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The prohibition on seeking or receiving assistance

Seven states not party—Belarus, France, Poland, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States—engaged in conduct in 2023 that was not compatible with the TPNW’s prohibition on seeking or receiving assistance to engage in a prohibited act.

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National flags of the United States and South Korea are displayed in front of a B-52H strategic bomber parked at a South Korean Air Force base at Cheongju Airport on 19 October 2023. The nuclear-weapons-capable B-52 bomber landed in South Korea on October 17 in a show of US support for longtime ally Seoul in the face of North Korean military threats. Photo: Anthony Wallace/AFP/NTB

For more information on the conduct that amounted to seeking or receiving assistance to engage in prohibited acts, see the 2023 edition of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor.

ARTICLE 1(1)(f) - INTERPRETATION

Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to: ‘Seek or receive any assistance, in any way, from anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Treaty.’

  • In contrast to Article 1(1)(e) of the TPNW, which prohibits states from assisting prohibited acts by others, Article 1(1)(f) prohibits states from seeking or receiving assistance to violate the Treaty themselves. It does not matter whether or not the assistance is actually received.
  • This precludes any state party from asking any other state or any natural or legal person (i.e., a company) to help it develop, possess, stockpile, test, produce, use, transfer, or receive nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, including where it is sought that foreign nuclear weapons will be stationed or deployed to their territory.
  • A similar prohibition, imposed only on non-nuclear-weapon states, is contained in Article II of the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), though it applies only to manufacture: the undertaking is to ‘not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices’.