As engineers, STEM professionals and compassionate members of the British public, we are writing to express our disgust that the 2025 National Engineering Day campaign has partnered with sponsors complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as those causing climate destruction and documented human rights violations.

The stated aim of National Engineering Day is “to make the UK’s engineers and engineering more visible, and celebrate how they improve everyday lives and shape the world around us” [1]. Therefore it is deeply troubling and at complete odds with the ethics of the engineering profession, that the campaign is providing a promotional platform for companies who profit from clear documented harm. These National Engineering Day sponsors are as follows:

MBDA

MBDA are Europe’s largest manufacturer of missiles and a corporate sponsor of National Engineering Day 2025. They sell parts for bombs that have been used by Israel to kill children and other civilians as part of their ongoing genocide in Gaza [3].

On September 16th 2025, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory stated officially that Israel’s acts in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention [2].

MBDA engineer the wing assembly of the GBU-39 precision-guided bomb, which unfold after launch allowing the bomb to be guided to its target [4]. Thousands of these bombs have been shipped to Israel and a recent investigation verified 24 cases where the GBU-39 was deployed in air strikes that killed civilians. Each one included children among the fatalities and a number of these attacks have been examined by the United Nations [5] and the humanitarian group Amnesty International, which flagged them as suspected war crimes [3].

The image above shows five-year-old Hanin al-Wadie who suffered severe burns to her face and arms, and whose parents and sister were killed when Israel bombed the Fahmi al-Jarjawi school in Gaza City. This attack was carried out while families sheltering there were sleeping. 36 people, half of them children, were killed when Israel targeted the school using the GBU-39. This was confirmed by weapons experts who identified fragments of the MBDA wing assembly in the debris [3].

BP

Fossil fuel emissions are rapidly heating our climate, acidifying oceans, and fuelling unprecedented climate disasters [6]. As the fifth-largest oil and gas company in the World BP bears significant responsibility for this global climate emergency. Yet BP have recently chosen to exacerbate their climate destruction further, by increasing their investments in oil and gas, whilst cutting funding for renewable energy; all at a time when climate science demonstrates that we are off course for limiting global warming to under 3°C by the end of the century [7].

BP also owns and operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, through which Israel receives 28% of its crude oil supply [8]. It has been widely reported that oil from this pipeline is used to produce jet fuel for military aircraft used to bomb civilians in Gaza. By facilitating the transport of the oil that fuels these atrocities, BP is contributing to and therefore complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide. However despite legal challenges outlining their violations of international law and their complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity [8], BP continues to supply Israel with oil.

BP has been succinctly described by leading energy expert Dr Richard Blanchard, as putting “profit over people, nature and our survival” [7]. BP is a Principal Partner of this year’s National Engineering Day.

Rio Tinto

The Mining Giant Rio Tinto is responsible for documented human rights violations and environmental pollution [9]. These harms have been investigated by human rights organisations around the World [10]. One such example is Rio Tinto’s former Panguna mine on the Pacific island of Bougainville. As part of this project the company’s subsidiary discharged over a billion tonnes of mine waste into local rivers, devastating both the environment and the health and livelihoods of local communities [9]. Rio Tinto walked away from the mine without contributing to clean-up or rehabilitation, yet the impacts of the mine continue to infringe on local communities rights to food, water, health, housing and an adequate standard of living. As such Rio Tinto remains in serious violation of its human rights and environmental obligations. One resident of a village nearby to the Panguna mine site described how “the river eats our skin”, in reference to the skin diseases, ulcers and sores experienced by local people, due to Rio Tinto’s toxic mine waste [9]. Rio Tinto is a Principal Partner of this year’s National Engineering Day.

These sponsors represent some of the most harmful engineering companies in the World. As such their involvement in National Engineering Day 2025; as “a day when we invite the public to marvel at engineering” [1] is both an unquestionable moral failure and offensive to those engineers who truly strive to make lives better.

We are therefore calling on the Royal Academy of Engineering to cease all partnerships and sponsorships with arms manufacturers, fossil fuel companies and organisations complicit in genocide, apartheid, human rights violations and climate destruction. To continue these promotional and financial relationships is a clear failure of your stated aim to use your expertise and network “to engineer better lives in the UK and internationally” [11].

Engineering truly does offer solutions for a better world and a better society, however it is the responsibility of organisations such as yours, to ensure that this vital work is not tarnished through affiliation with those who profit from genocide, human suffering and the destruction of nature and our habitable world.

Sincerely,


The Undersigned

References

1 - raeng.org.uk/media/weypq2af/2025-national-engineer...

2 - un.org/unispal/document/israel-has-committed-genoc...

3 - theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/17/european-missile...

4 - https://mbdainc.com/products/diamond-back/

5 - ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/...

6 - academic.oup.com/oocc/article/5/1/kgaf011/8099165...

7 - lboro.ac.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2025/febru...

8 - theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/23/gaza-war-vict...

9 - hrlc.org.au/app/uploads/2025/04/AfterTheMineRioTin...

10 - amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/foi-request-reveals-...

11 - https://raeng.org.uk/about-us/