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Map the Global Arms Trade With This New Weapons-Tracking Site

An EU-funded project gathers data on weapons used in conflicts and maps it in a public access database.
iTrace screenshot: Conflict Armament Research

A new website aims to make it easy for anyone to track the trade of diverted weapons and ammunitions, with the intention of facilitating the work of governments, NGOs, and journalists. iTrace, funded by the European Union, takes data collected by on-ground investigations and maps it onto an instantly recognisable, Google Earth-style interface.

"It's a global weapons monitoring system," James Bevan, director of Conflict Armament Research, the company behind the project, told me. The current iTrace webpage (which will be changed once the tool goes live on September 27), describes the project as "the world's most powerful public access weapons tracking database." The tech is based on Dfuze, an intelligence tool used by governments to securely share data on the movements of bomb-makers, among other things.

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Most of iTrace's data has been collected from Sub-Saharan Africa, with countries including Somalia, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, South Sudan, and others. Investigators recently came out of Syria and Northern Iraq, with plans to cover more of the Middle East.

iTrace screenshot: Conflict Armament Research

The data can be searched by country or region to examine local issues. Alternatively, you can punch in the serial number of a weapon, or even a part of the number, and be shown where else in the world weapons from that particular shipment are being used (assuming that the database contains information on that one). Other ways of digging through the data include box markings and packing lists.

Bevan gave a hypothetical example: After clicking on a certain country, I may be greeted with figures such as that 80 percent of the weapons being traded are made in one country, 70 percent were manufactured in the last five years, and 30 percent have been diverted by a certain government to a certain non-state actor, building up a nuanced picture of what trade relationships are taking place. "These trends are very localised, and they're quite complex," Bevan said—so it's useful to have the data in an easy-to-digest format.

According to Bevan, NGOs' traditional approach to monitoring the movement of weapons has been to look at it at arm's length, rather than getting directly involved. This has an effect on the quality of the data received. "From a distance, you have a very hazy idea of what is going on in that conflict," he said.

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Instead, Conflict Armament Research sends in small teams, some of which include former United Nations weapons inspectors, into a conflict to collect data on the ground. They do this in a number of ways, including working with rebel groups, and looking at weapons that have been intercepted by security forces.

iTrace screenshot: Conflict Armament Research

"We have a network of local contacts on the ground who constantly inform us of the dynamic of the conflict, or whether there's been a seizure of weapons," Bevan said. "We take each individual item, thoroughly investigate it, and then aggregate it into a global data set, and that then becomes very powerful."

When governments and organisations talk about the problems associated with arms trade, they often attribute them to general themes such as weapons being recycled from another conflict, or illicit weapons trafficking. But when you take a closer look, some of these claims may be too general. "Actually, when you put boots on the ground and you conduct an investigation of each case, a lot of those myths are not true," Bevan said.

The project has been in development since September 2011. It has taken three years to get to this stage, because all of the information has been gathered by Conflict Armament Research itself, for reasons of accuracy and verification.

That, and it can take a while to convince a government to allow access to weapons. "Most of our time is spent setting up access to conduct investigations, rather than conducting the investigations themselves," Bevan pointed out.

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From a distance, you have a very hazy idea of what is going on in a conflict.

But iTrace may be of benefit to those that do let investigators in. With the data collected, Bevan says, people can know "exactly what routes these weapons are coming through, and who is responsible." Armed with this data, countries can then introduce policies based on hard evidence, tailored for their specific needs.

The idea of responsibility is important. With weapons going through multiple hands, and money switching at different points, it can be difficult to determine who is playing what role in a conflict.

There's a regional aspect too. "Very often, these weapon transfers originate two or three countries away." That means that while data may be collected in one country, it could help others address illicit trade on their own turf. "It gives them, effectively, regional investigation capacity."

One group who may want to use iTrace—it's accessible to all—are international policy makers working on arms control issues. They could use it to help monitor the effectiveness of their work, and analyse whether or not they need a new strategy. It could then help support the evaluation of legal agreements such as the Arms Trade Treaty, or regional agreements between countries. Of course, it will also be of interest to investigative journalists, who may want to track a weapon shipments movements.

As it's free, anyone can log on and sleuth through the data. This sort of open source intelligence sharing resonates with existing work by citizen journalists like Brown Moses, who made a name for himself analysing weapons in Syria. "They're complementary approaches," Bevan said of these efforts. "We take it a stage further."