- Updated October 20, 2023
The Conventional Defense Program at the Stimson Center created the CSPA Implementation Tracker to help monitor the law’s effect and serve as a tool for policymakers and the public to examine U.S. arms transfers and military assistance to governments with documented records of child soldier recruitment or use. The Tracker allows users to closely survey the relationship between U.S. arms sales and military assistance and efforts to prevent the exploitation of children as tools of warfare.
Twenty-four countries have been identified on annual CSPA lists since the law took effect.
Twelve have been listed for five or more years. Countries included on a CSPA list are prohibited from receiving certain types of U.S. arms sales and military assistance in the following fiscal year. However, the president can waive these prohibitions if so doing is deemed to be in the “national interest of the United States.”
CSPA List by Year
Each shaded box corresponds to a year the country appeared on the CSPA list.
The CSPA list has grown in size, as has the use of national interest waivers.
More often than not over the law’s history, the U.S. president has elected to use national interest waivers – either in part or in full – to allow the majority of CSPA-listed governments to receive otherwise-prohibited U.S. arms sales and military assistance.
Number of CSPA-Listed Countries Over Time
Number of countries included on each year's CSPA list, 2010-2022.
97% of arms sales and military assistance was still provided to CSPA-listed countries through the use of presidential waivers.
The U.S. government is estimated to have waived more than $6 billion in U.S. arms sales and military assistance to CSPA-sanctioned countries over the last 14 years – or approximately 97% of the total amount of arms sales and military assistance that has come within the law’s scope.
Total Amount Waived and Prohibited
Since the CSPA took effect.