Article 36 is a specialist non-profit organisation, focused on reducing harm from weapons.

A small and effective team of advocacy and policy experts based primarily in the UK, we work in coalitions for new international legal and policy agreements. We bring our expertise and creativity to briefings, negotiations and strategically convened discussions.

We work together with civil society partners and governments to develop new policies and legal standards that prevent civilian harm from existing and emerging weapons technologies.

Our work is underpinned by rigorous, transparent and independent analysis of how weapons harm civilians, and how to reduce and prevent such harm.

Our team has more than a decade of experience in diplomatic negotiations and in developing practical, actionable policies.

We believe that international standards can respond to humanitarian concerns, and we recognise the power and importance of legal, political and social norms in influencing behaviour.

From framing humanitarian issues and shaping civil society responses, to convening key political meetings and presenting as experts in international treaty negotiations, we provide a critical voice on the role of weapons in our world.

How we work

Developing international laws and standards takes time: the adoption of a treaty is typically the result of a decades work through close partnerships and collective mobilisation. Agreements also require effective support after they have been signed.

Because of this, we are part of the leadership teams of several international coalitions, including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and the Stop Killer Robots campaign, which we coordinated from 2021-24. We currently coordinate and provide leadership and expertise to the International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW).

We have developed a resource on working in global civil society coalitions for those engaging within these partnerships or considering establishing them.

We collaborate closely and in partnership with states and international organisations during work to build new policy outcomes on our focus issues.

We are also pleased to frequently partner with academic institutions, including the University of Liverpool (with whom we had a PhD collaboration), Harvard Law School and the University of Exeter.

Article 36 has been grateful for the funding support of a wide range of government and private organisations, including the governments of Austria, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland, Open Society Foundations, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and DeepMind.

Organisational commitments

Article 36 has an organisational policy not to organise or participate on all male panels. We host the Say No To #Manpanels list of individuals who benefit from their male gender and have committed not to speak on panels that include only men. We work to improve our internal policies and reflection in other areas, and our current policies on equality, diversity and inclusion, parental leave, safeguarding as well as our ethical image usage policy are available on request. This website is built to WCAG 2.0 (AA standard) accessibility, audited by Lighthouse.

Our Impact

Through our innovative policy work and close partnerships, our small team exerts significant strategic influence. Our impact is visible in how our new and creative framings of weapons policy challenges have created policy movement, and in the content of new international agreements.

• Our team played a central and foundational role in framing the use of explosive weapons in populated areas as an urgent humanitarian problem, and in building momentum and political will to respond to this issue, with the adoption of the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas in 2022 a major milestone in this work.
• Our framing of the need for "meaningful human control" over weapons systems has become central to how state representatives, UN bodies, coalition partners and other humanitarian and human rights organisations talk about the challenges with autonomous weapons, and the need for an international legal response. We also provided an early elaboration of legal regulation through both prohibitions and positive obligations - which is, similarly, now key in states' discussions.
• Reframing problems can help move deadlocked discussions to signed treaties. In our 2013 report Banning Nuclear Weapons Article 36 argued that concluding a treaty banning nuclear weapons did not depend on the agreement of nuclear armed states, who historically oppose such bans. As members of the ICAN Steering Group, we rallied a wider coalition around this idea. Drawing on our professional network, we hosted a series of informal, small-group meetings, bringing together diplomats and other important stakeholders. These multi-stakeholder planning discussions were key to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons being adopted in 2017, which is a significant normative step in eroding the legitimacy of and building stigma against nuclear weapons possession.
• Our impact can also be seen in the inclusion of humanitarian concerns in international weapons agreements. With our partners, Article 36 overcame initial ambivalence from negotiators to make sure that assisting victims of nuclear weapons use and testing, and cleaning up contaminated environments, was part of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Current Focus Areas

Our main current projects and work focus on:

• Supporting the implementation of a political commitment to protect civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas
• Advocating for the development of an international legal instrument to control autonomous weapons
• Research and policy analysis to develop a broad lens and policy action for better protecting civilians