Director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), Renata Dwan, warned on Tuesday that the risk of using nuclear weapons is at its highest since World War Two.

Dwan deemed it an “urgent” issue that the world should take more seriously rather than ignore, noting that nuclear modernization programs are in progress and the traditional arms control arrangements are being brushed aside.

“I think that it’s genuinely a call to recognize, and this has been somewhat missing in the media coverage of the issues, that the risks of nuclear war are particularly high now, and the risks of the use of nuclear weapons, for some of the factors I pointed out, are higher now than at any time since World War Two,” she told reporters in Geneva.

“How we think about that, and how we act on that risk and the management of that risk, seems to me a pretty significant and urgent question that isn’t reflected fully in the (U.N.) Security Council,” she added.