Idea and research: Rosie Birchard
Research, data analysis, visualization, interviews, writing: Gianna-Carina Grün
The data used for this project is sourced from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), particularly the Arms Transfers Database.
Using their import/export interface, data for the five biggest weapons exporters was downloaded (adding their name in the supplier field) and total exports and total imports (leaving the supplier field blank). We selected "summarize by country" and a year range from 2000 to 2024.
The data was then processed to produce the three graphics included in the article.
After consultation with SIPRI, the yearly data was aggregated into five-year-periods as this increases robustness of trends, as opposed to analysing year-on-year changes.
For both export concentration and import concentration, the share each country has in all exports (or imports, respectively) was calculated. This data was already included in the dataset downloaded from SIPRI, however, we wanted to include more decimal points than included in the original data, so nations with a smaller role would still appear in the visuals.
For the regional, SIPRI data was merged with the UN's classification what region a country belongs to. This led to exclusion of weapon trades with multinational or subnational groups in SIPRI's data:
African Union, unknown recipient(s), OSCE, PRC (Israel/Palestine), UIC (Somalia), Syria rebels, LTTE (Sri Lanka), Houthi rebels (Yemen), Hamas (Palestine), NLA (Macedonia), United Wa State (Myanmar), LRA (Uganda), Northern Alliance (Afghanistan), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Israel/Palestine), Hezbollah (Lebanon), NTC (Libya), NATO, Darfur rebels (Sudan), Kurdistan Regional Government (Iraq), Ukraine Rebels, unknown rebel group, HoR (Libya), United Nations, PKK (Turkiye)
Results were compared with SIPRI's own report to ensure data matches.