Call for Industry Cooperation in Arms Tracing

NGO mapping supply chains in Ukraine ask for help.

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The RAPTAC received a briefing by Damien Spleeters, Conflict Armament Research, on chains of supply of components found in Russian and Iranian weapons used in Ukraine, and his organizations outreach to industry.

CAR is an independent research organization that is investigating the diversion of weapons and commodities in conflict areas around the world,  funded by the EU and the US government.   CAR investigation teams work on the ground in active armed conflicts. The teams document weapons at the point of use and track their sources back through the chains of supply.

“We have a pretty thorough tracing process, in which we will send a what we call a ‘trace request’ to the manufacturers with all the markings, all the photos, all the contextual information that we have gathered. We give them 28 days for a response.

“Then we we will in general we will discuss with manufacturers information sharing protocols and what they are ready to share with us.  Once they respond, we give them what we call a ‘right of reply.’ We will summarize all the information they have provided to us into a text for them to comment or correct if they'd like to, and we give them another 28 days to do that.

“So all the entities we contact are aware of the information that we can use,  and they are in control of that. There's there's no surprise when we use that information to update the EU the US or to continue our own investigations.

“The entities we have engaged with so far have been very happy with how it went and as I said we are we are flexible in the way that we use the information.  We always agree with the manufacturer or with the entity on what is going to happen with the information they give us. 

"In some cases they're happy for us to receive information for us to continue the investigation, but they don't want some of the distributors to be named publicly, for example.  We are happy to accommodate that type of demand because the last thing we want to do is hurt business."

Update:  April CAR Report updates content.

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