Skip to main content

About the Ban Monitor

The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor was established in 2018 and is a de facto monitoring regime for the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Using the TPNW as a yardstick against which progress towards a world without nuclear weapons may be measured, the Ban Monitor records progress related to signature, ratification, entry into force, and universalization of the Treaty. It also evaluates the extent to which the policies and practices of all states comply with the core obligations in the TPNW. The term “compliance” is used in a broad sense to refer to the compatibility of each state’s behaviour with the prohibitions of the TPNW, regardless of whether the state in question has adhered to the TPNW. A central purpose of the Ban Monitor is to highlight the specific activities that stand between the international community and the fulfilment of one of its most urgent and universally accepted goals: the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The Ban Monitor aims to:

  • Be an accessible and trusted long-term source of well-documented, objective information on progress made and analysis of key challenges.
  • Provide knowledge which is essential for an informed public debate on nuclear weapons.
  • Help build capacity among non-nuclear weapon states to actively participate in and contribute to international frameworks for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
  • Contribute to a change in the way that nuclear weapons are talked about and perceived, and thus reinforce efforts to address the threats that nuclear weapons pose.

In addition to its comprehensive prohibitions on all nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices, the TPNW contains a series of positive obligations. These include reporting; accepting international safeguards on nuclear material; the duty to destroy any stockpiles and eliminate nuclear-weapon programmes; the duty to ensure the removal of any foreign nuclear weapons from a state party’s territory; the duty to implement the Treaty at domestic level, including through the adoption of national legislation; the duty to assist victims of the use or testing of nuclear weapons and to remediate contaminated land; and the duty to promote adherence to the Treaty. The Ban Monitor will also be evaluating states parties’ compliance with these positive obligations once the Treaty has entered into force.