Research Institutes

This page lists a small selection of institutes with a particular interest in research on arms production and related issues.

• Germany:

Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and facilitating the processes whereby people, skills, technology, equipment, and financial and economic resources can be shifted away from the defense sector and applied to alternative civilian uses.
In its annual Conversion Survey BICC provides estimates for national and world employment in arms production.

• South Africa:

Institute For Security Studies.

• United Kingdom:

The UK Chapter of Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR). ECAAR seeks to promote better understanding and friendlier relations between nations, races and classes of people; to foster a desire for universal, perpetual peace; to support the movement for world disarmament; and to promote the creation of a system in which international disputes are solved without war, through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, judicial proceeding, the United Nations or other multinational institutions for the settlement of conflicts.

• USA:

The Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute engages in public education and policy advocacy aimed at promoting restraint in the international arms trade. The center has published studies on US arms industry lobbying.
[See: Profiling the Small Arms Industry by Frida Berrigan and Michelle Ciarrocca, November 2000; the report provides information about six companies producing small arms: Alliant Techsystems, Colt Manufacturing, Denel South Africa, FN Herstal, Heckler and Koch and Saco Defense]