Arms TRACK is a Geneva Academy project developing a dedicated online portal to support States in fulfilling their obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). By providing structured assessments of the conduct of police and armed forces in importing States alongside the heightened risks to civilians inherent in specific conventional weapons, the portal enables exporting States to make more informed and legally sound transfer decisions.
The project forms part of the Geneva Academy’s broader commitment to supporting the implementation of international arms control and disarmament rules through rigorous legal research and accessible policy-relevant outputs.
From Gaza to Sudan to Yemen, the supply of weapons is fuelling violence against civilians, with violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law (IHL) widespread. The ATT, to which 118 States are party, seeks to control the illicit trade in conventional weapons and to ensure they are not provided to warring parties that would misuse them. But its implementation in States Parties has been decidedly uneven. Meanwhile, rearmament over the coming five years around the world will see a huge increase is foreseen in weapons research, development, and production across the continent and beyond.
This project seeks to buttress understanding of the level of compliance with international human rights law and IHL in importing States so that all arms-exporting States may make more informed decisions, in conformity with Articles 6 and 7 of the ATT.
Arms TRACK thus aims at creating and populating a dedicated website to support ATT implementation. It consists of two core components:
Component One: Weapons Risk Repository
A comprehensive repository of conventional weapons categories and types, covering targeting accuracy and other civilian risks — from explosive and fragmentation to incendiary effects. The repository comprises the UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA) categories plus small arms and light weapons and all munitions.
Component Two: State Conduct Assessments
Detailed assessments of armed forces and law enforcement in all actual or potential importing States, evaluating legality of weapon use in policing operations and the conduct of hostilities under IHL and the law of law enforcement.
The Arms TRACK portal will fill a major gap in resourcing and supporting the implementation of the ATT, allowing exporting States and arms producing companies to make informed decisions about whether a proposed export of any given weapon or weapons system would be lawful. By combining detailed weapons risk data with independent assessments of State conduct, the platform provides a single analytical environment for transfer risk assessment and compliance analysis.
The project is grounded in the legal obligations of exporting States under the ATT, particularly Articles 6 and 7, Arms TRACK complements the Geneva Academy’s broader research infrastructure. In particular, it draws directly on the legal conflict classifications and civilian harm assessments produced through RULAC and IHL in Focus, and is designed to integrate seamlessly with the War WATCH platform.
State conduct assessments describe compliance with relevant IHL rules as and when applicable, and with the law of law enforcement — both in general terms and with respect to specific weapons systems, enabling weapon-specific export assessments.
Arms TRACK is led by Stuart Casey-Maslen, Head of Scientific Projects at the Academy, who is co-authoring a second edition of the legal commentary on the Arms Trade Treaty, to be published by Oxford University Press in early 2027.
Technical partners supporting the digital platform’s development: WonderWeb