Introduction
Against a backdrop of proliferating global conflict and crises, the appetite and funding for multilateral cooperation and peace initiatives are diminishing. In this context, the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) — adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2013 as the first global, legally binding instrument to regulate the international trade in conventional arms — provides an important avenue for the type of international cooperation that can address critical aspects of these global challenges, while simultaneously improving transparency of the arms trade and building confidence between States.
More than 12 years after the adoption of the ATT, implementation of and compliance with the treaty are noteworthy, and the mandatory ATT annual reports provide a useful metric to evaluate the ways in which States are implementing and understanding their ATT obligations. Article 13(3) of the ATT requires States Parties to provide information each year on their authorized or actual conventional arms exports and imports through an annual report submitted to the ATT Secretariat. With the first State annual reports submitted in 2016 (on transfers undertaken during the 2015 calendar year), 2025 marks 10 years of ATT annual reporting and data available to analyze.
ATT Annual Reporting Obligation
Article 13(3): Each State Party shall submit annually to the Secretariat by 31 May a report for the preceding calendar year concerning authorized or actual exports and imports of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1). Reports shall be made available, and distributed to States Parties by the Secretariat. The report submitted to the Secretariat may contain the same information submitted by the State Party to relevant United Nations frameworks, including the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms. Reports may exclude commercially sensitive or national security information.
This report evaluates ATT annual reporting by examining the ATT annual reports submitted in 2025 (covering the arms exports and imports that occurred during the 2024 calendar year) as well as reporting trends that have developed over the past decade. The report is organized into five sections. Section 1 provides insight into the 2024 annual reports and overall reporting compliance. Section 2 examines rates of private reporting, report formats and templates, the withholding of commercially sensitive and/or national security information, “nil” reporting, and national definitions of weapons categories within publicly available 2024 reports. Section 3 discusses States Parties’ reporting practices when preparing 2024 reports, specifically appraising whether and how States Parties reported on their arms exports and imports. Section 4 compares reporting under the ATT with reporting under the UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA). The concluding section reflects on the status of annual reporting moving into the treaty’s second decade and outlines recommendations for States Parties, the ATT Secretariat, the ATT Working Group on Transparency and Reporting, and other stakeholders to enhance future work and strengthen annual reporting. Annex I provides a list of annual reporting resources.
