Action on Armed Violence

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) aims to lessen the effects of armed violence by researching and monitoring its causes and consequences. Our primary focus is on the impact of explosive weapons that can cause widespread damage in populated areas. Since October 2010, we have been conducting a global assessment of explosive violence. Our efforts include examining various case studies related to the harm caused by explosive weapons. This includes the lasting effects in countries like Sri Lanka, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as NATO air strikes, attacks using improvised explosive devices by extremist groups, and the wide-reaching impact of explosive weapons in Ukraine, Jordan, and Israel, among others. We share our findings at international platforms, including the UN, and have presented our evidence on the harm caused by explosive violence to the UK Parliament, think tanks, and public discussions. Our research is frequently referenced in the media, and we are regular contributors to discussions on armed violence worldwide. For further details, please reach out to Iain Overton at [email protected].

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Articles

The martyr’s logic: why provoking Iran risks a global spiral of violence

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

The modern Middle-Eastern suicide bomber, the archetypal face of 21st-century terrorism, did not first emerge from the rubble of 9/11 nor the insurgencies in Iraq and Syria. Rather, the modern architecture of martyrdom was born earlier, in a different war and under a different banner: that of the Islamic Republic of Iran during its brutal conflict with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s. This origin story matters now more than ever.
A brief guide to Iranian ballistic missiles

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

On the evening of June 12, 2025, Israel launched a surprise air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and senior leadership. The initial strikes hit the Natanz uranium enrichment site and key nodes in Iran’s ballistic missile programme, reportedly killing much of Iran’s top military command and several senior nuclear scientists. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the assault as a pre-emptive blow against Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Inside Palantir: profits, power and the kill machine

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

Here, Manasa Narayanan from The Citizens speaks to a former Palantir employee, who has now turned critic, agitator and educator speaking out against the tech company. One of the most defining images of Trump’s second inauguration was the tech overlords filing up to declare their allegiance. Perhaps this line up was a demonstration that they wield great powers too.
Putin’s wartime arsenal: inside Russia’s re-industrialised war machine

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

More than three years into its bloody invasion of Ukraine, Russia has transformed into a full-scale wartime economy. Despite sweeping Western sanctions, the Kremlin has maintained economic stability and redirected state spending into defence production, with military expenditure now accounting for nearly 40% of the federal budget.
The vanishing children: the Gaza Ministry of Health’s quiet redaction of thousands of deaths fuelled doubt - but the data suggests something far darker than deception - AOAV

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

In March 2024, nine-year-old Fouad Hazem Fouad Hamada was killed alongside his father and three sisters when an Israeli airstrike destroyed their home in Khan Younis. In December 2023, ten-year-old Sara Khalil Harb Qadieh was shot in the head by an Israeli drone while sheltering in a school-turned-refuge in southern Gaza. And in October 2023, sixteen-year-old Aya Muhammad Abu Shawish was buried with her family in the rubble of their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Britain’s military embrace of Israel’s war on Gaza examined

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

When Hamas fighters breached Israel’s defences on 7 October 2023 – killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking hundreds hostage – one of the staunchest responses came from London. Within days, Britain dispatched military assets to the eastern Mediterranean in a show of support for Israel’s counter-offensive in Gaza (Reuters, 2023).
Review: "The Alibi of AI" by Anthony Downey

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

In The Alibi of AI, published this week in Digi War, the British academic Anthony Downey delivers a broadside against the creeping normalisation of algorithmic warfare. He argues, with his signature careful wording, that artificial intelligence in military targeting has become not just a tool of war, but a rationale for it. He leans heavily upon the witnessed carnage of Israel’s war on Gaza to do so.
The BBC and Gaza: a public broadcaster under fire

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

Few institutions are as embedded in the British psyche as the BBC. With its global reach and reputation for impartiality, it occupies a central place in the UK’s information ecosystem. Yet a new report by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), a Muslim Council of Britain project, challenges that image.
The Golem protocol: AI, war, and the theologies of control

1 week ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

In the Jewish folklore of 16th-century Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel fashioned a man out of clay. This golem, brought to life by the Hebrew word אמת (emet, meaning “truth”) inscribed on its forehead, was intended to defend the Jewish ghetto from anti-Semitic violence. It obeyed at first, powerful and tireless. But over time, the golem grew unruly. Its strength became a threat.
Justice in the balance? Oleksandra Matviichuk’s call to action to the British parliament concerning Russian war crimes in Ukraine

2 weeks ago | aoav.org.uk | Iain Overton

On 12 June 2025, Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk addressed a packed Committee Room in the Houses of Parliament.