The independent resource on global security

Backgrounders

Food security programming: Strengthening preparedness, responses and prevention

With acute food insecurity on the rise around the world, this topical backgrounder presents four suggestions for making food security programming more cost-effective in a time of funding constraints, climate change and heightened conflict risk.

Tensions on the Belarus border: A look at military spending and arms import patterns

With heated rhetoric and intensified military activity along its borders with NATO neighbours, what does SIPRI data reveal about the status of Belarus's military?

Multilateral peace operations in 2022: Developments and trends

To mark the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, SIPRI is releasing new data on multilateral peace operations in 2022.

Iraq in 2023: Challenges and prospects for peace and human security

A snapshot of the situation and remaining challenges for Iraq, two decades after the invasion.

Iraq since the invasion: 20 years in SIPRI data

To commemorate the upcoming 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on 20 March, SIPRI has prepared this Topical Backgrounder along with an Interactive chronology of security developments in Iraq spanning from 2002 to 2021. These materials are components of a larger collection of new materials that SIPRI is creating to commemorate the anniversary.

The proposed hike in Japan’s military expenditure

On 23 December 2022, the Japanese cabinet unveiled its 2023 budget for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), totalling 6.8 trillion yen ($52 billion). The new budget is 26 per cent higher than the JSDF budget for 2022, the largest year-on-year nominal increase in planned military spending since at least 1952.

Environmental accountability, justice and reconstruction in the Russian war on Ukraine

This Topical Backgrounder looks at the steps being taken in and beyond Ukraine to measure war-linked environmental damage, hold Russia to account and support green reconstruction, and puts them in an international context.

Afghanistan and its neighbourhood: A stocktaking of regional cooperation since the Taliban takeover

This topical backgrounder presents several indications that a more regionally grounded, cohesive perspective and approach for Afghanistan is emerging—small seeds from which a sustainable response to Afghanistan’s peace, security and development challenges might grow.

Arms transfer and SALW control-related assistance in the Middle East and North Africa: Identifying needs and bridging gaps

Using information from SIPRI’s database of ATT-relevant cooperation and assistance activities, this Topical Backgrounder provides an updated picture of assistance activities involving countries in the MENA.

Climate-related security risks in the SADC region

This SIPRI Topical Backgrounder provides an overview of the climate-related security risks in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, the current discourses on these risks within SADC, and SADC’s institutional architecture and policy responses to climate change.