Start a free trial
Menu

AJP-3.25

AJP-3.25 Allied joint doctrine for non-combatant evacuation operations

NATO commanders and their staffs at the operational level, with a secondary reference role for coalition partners, non-NATO nations, and NATO or non-NATO civilian actors

AJP-3.25 is NATO's Allied Joint Publication for non-combatant evacuation operations, doctrine for military commanders and diplomats to plan and conduct the evacuation of civilians from a crisis area; nations record their agreement to use it in STANAG 2514.

Edition
A
Published
2025-11

What it is

AJP-3.25 is NATO's Allied Joint Doctrine for Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations, or NEOs: "an operation conducted to relocate designated non-combatants threatened in a foreign country to a place of safety." It is written for a specific reader, and says so directly: "AJP-3.25 is written for NATO commanders and their staffs at the operational level engaged in joint operations." Two further readerships are named alongside that primary one: "the doctrine also provides a useful framework for operations conducted by a coalition of partners and non-NATO nations," and it separately "provides a reference for NATO civilian and non-NATO civilian actors." Nowhere does it address a supplier, manufacturer, or certification body, and nothing in it creates a requirement a company is assessed against.

This is Edition A, Version 1, promulgated in November 2025. It supersedes AJP-3.4.2, Edition A, Version 1, which it directs be destroyed, a renumbering of doctrine that previously lived under a different Allied Joint Publication code rather than a routine revision of a prior AJP-3.25.

Who is actually responsible for an evacuation

The doctrine is careful, from its Preface onward, to place a NEO where it belongs: with states and their diplomatic missions, not with NATO's military chain. "NEOs are state diplomatic initiatives with Alliance forces participating in a supporting role," and whether a NATO-led NEO happens at all is a national decision taken operation by operation: "participation in a NATO-led non-combatant evacuation (NEO) will be decided by each Allied state on a case-by-case basis, depending on each unique situation." The senior state diplomatic representative in the country, the head of mission (HOM), is the responsible authority for the evacuation of that state's own designated non-combatants, called "entitled personnel" (EP) in this doctrine's terms, a narrower category than "non-combatants" generally: government employees, their dependents, or others specifically designated by the appropriate authority.

Command of the military side stays separate. "While the HOMs are the responsible state authorities, they do not exercise command over the joint force." The commander joint force command (COM JFC) retains military command of Alliance forces throughout, reporting through the NATO Command Structure to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Diplomatic mission security personnel and joint force personnel answer to two distinct chains of command, and the doctrine flags this as something that has caused friction in practice and must be understood by everyone involved before an operation starts.

How it binds, and how it does not

AJP-3.25 does not bind a company, or even a nation, by existing. NATO nations record their commitment to use it in a separate agreement, STANAG 2514: "the agreement of nations to use this publication is recorded in STANAG 2514." A nation ratifies that STANAG and then implements the doctrine through its own national orders and training; ratification can carry reservations, and this edition's own record of national reservations includes Italy's dispute over how the doctrine assigns military police versus stability policing roles during a NEO. None of this reaches a company directly. Where a supplier encounters AJP-3.25 at all, it is because a contract or tasking has placed its people or services alongside a national or NATO evacuation effort, most plausibly as a contracted provider of logistics, transport, catering, billeting, or interpretation: the doctrine itself expects that "support may still be obtained locally through contracts with individual civilian providers," coordinated through an assigned contracting or purchasing officer.

Planning, phases, and organisation

Chapter 4 works through contingency and predeployment planning: the diplomatic mission's own evacuation contingency plan, and the staged notification system many missions use as a crisis develops, from "stand fast" through leaving by commercial means while it remains available, to official evacuation, to shelter in place. Chapter 5 sets out six phases at the operational level - planning, preparation, pre-deployment, deployment, execution, and redeployment - and the joint force organisation built to run them: an advance headquarters, a main body, and an evacuation force typically built from a forward command element, and administrative, marshalling, security, sustainment, and communications elements. Annex A is a functional-area planning checklist running across intelligence, operations, logistics, medical, legal, communications, public affairs, and political considerations, and Annex B applies the joint intelligence preparation of the operating environment process from AIntP-17 specifically to a NEO.

What the doctrine actually specifies

Some of the most concrete requirements sit in procedural detail rather than in the chapter narrative. On political asylum: commanders "may not grant political asylum to any foreign national," though they may grant temporary refuge under emergency conditions where there is imminent danger to someone's safety, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe approval is required before anyone granted temporary refuge can be released. On pets: only dogs and cats are ever authorised for evacuation on a military or chartered aircraft, and even then "the evacuation of pets is not normally authorised"; any commercial transport of a pet is arranged and paid for by the family. On deceased evacuees, human remains are never transferred until every living entitled person has been safely evacuated. On diplomats' own protections during evacuee processing, Annex E states that "the persons, property, papers, and families of HOMs are exempt from search under any circumstances without specific direction from the North Atlantic Council," and diplomatic pouches are never searched.

