Today SIPRI launched the findings of SIPRI Yearbook 2013, which assesses the current state of international security, armaments and disarmament. Three key findings are emphasized in the press release (which you can also read in Swedish, Catalan and Spanish).
First, alone among the five legally recognized nuclear weapon states, China expanded its nuclear arsenal in 2012:
weapon-possessing states are genuinely willing to give up their nuclear
arsenals. The long-term modernization programmes under way in these states
suggest that nuclear weapons are still a marker of international status and
power,’ says SIPRI Senior Researcher Shannon Kile.
Second, the number of personnel deployed with peace operations worldwide is falling rapidly, due to the withdrawal from Afghanistan:
Syria in 2012 highlighted the weakness of international commitment to the
responsibility to protect. In the end, national interests and deep-rooted
fears that the responsibility to protect undermines the principle of state
sovereignty, seem to weigh heavier than the plight of populations caught up in
conflict,’ said Dr Jaïr
van der Lijn, a SIPRI Senior Researcher, who leads SIPRI’s work on peace
operations, peacebuilding and conflict management.
Third, progress towards a global ban on cluster munitions stalled in 2012:
producers stay outside the Cluster Munitions Convention, they can argue that
cluster munitions remain a “legitimate” means of waging war and
military-industrial product—even if most seem to have acknowledged their
potentially grave humanitarian impacts,’ said SIPRI Researcher Lina Grip,
co-author of a new section of the Yearbook looking at humanitarian arms
control.
The SIPRI Yearbook is a compendium of cutting-edge information and
analysis on developments in armaments, disarmament and international security.
SIPRI Yearbook 2013
includes sections on patterns of organized violence and the
interactions between peace operations and conflict management alongside
authoritative data and analysis on military spending, arms transfers, arms
production, nuclear forces, nuclear non-proliferation and arms control, and
chemical and biological weapon arms control.
Download an English summary of SIPRI Yearbook 2013 (PDF).