SIPRI Background Papers

Africa is responsible for a mere 4 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, 57 per cent of the countries facing the highest double burden of climate exposure and political fragility risks are located in sub-Saharan Africa. As the risks are most pronounced in fragile countries and transcend boundaries, responses from intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the African Union (AU) are crucial in developing the relevant solutions.

The Arctic region is going through unprecedented changes in its physical, social, geo-economic and geopolitical realities. These rapid changes are having a considerable impact on Arctic security. The various security challenges in the Arctic are often examined in silos, assessing one problem at a time, but the complexity of the risks can best be understood when these challenges are looked at in connection with each other.

Since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on 31 October 2000, global efforts to promote and develop the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda have been ongoing. Thus far, however, the perspective of traditional Western donors in the global North has been at the centre of the discussion. By contrast, and despite their growing importance as donors, South Korea and Japan are often absent from the policy discussions.

Target 16.4 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Develop­ment Goals aims to, among other things, ‘significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows’ by 2030. Indicators have been agreed for measuring the achievement of this target. Data­-collection efforts have been launched for arms flows while work continues on finding an agreed definition and measure of illicit financial flows.

This paper focuses on reporting for 2017, the most recent reporting year, as indicative for both the problems of participation and quality.

The third phase of the New Geopolitics of Peace Operations (NGP) initiative seeks to enhance understanding of how peace operations interact with non-traditional security challenges such as terrorism and violent extremism, irregular migration, piracy, organized crime and environmental degradation.

The Horn of Africa is undergoing far-reaching changes in its external security environment. A wide variety of international security actors—from Europe, the United States, the Middle East, the Gulf and Asia—are currently operating in the region. As a result, the Horn of Africa has experienced a proliferation of foreign military bases and a build-up of naval forces. The external militarization of the Horn poses major questions for the future security and stability of the region.

The Black Sea region is experiencing a changing military balance. The six littoral states (Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine) intensified their efforts to build up their military potential after Russia’s takeover of Crimea and the start of the internationalized civil war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

This background paper on Russia is part of the Black Sea Regional Security Initiative, a project launched by SIPRI in 2017 to provide independent data and analysis on security developments in the region and to promote transparency around military issues.

A significant number of cooperation and assistance activities have been carried out in recent years aimed at helping states to improve their arms transfer and small arms and light weapons (SALW) controls. Many of these have focused on the implementation of either the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) or the United Nations Programme of Action on SALW while others make no mention of these instruments.