Every New Year I keep an eye on the Doomsday Clock by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 2026 Doomsday Clock Statement – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The Bulletin was set up in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons for The Manhattan Project. Two years later, in 1947, they came up with the Doomsday Clock; which tracks the proliferation of technologies, conflicts and other stressors such as biological threats, climate change to assess global vulnerability.
If the apocalypse or a nuclear attack is considered to happen at midnight, the time on the clock illustrates how close we are to that event taking place.
The threats assessed now include environmental disaster, biohazard and global wars. Since 2010 we have moved increasingly close to midnight. In the last update, released recently (27 January 2026), it edged ever closer to global catastrophe at 85 seconds…
The technology for all out war has been with us since 1945 but the other factors that matter are the temperature for war, mood of the leaders and compulsion to fight. As the Bulletin says many major world leaders have become more aggressive – at home and abroad. For example, in the US we see Trump’s actions causing major crisis in his own cities like Minneapolis and Maine.
The imminent ending of agreements to stop nuclear arms proliferation is happening at a time when new agreements seem uncertain.
The failure to find resolution to the climate crisis, which the US is not seeing as a priority, and in which the COP (Conference of the Parties) meetings have failed to address fossil fuel consumption is another driver for the statistic. Asian, African, and South American countries are the most likely to suffer the harms of climate change while the west is better placed to mitigate its effects.
Sadly, one aspect of those matters, racism, appears to be getting worse on a global scale. It is not just a feeling or sense of concern as we are seeing an increase in extremist parties making political footholds globally; this view is also supported by sources such as the United Nations, UNESCO and Amnesty International amongst others.
UNESCO stat
According to UNESCO’s newly launched Global Outlook on Racism and Discrimination, compiled using AI analysis of world news, race accounts for 38% of reported discrimination cases globally, followed by sex and gender (33%) and ethnicity (20%).
Alarmingly, 18% of cases involve physical attacks, underscoring the violence and harm many face daily. Systematic oppression, tied to societal and institutional structures, makes up 25% of incidents.
Dr Ashwini KP, the Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur (SR) on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, presented three reports during the Interactive Dialogue held on 3 July 2025, at the 27th and 28th meetings of the 59th session of the Human Rights Council.
- The first Report focused on her official visit to Brazil, highlighting systemic racism and the urgent need for reparative justice for Afro-Brazilian communities, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalised groups affected by historical injustices.
- The second Report explored intersectionality as a crucial framework for achieving racial justice. Evidence was drawn globally from almost every member state of marginalised communities or state endorsed systems of racism. Dr Ashwini emphasised that tackling racism requires understanding its intersection with other forms of discrimination, including gender, disability, and migration status, and called for this approach to be integrated into laws and policies.
- The third Report criticised the glorification of Nazism as a legal and moral imperative, documenting the rise of neo-Nazi ideologies and urging Member States to strengthen legal measures to combat such extremist views.
As well as providing evidence to the Human Rights Council, Amnesty International has separately published ‘The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Inequality’ documenting the increasing use of ‘racist’ technologies at borders which exacerbate underlying racial, economic, and social inequalities at borders and beyond.
Migrant workers and others with insecure citizenship status are often subject to the same forms of digitally enabled surveillance, monitoring, and exploitation as asylum seekers and refugees, and are similarly targeted by these technologies because of their inability to opt out or seek redress from harm. These technologies are often designed primarily by for profit organisations who are not concerned with human rights or the ethics of increased drone surveillance or biometric sensors and are poorly regulated, if at all, by governments.
Globally, a concern is people are being manipulated to operate for and by racist systems, ignore increasing problems and endorse governmental structures of oppression in order to increase these threats. Others, find it easier to turn a blind eye to these activities.
Those doing the manipulation do so for many reasons, often local power or personal power; or sell war products; or control of land and other natural resources. Many leaders rather than minimising our differences, focusing on our similarities and finding ways to reduce conflict are ramping up polarities for personal gain. It strikes me that many of those pursuing these causes feel invincible when they do these things.
At a very strategic level the Doomsday Clock tells us otherwise. The truth is when we allow people to harden, to be aggressive and in practice to make arguments of oppression or the case for one ethnicity or race or person over another, for low tolerance of diversity and hostile environments for the ‘other’ we do not become more invincible. We become at greater risk; all of us – each and every one.
This is why ending racism is important, not just for those of use who suffer it, but for all of us. This is why we all need to be active anti-racists.
HRC59: Intersectionality from a Racial Justice Perspective