The doctrine is also explicit about what it does not cover. Repatriation, the return of citizens to their home state, is "not included in NEO" and treated as a separate process that follows one. Nor is a NEO treated as a form of personnel recovery, even though the two can look similar in practice: "NEOs are not considered to be a subset of PR."

Sustainment, and the case for contracted support

Chapter 6 states the sustainment problem plainly: a NEO usually happens somewhere with no standing support arrangement, so "the only guarantee of sufficient sustainment is if the Alliance force deploys with it." Host-nation support, where a government is willing and able to provide it, is one route; the other, which the doctrine treats as routine rather than exceptional, is local contracting for civilian transport, billeting, catering, and similar services, run under an assigned contracting officer. This is the doctrine's main point of contact with an ordinary commercial supplier; everything else in the publication addresses commanders, staffs, and diplomats directly.

How it is assessed

Nobody is certified, audited, or inspected against AJP-3.25, and the document names no such scheme. What it describes instead is internal to NATO: "for a NEO, the after-action report suffices as the assessment of the operation," supplemented by example indicators (numbers of entitled personnel evacuated, evacuation control centres operational, and similar measures) a joint force may track while an operation is under way, and by NATO's standing lessons-learned process. None of this is a mechanism an organisation outside NATO's command structure is assessed against.

Where it sits among related doctrine

AJP-3.25 is "directly subordinate to" AJP-3, the doctrine for the conduct of operations generally, and its own Preface names three related publications: AJP-3.24 on peace support, AJP-3.26 on the military contribution to humanitarian assistance, and AJP-3.27 on counterinsurgency. Elsewhere it draws on AJP-5 for the operations planning process, AJP-6 for communication and information systems, AJP-3.12 for military engineering support, AJP-3.14 for risk management and force protection, and AJP-3.5 for special operations, among a longer list the standards explorer shows in full. Its own cover agreement is STANAG 2514, the instrument nations actually ratify.

Obtaining the document

AJP-3.25 is unclassified ("NON CLASSIFIED") and free of charge, like all NATO standardization documents. NATO's Standardization Document Database lists the current edition; we do not host a copy or sell it.

How we help

AJP-3.25 is operational doctrine for NATO commanders and diplomats, not a management-system standard, and the work it describes - planning an evacuation, running an evacuation control centre, screening entitled personnel, coordinating with a head of mission - happens in the field, not in software. It creates no requirement a company is assessed against, and no certification scheme exists for it.

Where a ComplyTrain customer touches this doctrine, it is most often as a contracted civilian provider of logistics, transport, catering, billeting, or interpretation supporting a forward mounting base or temporary safe location, exactly the kind of local contracting the doctrine itself expects. For that work, ComplyTrain holds the same evidence trail it holds against any other contractual requirement: the trained people, the documented procedure, and the record that both existed when a customer or auditor asks. ComplyTrain does not plan a NEO, run an evacuation control centre, decide who counts as entitled personnel, or stand in for a head of mission's or a joint force commander's judgement; that stays with the military and diplomatic staff who own it.

What a specific contract requires is set by the contract and the customer's quality clause, never by us. See what else sits alongside AJP-3.25 in the standards explorer, and talk to us about the documentation trail behind the contracted work your organisation does around an evacuation effort.

Standards it references

Questions

Does AJP-3.25 place any obligation on a company?

No. It is written for NATO commanders and their staffs, not for companies. It binds nations through STANAG 2514, which they ratify and implement through national orders; a company only encounters it where a contract or tasking places contracted services, such as local logistics or transport, alongside an evacuation effort.

Is there a certification for AJP-3.25?

No. The document names no certification body, notified body, government-surveillance regime, or audit of an organisation. It is doctrine, assessed by NATO internally through the after-action report and its standing lessons-learned process, not something an external body certifies.

What is the difference between AJP-3.25 and STANAG 2514?

STANAG 2514 is the agreement NATO nations ratify to use this publication; AJP-3.25 is the doctrine itself. Ratification and implementation are separate steps, and a nation can ratify with reservations, as recorded for this edition.

Can commanders grant political asylum during a NEO?

No. Commanders "may not grant political asylum to any foreign national." They may grant temporary refuge under emergency conditions of imminent danger, but releasing anyone who received it requires Supreme Allied Commander Europe approval.

Can pets be evacuated during a NEO?

Only dogs and cats, and even then the doctrine states that "the evacuation of pets is not normally authorised." Where it is approved, families must provide the pet's own container, health and vaccination documentation, and bear the cost of any commercial transport themselves.

Does a NEO count as personnel recovery?

No. The doctrine states directly that "NEOs are not considered to be a subset of PR," even though the two can involve similar planning and capabilities.