Human Rights Facts (34): Arms Trade
This post on the international arms trade is a follow-up of a previous post on the evolution of war in the world and of one on the evolution of military budgets and defense spending.
Again, it’s useless to oppose trade in or production of arms in general. People and countries have to be able to defend themselves. However, weapons are mainly used for purposes other than self-defense. You don’t need arms to violate human rights, but it makes it much easier. As most countries don’t produce enough arms for their own needs, they have to import them. It’s difficult to estimate the precise financial value of the international arms trade because statistics are often highly confidential, for obvious reasons. The estimated financial value of the international arms trade varies between $25 and 35 billion, which represents about 0.5 % of world trade. After a downward trend following the end of the Cold War, trade has increased during the last decade:
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The U.S. is the top supplier of weapons to other countries, accounting for around 35% of worldwide weapons sales, followed by Russia, Britain, Germany, France and China. The main buyers of arms are China, India, and the United Arab Emirates.
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This covers only international transfers. We should also include domestic sales of arms. Many industrialized countries have a domestic arms industry to supply their own military forces, and a domestic trade in weapons for use by their citizens. Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the phrase “military-industrial complex”, where the armed forces, industry and politics become closely linked and encourage each other’s hunger for arms.
We see a similar increase in data on arms production. According to SIPRI,
“arms sales by the 100 largest arms-producing companies in the world (excluding China) – the SIPRI Top 100 – amounted to $315 billion in 2006, an increase of 9 per cent in nominal terms and 5 per cent in real terms.”
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Arms exports are often used, not only for the benefit of the national economy, but also to influence other countries.
Over 600 million items of small arms are in circulation. According to Oxfam, around 500.000 individuals die in small arms-conflicts every year, approximately one death per minute.
