About the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor

Established as a research programme in 2018, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor is produced and published by Norwegian People's Aid (NPA), a partner organization 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. (As of 31 December 2021, this is all 193 UN member states, the two UN observer states (the Holy See and the State of Palestine), and two other states (the Cook Islands and Niue).) It uses the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as the primary yardstick against which progress towards the elimination of nuclear weapons is measured, because this Treaty codifies the norms and actions that are needed to create and maintain a world free of nuclear weapons. The impact of the TPNW will be gradual, its effectiveness dependant on how its provisions are accepted and applied by each and every state.

As a de facto monitoring regime for the TPNW, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor records all developments related to the universalization of the Treaty. But it also tracks the status of the 197 states in relation to all other relevant multilateral treaties and regimes dealing with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. These include the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the 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), the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and the Conference on Disarmament (CD). Thus, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor functions as a one-stop source of information on the status of all states in relation to all components of the existing architecture for disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor encourages universal adherence to every relevant global treaty.

The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor also sets out clear legal interpretations of each of the prohibitions and positive obligations of the TPNW, and assesses the extent to which the 197 states — regardless of whether they have consented to be bound by the Treaty — act in accordance with them or not. States parties and signatories are categorized as either ‘compliant’ or ‘not compliant’ with the TPNW, whereas states not party are categorized as either ‘compatible’ or ‘not compatible’. This is done with a view to providing guidance on implementation of the Treaty’s obligations: to states that have already ratified or acceded to the Treaty; to those that are considering whether to do so; and to those that could do so in the future.