A Top Global Think Tank

Conventional weapons

SIPRI’s Conventional Arms Control (CAC) Programme was launched in the latter part of the 1980s as the processes of arms control in Europe gathered momentum toward the end of the cold war.

Accordingly, since then the Programme has dealt with a broad spectrum of arms control issues including:

  • European arms control and disarmament culminating in the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (the CFE Treaty), which was later adapted by the 1999 Agreement on Adaptation of the CFE Treaty (not yet in force).

  • Regional arms control agreements including the 1996 Agreement on Sub-Regional Arms Control in the former Yugoslavia and the 1997 ‘Shanghai Five’s’ Agreement on the Mutual Reduction of Armed Forces in the Border Area;

  • The process of military confidence building in (a) the OSCE area including the Vienna CSBM Documents; the Treaty on Open Skies; regional accords; and so-called norm- and standard-setting measures, and in (b) non-European contexts: North-East Asia and China-Taiwan cross-Strait relations.

  • Global restrictions on conventional arms, notably in the humanitarian context: anti-personnel mines, explosive remnants of war (ERW) and cluster munitions.

Staff