Pursuing Accountability for the Arms Trade: A Primer on European and UK Laws and Mechanisms

The report critically examines the regulatory frameworks, processes and practices (judicial and non-judicial) in five major EU exporting countries – France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy – and in the UK. It explores how these mechanisms have been used to restrict arms sales to countries where they are used in repression to commit serious violations of international law. Drawing on three case studies concerning the provision of arms to parties involved in the conflict in Yemen, Libya and Palestine, the report highlights lessons from past and ongoing accountability efforts.

Additionally, it identifies advocacy opportunities and legal pathways for civil society organisations in Southwest Asia and North Africa that monitor arms end-use, as well as for international advocates working to hold governments and companies accountable. Overall, accountability efforts have revealed the capacity of states’ licensing regimes to evade determinations of prohibitive risk and thus the review and suspension of arms exports, signalling the need to redirect civil society efforts towards a systemic analysis of arms trade accountability, as part of the international system’s responses to and regulation of complicity relations with mass and structural violence.

The report was published in December 2024, but the research and information contained in it are up to date as of March 2024.