ATT Monitor, Vol. 15, No. 1
The horrific harms of selling arms: a report from the ATT intersessional meetings
4 May 2022
Allison Pytlak and Laura Varella
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The world is awash in weapons. This observation is, sadly, not by any means a new one but does feel particularly prescient right now. As states and civil society met in Geneva last week for the most recent round of Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) meetings, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual report on military spending. In the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, military expenditure reached a record level high of US $2.1 trillion. Some of the main drivers of that growth are owing to military budget increases among states that were already big spenders such as Russia, China, and India, but also to some sizeable increases from a small handful of states that had otherwise been quite consistent—Australia, Iran, Japan, and Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the military aid and arms transfers to Ukraine over the last several weeks are occurring at unprecedented levels and being approved by some states at an expedited pace. This is raising questions from some as to how diligently arms transfer risk assessments are being conducted. Others have noted that history has shown us how sending arms to a warring party can contribute to exacerbating and prolonging conflict, and those weapons may fall into illicit circulation during or after the conflict. War profiteering was a central message of activists participating in the #StopLockheedMartin global days of action that occurred from 21-28 April, as the ATT meetings were opening. The website of the organisers notes that “Lockheed Martin’s revenue from arms deals in 2020 was USD $65 billion. It’s an unbelievable amount of money based on an horrific amount of harm to our planet and her peoples.”
It was in this context that from 26-29 April the ATT’s three working groups were convened and a preparatory committee (PrepCom) for the Treaty’s upcoming annual conference was held in a hybrid format from Geneva. The overall tone of the discussions was fairly technical and unlike other disarmament and arms control forums, oddly devoid of many political statements about the Ukraine conflict. While politicisation has been detrimental to progress in some of these forums, or has been instrumentalised to help achieve other objectives, it is also important to recognise that the work to control arms and prevent humanitarian suffering does not occur in a vacuum.
What did come through clearly as an urgent and substantive concern from both civil society and states is the decline in transparency and in particular, meaningful transparency. The increase in private national reporting, coupled with declining rates of compliance with ATT reporting obligations and the challenges posed by data aggregation are collectively undermining the Treaty’s transparency aims and objectives. “As a consequence, there is now less information available on the global arms trade than in previous years,” observed an expert participant at last week’s meetings.
Our report provides more information on this and other topics.
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