This quarterly monitoring, published by GRIP since 2011, aims to monitor the security situation in West Africa with a focus on Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Senegal. It examines in particular broad internal security issues, regional tensions, and cross-border and transnational crimes.

Considering its significant investment in defence, Saudi Arabia’s attempts to create a national arms industry capable of supplying equipment to the Saudi military have historically produced limited results. To change this, Riyadh designed in 2017 a public strategy named “Vision 2030” for economic reorganization and diversification with a military-industrial component. This research paper provides an overview of the issues related to this ambition of Riyadh. It presents the main determinants of the arms market, emphasizing the profile and characteristics of the supply. It also provides an overview of the situation of Saudi Arabia in terms of arms supply from 1970 to 2010. Finally, it sets out the process of developing military production capabilities over the last decade.

Photo credit : Wikimedias Commons. Saqr-1, first saudi armed drone developed by  KACST (King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology).

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) requires that the risk of transferred weapons being used to commit gender-based violence be taken into account in the granting or denial of exports licences. However, this risk is not stated as such in the criteria of the European Common Position, the European instrument for the assessment of arms exports (which is supposed to comply with the obligations of the ATT, following its recent revision). This Analysis explores the approach of EU states, all members of the ATT, to gender considerations in the assessment of their arms transfers. Furthermore, is there a unanimous definition of gender-based violence? And what methods are available to assess this risk in the European context?

Photo credit : DRC 2011_Maison Anuarite drop in centre group in silhouette_PC Zute Lightfoot

The European Union’s (EU) strategy to tackle arms trafficking and firearm-related crime took a new turn in 2017. EU Member States agreed to overhaul the decades-old Directive 91/477 which had established common rules on firearms detention and acquisition for civilians. As part of the package, they addressed a growing trend in arms trafficking across the continent: the illicit conversion of blank-firing and alarm weapons to lethal and live firing ones. This phenomenon had spread among various types of criminal users, with a potential to ultimately reach terrorist circles. For that reason, the new Directive has brought these alarm weapons into the scope of EU regulation on firearms to apply them the same controls. However, its implementation, almost three years in the making, has faced both opposition and delays from Member States which threaten to derail its action on arms trafficking.

Photo credit: Start of the Brussels 20 km race in 2017, given by Princess Astrid with a blank starting gun. The detonation caused minor injuries to Prime Minister Charles Michel (left), who suffered temporary deafness. Source: RTBF. 

This Analysis addresses one of the sensitive issues of the European Defence Fund (EDFEF): that of third countries. In what terms can the latter be associated with the European Union's (EU) capability ambitions?

The EU has already partly answered this question. It is ready to open the doors of the Fund, but only on its terms. However, the requirements imposed are not suitable for everyone. They were received coldly across the Channel and were considered unacceptable across the Atlantic. Washington has thus activated its relays to push the Union to change the rules of the game.

Pressure from the United States is a major challenge for Europeans. At a time of Brexit and "Trumpism", the Fund's eligibility criteria are a crucial issue for the EU. They refer to both the means and the end of its integration project.

Crédit photo : ha-ber.com

Manufacturing processes consisting in adding layers of material, widely referred to as ‘3D printing’, have been used in many industrial sectors for decades. With the development of printing material aimed at facilitating ‘individual’ production among laymen came some concern about a possible 3D printed proliferation of firearms. In the wake of the much publicized manufacture of a plastic-made, 3D printed gun by a young American hobbyist in 2013, EU law enforcement agencies began watching over the phenomenon so as to assess its potential. Although it poses risks to marking and identification, illicit 3D manufacturing of firearms has failed to entrench itself as a significant source of supply for criminal end-users. 3D printed prototypes suffer such key shortfalls as lack of reliability, underperforming characteristics incompatible with criminal requirements while they have to compete with other illicit sources of supply. However, it remains crucial to keep following with technical, technological and economic developments of 3D printing in order to best anticipate any game-changer in the illicit proliferation picture.

Photo credit: The 3D-printed "Liberator" gun designed by Defense Distributed (source : theverge.com)

Since the 1990s, drug trafficking networks have been infiltrating Kenyan communication and economic infrastructures. Forced to divert from their main routes, networks have found in Kenya the key elements they needed to transit drugs from Asian producers to European consumers. Since Kenya is an indirect transit hub, the development of drug trafficking has gone relatively unnoticed until the 2010s. From then onwards, increased seizures along the maritime routes, and an upsurge in drug consumption in Nairobi and Mombasa, have started alerting national and international actors. This Analysis demonstrates that far from being a second-class route, Kenya presents endogenous elements on which traffics thrive. The country’s communication and transport infrastructures, coupled with crippling corruption problems and high capacity deficiencies within the police forces and the judicial system, prevent any viable counter-trafficking action. Moreover, exogenous factors foster traffics in Kenya:  its large uncontrolled maritime front and borders allow traffics, redirected from the main routes, to go unnoticed.

Crédit photo : saisie de drogue au Kenya (source : FILE)