Arms trade watchdog says countries are failing in their obligations to report weapons trade

ATT Monitor team, the body charged with overseeing the global Arms Trade Treaty, condemned on Tuesday a lack of transparency around states reporting the weapons they are buying and selling. Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, the treaty aims to regulate the international flow of conventional weapons to stop their illicit trade. While its 118 member states are supposed to submit annual reports on their weapons imports and exports, just 46 countries - less than 40 percent - submitted their 2025 reports on time, Alexandra Marksteiner, a member of the monitoring team, told a press conference in Geneva. "The decline in meaningfully transparent reporting and publicly available information highlights larger issues around transparency in the global arms trade," the monitor said in a statement, adding that this is "particularly distressing in times of increasing military expenditure, escalating conflict and diminishing peace".