The international trade figures used in this Situation Update are based on import and export data reported by states to UN Comtrade, which is the largest source of international customs statistics (Jenzen-Jones and Schroeder, 2018, p. 297).[1] Overall, 156 countries reported more than 77,500 small arms transfers to or from a total of 230 jurisdictions over the period 2019–24.[2]
Due to the voluntary and often incomplete nature of state reporting, these sources do not capture the totality of the international trade, and therefore better reflect commerce involving at least one transparent state. Indeed, if neither the exporter nor the importer reports the details of a transfer to UN Comtrade, the transaction will not be reflected in the data. Moreover, transfers of some light weapons, light weapons ammunition, and accessories are reported in categories that also include other types of equipment not considered to be small arms or light weapons and are therefore excluded from this analysis. Finally, as UN Comtrade uses data on commercial shipments, it may not capture small arms transferred directly by armed forces, such as some shipments of military aid or transfers to troops deployed on exercises abroad.
Isolating military-style small arms from other weapon categories used in UN Comtrade is also challenging, since such weapons can be lumped together with different categories of small arms. This paper uses Harmonized System (HS) category 930190 ‘military weapons; other than revolvers, pistols, and arms of heading 9307, n.e.c. in heading 9301’ as a proxy for military-style small arms in the UN Comtrade data. It is worth noting, however, that even this category may sometimes include errors, such as items being included that are not considered to be small arms and light weapons (Jenzen-Jones and Schroeder, 2018, p. 298; Small Arms Survey, 2009, p. 30).
The visualizations included in this Situation Update show both the data on transfers as reported by the concerned states or regions (‘reporter data’) and the data on those transfers as reported by their trading partners (‘partner data’). This makes it possible to identify discrepancies between reporter and partner data, and whether the overall trends hold in both data subsets. In the text, unless specified otherwise, import data is data reported by the importers, and export data is data reported by the exporters. When significant variations in trends exist between the ‘reporter data’ and the ‘partner data’—that is, the data on these same trade flows reported by the trading partners around the world—these are noted in the text. Partner data is used to highlight the discrepancy and provide a more comprehensive picture.
Discrepancies between reporter and partner data in international trade statistics are not limited to the small arms trade. They can be explained by several factors, including differences in valuation methods across countries; the inclusion, or not, of transshipments and re-exports; and trade fraud (Kee, 2024). Arms researchers have also noted that many states do not report small arms transfers to UN Comtrade, or do so only partially, often reflecting a lack of transparency, which can also affect the consistency of reports (Florquin, Hainard, and Jongleux, 2020, p. 14).
As a result, this Situation Update is skewed towards documenting more transparent countries and particular categories of items, and most certainly under-estimates the total value and extent of the global authorized trade in small arms, and of military-style small arms in particular. Figures should therefore be considered as conservative, but nevertheless informative.
The analysis presented in this Situation Update reflects data entered in UN Comtrade as of 1 August 2025. This means that trade data for recent years, and especially 2024, may not be complete or definitive as some states may still submit data or revise their respective UN Comtrade submissions months after the end of the relevant calendar year (Florquin, Hainard, and Jongleux, 2020, p. 14). While acknowledging this caveat, it was deemed important to include the available data from recent years in light of the broader shifts in the global conventional arms trade that have been documented elsewhere, notably in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (George et al., 2025).
The data presented is as reported to UN Comtrade and not adjusted for inflation. This is due to the relatively short (six-year) period of this study as well as the project’s interest in documenting the extent of discrepancies between importer and exporter data, including in Latin America. Applying inflation rates to this data would, in effect, change the values of what states originally reported, making such comparative analysis more difficult. The Survey uses the United Nations Statistics Division’s regional groupings (UNSD, n.d.). In this paper, Latin America comprises Central and South America but excludes the Caribbean.
[1] When referring to total small arms transfers based on UN Comtrade data, the study includes the following Harmonized System (HS) codes, which encompass both small arms and light weapons categories: 930120, 930190, 930200, 930320, 930330, 930510, 930520, 930521, 930529, 930621, and 930630.
[2] Each of these transfer records provides the aggregate USD value of imports or exports in a specific weapon category between two countries for an entire year. This means that each record may in fact sum up the value of multiple similar individual transfers occurring in a given year.
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