As an independent, non-profit organization, BICC (Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies) deals with a wide range of global topics in the field of peace and conflict research centering around organized violence. Our vision is a more peaceful world. Our mission is to conduct critical, problem-oriented, policy relevant research in response to the problems posed by organized violence. To do so, we engage in active exchanges with scholars and politicians as well as stakeholders in everyday practice and civil society. As a think tank, BICC seeks to engage in a dialogue with NGOs, governments, private organizations, research institutes and universities and well as with interested individuals. BICC examines the dynamics of organized violence at three levels: concepts, means and practices. Its work is clustered in various research themes among them 'discourses about war', arms transfers and arms control', 'mobilization and demobilization', 'natural resources and conflict', 'refugees and IDPs'. BICC’s portfolio includes: applied research, policy advice, technical advice and capacity development, data and geographic information systems, information of the public. BICC cooperates with international and national research institutes and foundations, UN and other international organizations, ministries such as the Federal Foreign Office (AA) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) as well as with institutions such as the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), NGOs, and international and bilateral organizations working in the field of development cooperation. BICC is co-editor of the annual “Peace Report” (Friedensgutachten).
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With its Global Militarisation Index (GMI), BICC is able to objectively depict worldwide militarisation for the first time. The GMI compares, for example, a country’s military expenditure with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its health expenditure.
It contrasts the total number of military and paramilitary forces in a country with the number of physicians. Finally, it studies the number of heavy weapons available to a country’s armed forces. These and other indicators are used to determine a country’s ranking, which in turn makes it possible to measure the respective level of militarisation in comparison to other countries.
The latest GMI of 2021 covers 153 countries and is based on the latest available figures (in most cases data for 2020). Israel, Oman, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Armenia, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Bahrain, Singapore and Russia are the top 10 worldwide. These countries allocate particularly high levels of resources to the military in comparison to other areas of society. See project website for more information
With its SALW guide, BICC provides a non-specialist, user-friendly and multi-language platform to inform about different categories and types of small arms and light weapons, their whereabouts in the world, and where possible, by whom they are held. It is designed to build knowledge on how to recognize different types, makes and models of commonly used SALW; to collect data on the global and country-specific spread of these SALW; and to describe some of their visual and technical specifications. The guide is not an exhaustive list of all SALW that are used around the world.
Global SALW control relies on, among other things, data and knowledge of the weapons themselves. Our aim is that the Guide will be used to support national reporting duties on SALW holdings; facilitate and ameliorate the collection of data on SALW; and increase general knowledge of global distribution of SALW. Thus, the guide addresses researchers, journalists, photographers as well as civil servants, officials and policymakers dealing with the aforementioned challenges of SALW control.
The underlying database of the SALW guide can be queried by either a geographical or weapon specific search term. In total, the guide contains visual images, markings and descriptions on 131 types of small arms or light weapons worldwide. The main source of the guide, the Small Arms and Light Weapons Guide (2016) by the German Bundeswehr Verification Center (BWVc), has been validated by various institutions and databases. See project website for more information