In , many regional organizations navigated the continued, albeit lessened, impact of the COVID pandemic and increased tensions resulting from the war in Ukraine to tackle a wide range of concerns related to weapons of mass destruction and conventional arms, in particular the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. While public health restrictions were gradually eased across regions, allowing a range of in-person activities to resume, virtual meeting technologies continued to provide valuable support in taking forward a range of projects and initiatives.
The United Nations maintained regular engagement with regional and subregional organizations through regular policy dialogues, long-term projects and exchanges. The war in Ukraine brought immediate implications for the regional security architecture in Europe. The war affected key operations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose member States could not find agreement to extend the mandates of its Special Monitoring Mission or Project Coordinator in Ukraine.
This graph shows the overall increase in global military expenditures from to , as well as the regional shares in such spending. Military expenditures grew in four of the five geographical regions in Spending decreased in Africa Regarding treaties on weapons of mass destruction, 14 States ratified or signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons during the year.
In Africa, five States ratified the Treaty, and three signed it. The five nuclear-weapon States of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [7] maintained varying positions on the relevant protocols to each of the five nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties, by which the States could commit to respecting the nuclear-weapon-free status of the corresponding regions and could undertake not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against States parties to the agreements.
States also continued to pursue the establishment of new nuclear-weapon-free zones, principally through efforts to create such a zone in the Middle East. The participating States also reaffirmed their commitment to keeping the process open and inclusive in working towards the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
