized the need to redesign work around human capabilities, while Rabbi Noam Marans of the American Jewish Committee distinguished the accumulation of information from the exercise of wisdom.

The speakers offered no single regulatory blueprint. They nevertheless returned repeatedly to the need for accountability, transparency and human judgment.

The gathering’s closing Peace Appeal connected these concerns to a broader agenda, urging that resources devoted to weapons be redirected toward food, water, education, healthcare and decent work.

It also identified nuclear threats, rearmament and artificial intelligence as challenges requiring international cooperation.

Closing ceremony. Credit: Community of Sant’Egidio / Assisi 2026

The message underscored a growing dilemma.

Humanity has developed technologies of extraordinary power. Yet the institutions and moral commitments needed to restrain their destructive uses have not necessarily kept pace.

From Hiroshima’s surviving witnesses to researchers confronting autonomous weapons, the warning emerging from Assisi was that security cannot be measured simply by what humanity is capable of building.

It must also be measured by what humanity is prepared to refuse.　

This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

At an interfaith gathering in Assisi, nuclear survivors, scientists and religious leaders confronted a troubling question: Can humanity control the destructive powers it continues to create?

Nach dem verletzungsbedingten Aus von Granit Xhaka kommt die Captain-Rolle auch beim aktuellen Nati-Zusammenzug Manuel Akanji zu. Vor den beiden Spielen spricht er über die Nati-Brennpunkte.

By Stephanie Hodge
NEW YORK, Nov 11 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations knows how to announce a milestone. What interests me, after a career that has included working inside UNICEF and UNDP and evaluating institutions from outside them, is what happens between the announcement and the working day.

Thalif Deen’s IPS article of 3 November 2026 asks whether gender bias at the UN is approaching an “inglorious end.” It is a question, not a declaration, and the reporting gives considerable space to continuing inequalities. Alongside achievements in representation, staff representatives describe barriers to advancement, weaknesses in accountability and fears about reporting discrimination. The article itself supplies reasons to resist a premature obituary for institutional bias.[1]

I bring a perspective to this question, certainly. But the discipline of evaluation requires me to challenge my own expectations as carefully as an institution’s claims. If the evidence demonstrates progress, acknowledge it. If it supports a narrower conclusion than the public celebration, say so.

The UN’s published figures demonstrate substantial progress towards numerical gender parity. They do not, on their own, establish whether discrimination in recruitment, advancement, treatment or access to authority has diminished.

UN Women reports that women’s share of Professional and higher categories across the UN system rose from 47 per cent in 2021 to 48.8 per cent in 2023, reaching 50.4 per cent in 2025. It also reports that parity among the Senior Management Group and resident coordinators has been maintained since 2018. These are meaningful achievements, and dismissing them would weaken any serious critique.[2]

The dates matter. The Secretary-General’s 2025 report principally covers January 2022 to December 2023, with developments through mid-2025. Its figures should not be presented as a fresh assessment of the workforce in November 2026.[2]

But an institutional average is an exceptionally comfortable place to hide an uncomfortable distribution.

UN Women’s accompanying infographic presents the following figures for 2025, citing the system-wide dashboard in June of that year:[3]

These figures appear in the same published presentation. They show how an overall majority can coexist with women’s underrepresentation at director levels. Under the UN’s operational definition, parity falls within a range of 47 to 53 per cent; the D-1 and D-2 figures above remain below that range.[3] [5]

That distribution does not, by itself, prove discrimination in individual appointments. Nor does a snapshot establish that women progress more slowly than men. It establishes why an aggregate percentage cannot answer the question of equal advancement. For that, we need to follow careers: who applies, who is shortlisted, who is selected, who progresses, how long progression takes, and who leaves.

There is another question beneath the celebration: which UN are we measuring?

The Secretariat dashboard cited in the article explicitly covers a defined population of international staff. Its explanatory notes say General Service and national staff are not shown and are intended for a subsequent phase. It also specifies appointment types and excludes entities with ten or fewer people. These are legitimate statistical boundaries, but they are boundaries all the same.[4]

This does not mean the UN collects no information about those groups elsewhere. It means this particular dashboard cannot establish what is happening across the whole workforce.

The Secretariat and the wider UN system are not interchangeable reporting populations. Neither are international professionals, national personnel and consultants. Every claim should tell the reader whose working lives it describes.

