Official texts of the Alliance, from the Treaty and its protocols to the Partnership for Peace documents, as well as the complete texts of all NATO Ministerial Communiqués since 1949.
For Other NATO Official Documents contact nac.central.registry@hq.nato.int or send a written request addressed to Head of Registry, NATO HQ, 1110 Brussels, Belgium.
Thematic Index of NATO Topics. Background information on the Alliance, its policies, activities and structures. Browse through the thematic overview below OR the alphabetical index
NATO Basic Texts is a thematic overview of NATO's most important official texts : from the Treaty and its protocols to the Partnership for Peace
Welcome to NATOTerm, the official NATO Terminology Database.
NATOTerm contains non-classified military terminology, as well as non-military terminology relevant to NATO. NATOTerm is available in both NATO official languages, i.e. English and French, and is maintained by the NATO Terminology Office, which is part of the NATO Standardization Office.
NATOTerm is updated on a regular basis to promulgate newly approved terminology. In addition to this, NATOTerm is being populated with the legacy terminology from specialist NATO glossaries.
Overviews of the most recent updates are listed below in chronological order. Please inform the NATO Terminology Office if you have come across any mistakes, discrepancies or missing data.
NATO Standardization Agreements:
NATO Encyclopedia is a compilation of archived online topic pages which explain every aspect of the Organization: its origin and fundamental security tasks, policies and decision-making processes, peace-support and crisis-management operations and how the Alliance tackles threats and develops capabilities. The pages also cover NATO’s partnerships and cooperative activities, its civilian and military structures, and specialised organisations and agencies, as well as NATO’s wider activities:
Secretary General's Annual Report
Annual Report to Council by the Resource Policy and Planning Board (RPPB)
The RPPB is a subsidiary body of the North Atlantic Council and has a lead policy and planning role in all NATO military common funded resource areas. The Annual Report analyses how NATO’s common-funded resources support approved Alliance objectives and priorities; assesses the performance of military common funding; and reviews the financial situation of the NATO Security Investment Programme and the Civil and Military Budgets.
The NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme
The Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme is one of NATO’s most important partnership tools, providing support to NATO’s political framework by developing and implementing joint collaborative activities with all partner countries. The Annual Report presents you with a detailed overview of the work and main achievements of the SPS Programme.
Summary of the National Reports of NATO Member and Partner Nations to the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP) on the implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security
NATO's comparative study on the integration of gender perspectives in the armed forces.
This first version of the NATO Wargaming Handbook (2023) intends to provide a foundation for NATO to develop a greater capacity to conduct quality professional wargaming.
NATO Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Handbook (2023) The NATO ADL handbook is published and maintained by the NATO Training Group (NTG) Individual Training and Educational Developments (IT&ED) task group. It provides guidelines for the development, implementation and evaluation of technology enhanced learning.
NATO Lessons Learned Handbook (June 2022) was published by the Joint Analysis & Lessons Learned Centre (3rd ed.) uses NATO's approach to Lessons Learned as the underlying model but has been written to be relevant to any organization.
The purpose of this handbook is to guide and assist you in fulfilling your role in supporting their organization and NATO to effectively learn from experience.
Allied Command Operations (ACO) /Allied Command Transformation (ACT) published in May 2020 the Allied Command Operations and Allied Command Transformation Public Affairs Handbook (May 2020).
CD&E Handbook (2018) was published by Allied Command Transformation (ACT).
Concept Development and Experimentation (CD&E) is a fundamental process which enables transformation activities. This CD&E Handbook provides basic information for the concept developer based on approved NATO guidance and policy as well as best practice derived from a rich history of CD&E experience. Although designed to address Alliance CD&E activities it has been developed with a vision of informing NATO nations, our partners and other nations and organizations. Accordingly, significant effort has been taken to ensure applicability of the methodology across the broadest user community.
The NATO Operations Assessment Handbook defines and describes operations assessment principles, procedures and techniques in NATO, within the construct of operations planning, and should be used in conjunction with the Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive (COPD).
NATO Logistics Handbook (November 2012) is published under the auspices of the Logistics Committee (LC) and aims to introduce logisticians at every level to some of NATO’s basic principles, policies, concepts and the organisations which they will encounter in the course of their work.
NATO Handbook (2006) was published by the NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division under the authority of the Secretary General as a reference book on the Alliance and on Alliance policies.
It is no longer updated and is shown here for historical purposes only. For an updated content, please refer to the Encyclopedia of NATO Topics webpage.