About the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor
The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor tracks progress towards a safer world: one without nuclear weapons. It is a non-governmental research programme and de facto monitoring regime for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Established in 2018, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor is produced and published by Norwegian People’s Aid, a partner organisation of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor evaluates the nuclear-weapons-related policies and practices of each of the 197 states that can become party to global treaties for which the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) is the depositary. (All 193 UN member states, the two UN observer states (the Holy See and the State of Palestine), and two other states; Cook Islands and Niue.) It aims to be an accessible and trusted long-term source of accurate information on progress in nuclear disarmament and analysis of the key challenges. Its central purpose is to highlight 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.
Using the TPNW as a yardstick against which the progress towards a world without nuclear weapons can be measured, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor records developments related to the universalisation of the Treaty. It also tracks the status of all states in relation to other relevant treaties and regimes dealing with weapons of mass destruction, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) treaties, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Partial Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (PTBT), Safeguards Agreements and Additional Protocols with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Finally, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor sets out clear interpretations of each of the prohibitions and positive obligations of the TPNW, and assesses the extent to which the world’s states – whether they have consented to be bound by the Treaty or not – act in accordance with them or not. This is done with a view to providing guidance to states that have already ratified or acceded to the Treaty, those that are currently considering whether to do so, and those that could do so in the future.