The Secretariat’s own human resources strategy also identifies a measure that reaches beyond headcounts. In A/80/550, the gap between women and men in the employee-empowerment dimension of the staff engagement survey is recorded as eight percentage points in 2021 and nine in 2024. Closing that gap is an explicit objective.[5]

The table does not explain the causes, establish whether the change is statistically significant, or identify which group scored higher. It should not be used as proof that discrimination worsened. It does, however, identify a workplace-experience gap that representation figures alone cannot resolve.

Nor should scepticism escape scrutiny. Shihana Mohamed, quoted in the IPS article, argues that reductions in male-dominated parts of the workforce helped produce the improved percentages. That is an explanation requiring examination, rather than a demonstrated finding we can simply adopt. The article does not provide the underlying analysis needed to establish how much of the change resulted from workforce reductions.[1]

An illustrative example shows why the question matters. An organisation employing 400 women and 600 men has 40 per cent female representation. Remove 200 men, recruit nobody, and it reaches 50 per cent. The calculation is correct; the explanation determines what achievement can reasonably be claimed. This is a hypothetical example, not a description of what happened at the UN.

Conversely, that possibility cannot justify assuming that the UN’s gains are merely arithmetic. We need comparable data on recruitment, promotion, retirement, separation and post abolition, using consistent dates and staff populations. Scrutiny must work in both directions.

What would persuade me that institutional bias was diminishing? Evidence of fairer career progression across grades, nationalities and contract types; greater confidence in raising concerns; credible protection against retaliation; and demonstrable consequences for discriminatory management. These are proposed tests of institutional change, not findings that the representation statistics have already established.

I would also ask whose experience disappears inside the category “women.” An international director, a national officer and a consultant awaiting renewal may share a gender while having profoundly different access to security and influence. An assessment of equality should examine those differences, rather than assume that one aggregate can represent them all.

The UN deserves credit for its documented gains in women’s representation. It should welcome equally rigorous examination of what those gains mean for working lives.

Count the women, certainly. Then examine who advances, who has authority, who can challenge a decision safely, and whose expertise changes the decision. Numerical parity is a meaningful achievement. Establishing that institutional bias is diminishing requires further evidence.

References

1. Deen, Thalif. “Is Gender Bias at the UN Coming to an Inglorious End?” Inter Press Service, 3 November 2026. Syndicated version.
2. UN Women. “Improvement in the status of women in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary-General (2025).” Publication summary accompanying report A/80/260, 25 July 2025.
3. UN Women. “Representation of Women in the UN System.” Infographic accompanying the 2025 Secretary-General’s report, p. 1; 2025 figures attributed to the UN System-wide Dashboard on Gender Parity, June 2025.
4. United Nations. “UN Secretariat Gender Parity Dashboard.” Coverage and methodological notes. Accessed 3 November 2026.
5. United Nations, Secretary-General. “Implementation of human resources management reforms: outlook for 2026–2029.” A/80/550, 28 November 2025, p. 13: gender-parity definition, employee-empowerment indicators and targets.

Stephanie Hodge, MPA Harvard (2006), is an international evaluator and former UN advisor who has worked across 140 countries. She is a former staffer of UNDP (1994-1996 & 1999- 2004) and UNICEF (2008-2014). She writes on governance, multilateral reform, and climate equity.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Double amputee Zaher told the BBC last year about his favourite footballer and a dream of being able to walk again.

Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/2286 of 12 October 2026 amending Decision (CFSP) 2018/1544 concerning restrictive measures against the proliferation and use of chemical weapons.

Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/2283 of 12 October 2026 amending Decision (CFSP) 2016/849 concerning restrictive measures against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/2397 of 26 October 2026 amending Decision 2010/573/CFSP concerning restrictive measures against the leadership of the Transnistrian region of the Republic of Moldova.

Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/2378 of 26 October 2026 amending Decision (CFSP) 2016/1693 concerning restrictive measures against ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaeda and persons, groups, undertakings and entities associated with them.

Statement on today's meeting in Abu Dhabi between the EU, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States and NATO

Main agenda items, approximate timing and press opportunities.

The Council extended the mandate of the EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine until 15 November 2028.

The Council approved conclusions reaffirming the EU’s commitment to principled humanitarian action, stronger protection of civilians and more effective action amid growing global humanitarian needs.

