Working paper presented by Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the Small Arms Survey to the Twelfth Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty, August 2026.
'High-profile port seizures consistently disprove a long-held assumption regarding arms trafficking - demonstrating that the world's most destabilizing volumes of illicit weapons move not across land borders, but by sea. The Global Study on Firearms Trafficking 2020 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that while interceptions from vessels constitute only 6% of global customs cases, they account for roughly 33% of all firearms seized by customs. Traffickers favour using maritime routes for high-volume bulk consignments over carrying smaller quantities by land.
Despite a 20-year international campaign to combat the threat from illicit man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS), acquisition and use of these weapons by non-state armed groups continues, especially in the Middle East and North Africa region.
On 10 December 2025, the Small Arms Survey and the Center for Security Studies 'CENSS' held an event for the launch of a new report titled 'Weapons Compass: Proliferation and Control of Arms and Ammunition in Wartime Ukraine'
Since the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, vast quantities of small arms, light weapons, and ammunition have been deployed to the front lines, some of which have been lost or abandoned by combatants and subsequently found and stockpiled by civilians over the course of the war.
The Caribbean region continues to suffer from high levels of firearm-related violence, with worrying developments that include the recruitment of children and adolescents into armed gangs, shootings in hospitals, and a surge in gang violence. Most of the weapons seized from perpetrators of these and other crimes are handguns, but recent data reveals a rise in trafficking of AR- and AK-pattern rifles and large-capacity magazines to some Caribbean countries.
If a ceasefire is soon declared, how can Ukraine ensure a sustainable post-war recovery?
'While firearm seizures often take centre stage in research and media articles, ammunition receives far less attention. Pistols, shotguns, and rifles cannot maim and kill without ammunition, yet ammunition seizures are frequently overlooked when not accompanied by firearms. The analysis of ammunition seizures can, nevertheless, provide important insights into the nature and scope of armed violence in a given region and, by extension, the public health risks posed by firearm-related injuries and deaths.'
Under the Global Framework for Through-life Conventional Ammunition Management, States committed to enhance the marking and tracing of conventional ammunition under national ownership and control (Objective 11), including by applying markings such as the manufacturer, the calibre or type, the year of production and the lot number.
Newly acquired data on firearms seizures at US ports of exit shows that trafficking dynamics vary significantly between the Caribbean and Latin America, and even within these regions. These differences include the number of seizures, the types of seized weapons, the illegal shipments’ modes of transport, and the seizure locations. Some of these differences are consistent with previous studies, while others are surprising.