War Profiteers

For the past few years, the Finnish arms trade has been changing. Data compiled by the peace and security think-tank SaferGlobe shows that the largest export region used to be the European Union, since 2015 the top position has been taken by Middle Eastern countries.

Across Europe, activists have been resisting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, destined to be used the ongoing war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign has seen many thousands of civilians killed.

In London, activists arrested taking nonviolent direct action against the DSEI arms fair have been in court in a series of trials. A large number of the defendants – mainly accused of obstruction of the highway – have been acquitted or had their cases dropped, successfully arguing that they were acting within their human rights to protest peacefully.

Chemring Group is the world's 68th biggest arms company, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The company was formed in 1905, and now employs just under 3,000 people. The companies profits in 2016 came to £8 million before tax.

The British government sanctioned the sale of spy equipment – capable of intercepting, tracking, and monitoring emails, mobile phones, and messaging services like WhatsApp – to Honduras, shortly before a recently disputed election.

German prosecutors have fined the arms company Airbus €81.25 million in order to settle an investigation into corruption allegations.

In January this year, Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced that Australia was aiming to become one of the world’s top ten ‘defence export’ countries over the next decade, moving up from its current position of 20th for the period of 2012-2016.

All over the world, police officers are looking more and more like soldiers. To help us understand this militarisation, War Resisters' International has developed a new web resource. We've researched how police forces are being militarised, drawn together the various trends we can see taking place, and illustrated all of this as a new online map. You can explore the resource here: www.wri-irg.org/police

The European Network Against the Arms Trade (ENAAT) has released a position paper and online information tool, outlining the network's view on the key decisions the European Parliament will take on the European Industrial Defence Programme in the coming weeks and months.

ABP – Netherland's largest pension provider – has decided to end it's it's investments in companies that produce nuclear weapons, as well as investments in the tobacco industry.

In December 2017, the Colombian government hosted the ExpoDefensa arms fair in Bogota. Nearly 300 exhibitors from 35 countries took part in the fair, with over 12,000 visitors attending, including 76 official delegations.

In Canada, eleven indigenous Guatemalan women are in the process of taking a multinational mining company to court. The women allege that in 2007, police officers, soldiers, and private security personnel attacked their village of Lote Ocho, in eastern Guatemala, and burned dozens of homes in a bid to drive the community from their ancestral land.