Remarks by Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis on the economic outlook in the euro area, defence financing and joint procurement, progress made on the digital euro and on the outlook for the banking sector, as well as the nomination process for three vacancies on the ECB Executive Board.

A Tanács a mai napon újabb intézkedésekről állapodott meg, amelyek célja az e-kereskedelem útján az Unióba érkező termékek után fizetendő hozzáadottérték-adó beszedésének javítása. Ez az uniós vámügyi keret nagyszabású átalakításának utolsó lépése.

The press briefing will take place on Wednesday 11 November 2026 at 10.00.

Az EU és az AKCSÁSZ-tagállamok a COP31 előtt együttes nyilatkozatot adtak ki, amelyben újólag hangsúlyozták elkötelezettségüket a Párizsi Megállapodás teljes körű végrehajtása és az éghajlat-politikai együttműködés megerősítése iránt.

On Tuesday, Industry Committee MEPs proposed to reshape the European Competitiveness Fund’s scope, governance and budget, with a focus on industrial and security dimensions.
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Research MEPs seek to boost EU scientific excellence, empower expert advice, and improve links between research and competitiveness.
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Parliament’s Energy and Transport Committees agreed to strengthen the 2028-2034 Connecting Europe Facility, EU’s main funding tool for key cross-border infrastructure projects.
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
Committee on Transport and Tourism

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Le Bénin et l'Égypte entendent renforcer leur coopération dans les domaines de la défense et de la sécurité. Cette volonté s'est traduite par la signature, le 9 novembre 2026, d'un accord de coopération militaire à l'occasion d'une visite de travail effectuée en Égypte par le ministre délégué auprès du président de la République, chargé de la Défense nationale, Gildas Agonkan.

Dans le cadre du renforcement des relations bilatérales entre le Bénin et l'Égypte, Gildas Agonkan a été reçu, lundi dernier, par le général Ashraf Salem Zaher, commandant en chef des Forces armées égyptiennes et ministre de la Défense et de la Production militaire. La rencontre qui a eu pour cadre le siège du Secrétariat général du ministère égyptien de la Défense, a été marquée par la présence de plusieurs hauts responsables militaires des deux pays.

Au centre des discussions figuraient le renforcement de la coopération entre les forces armées béninoises et égyptiennes, ainsi que les questions d'intérêt commun relatives à la défense et à la sécurité. À l'issue des échanges, les deux parties ont procédé à la signature d'un accord de coopération militaire visant notamment à faciliter le transfert de compétences, le partage d'expériences et la collaboration dans plusieurs domaines militaires et techniques.

À cette occasion, le général Ashraf Salem Zaher a souligné l'importance des relations historiques entre les deux pays. Il a également réaffirmé la volonté de l'Égypte de consolider ses partenariats militaires avec les États africains amis, dans une dynamique de contribution à la sécurité et à la stabilité du continent.
Le ministre Gildas Agonkan a exprimé l'intérêt du Bénin à approfondir ses relations avec l'Égypte dans les domaines de la défense et de la sécurité. Il a salué l'engagement de ce pays en faveur de la promotion de la paix et de la sécurité en Afrique.

Des perspectives de coopération dans l'industrie
En marge de cette rencontre, le ministre béninois a également échangé avec le général de division Mohamed Abdel Fattah Aboubakr, président de l'Organisation arabe pour l'industrialisation (AOI).
Les discussions ont porté sur les possibilités de mobilisation des capacités industrielles et technologiques égyptiennes pour répondre à certains besoins du Bénin. Les secteurs de l'industrie de défense, de la sécurité et des projets de développement ont notamment été abordés.

Les deux parties ont également examiné différentes pistes de coopération dans le domaine de la production industrielle. L'objectif est de favoriser le partage d'expertise, de renforcer les échanges technologiques et de créer de nouvelles opportunités de partenariat entre les deux pays.

Le président de l'Organisation arabe pour l'industrialisation a, de son côté, réaffirmé l'intérêt de son institution pour le développement de relations avec les pays africains. Il a également exprimé sa disponibilité à accompagner les projets de développement du Bénin.

À travers cette visite de travail, le Bénin et l'Égypte affichent leur volonté de donner une nouvelle impulsion à leur coopération bilatérale. Au-delà de l'accord militaire signé, les échanges ouvrent des perspectives de collaboration dans les domaines industriel et technologique, avec des enjeux liés au renforcement des capacités nationales et au développement des relations entre les deux pays.

F. A. A.