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By Fareeda Khalifa on 21 Nov 2024
This article explores the intersection of arms transfers, explosive violence, and gender disparities in explosive violence harm from 2011 to 2023. Data reveals that over 450,000 casualties resulted globally from explosive violence during this period, with a significant and rising share of female victims. Women experience unique vulnerabilities in such attacks, from targeted violence to disproportionate social stigma when injured.
The analysis identifies alarming patterns in countries affected by explosive violence against women (EVAW), correlating these trends with arms transfers, particularly since 2021. Key findings include the concentration of EVAW incidents in conflict zones such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Palestine, alongside the growing presence of attacks in non-conflict countries. The arms trade, dominated by suppliers from nations with high female empowerment indices, raises ethical questions about the dissonance between domestic values and foreign policy. While challenges such as underreporting and the opaque nature of arms flows persist, this article’s findings underscores the importance of addressing the role of arms transfers in perpetuating violence against women. It calls for further research, policy alignment, and advocacy to mitigate the gendered impacts of explosive violence in both conflict and non-conflict settings.
- Background
In recent years, data and analysis have pointed towards alarming trends in the conflict landscape, with 2021-2023 being the three most violent years since 1989, according to data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). This aligns with an increasing number of conflicts, often on several fronts, as 18 of the 34 conflict-affected countries in 2023 had at least two open state-based conflicts.[1]
Globally, more than 120,000 people fell victim to one-sided violence between 2011 and 2023, over 10,000 of which took place in 2023 alone.[2] In this same period, there have been over 450,000 casualties resulting from explosive violence, with almost 6000 recorded incidents involving women or girls, according to data from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).[3]
Since 2010, there has been a sixfold increase in events where women are victims of political violence.[4] Concurrently, the forms of violence that women experience vary and only one third of all targeted attacks constitute sexual violence. Moreover, women have increasingly fallen victims of violence using explosive weapons, including bombs, airstrikes or victim-activated explosive devices such as landmines.[5] These attacks take place both during and outside active conflict. Even when women are not ultimately killed in attacks involving explosive devices, being injured has severe implications for their health, with women suffering disproportionally from stigma in cases of disability.[6]
This chapter examines patterns of explosive violence against women (EVAW henceforth), contrasting conflict-affected and non-conflict countries, and considers the role of the arms trade in exacerbating the impact of explosive violence on women between 2011 and 2023. This phenomenon is relevant to study as global trends point towards an increasing share of female victims of explosive violence over the years, along with a relative increase in arms transfers along the same path, but particularly since 2021. This also aligns with a decreasing index of female empowerment after rising at a stable level prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Overall Trends in Explosive Violence against Women
The figures below showcase the distribution of EVAW, by number of years with explosive events in each country (Figure 2), and intensity, relying on the number of events with recorded female victims (Figure 3).
It is key to note that almost half of the countries for which data is available have experienced at least one year where explosive violence against women took place, and only 6 out of the 88 countries with no recorded years of EVAW have been in conflict at some point within the period examined.
- Impact of Arms Transfers on EVAW
In order to analyse the impact of the arms trade on EVAW , we rely on SIPRI’s Arms Transfer Database, which has a breakdown of major conventional arms being transferred between countries, with information on the recipient, supplier, armament type, number of weapons delivered, and trade volume, among others.[7] This is compiled with data on active conflict from UCDP, whereby a country is coded as 1 if conflict occurs at least once between 2011 and 2023. The EVAW Index calculated by the authors ranges from 0 to 13, indicating the duration (number of years) within which at least one explosive event involved female victims.
- Broad Trends in Top EVAW Countries
Within the countries with the highest EVAW Index, different patterns arise for conflict and non-conflict countries. Approximately 70% of explosive attacks against women between 2011 and 2023 took place in 5 countries (Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Pakistan), whereas the total number of attacks in the top 10 non-conflict countries are under 70 incidents within the same period.
Overall, the top 10 conflict countries that experience high levels of EVAW tend to have relatively low levels of female empowerment compared to non-conflict countries and those with low levels of EVAW. Tables 1 and 2 showcase the discrepancy, with most conflict countries falling below the global average for female empowerment, apart from the Philippines, whereas only Saudi Arabia fails to meet this criterion within the non-conflict countries.[8]
- EVAW per capita and Number of Weapons
In order to allow for an examination of the scale of targeting women face, irrespective of the duration, the following analysis uses an alternative representation: EVAW per capita, which is then multiplied by 100,000 for scaling and interpretation purposes. Data presented in Table 3 show that some of the top 10 countries in conflict and non-conflict now change, at least in order. This illustrates that within each 100,000 people in Palestine, about 42 of them will be female victims of explosive violence, whereas the figure is much smaller in the highest non-conflict country, with only 2 in a million in Armenia.
- Types of Weapons used in high EVAW countries
The types and sources of weapons most exported by countries with the highest EVAW indices could support our understanding of the impact of arms transfers on violence against women. Missiles appear to be within the top 3 categories for all but one conflict countries represented below, and this could potentially be a factor in higher casualties as they, along with small arms and light weapons, are easier to transfer across actors as opposed to larger armament types.
- Who provides weapons to countries with the top EVAW?
Table 6 presents the top two suppliers of weapons for each country in the top 10 EVAW (conflict and non-conflict) by number of weapons supplied. Relatedly, it is interesting to note the level of women’s empowerment for the main suppliers of weapons to countries with highest EVAW (Table 7). All top suppliers, apart from Russia and China, have above average values and place a relatively high emphasis on female empowerment, but provide weapons in contexts which do not align with such standards and where there is a high proportion of female victims.
- Conclusion and Final Thoughts
The preliminary analysis in this chapter showcases a correlation between the numbers of weapons and the level of explosive violence, particularly targeting women in both conflict and non-conflict countries. The use of explosive weapons against women remains relatively low as the majority of victims are men. Around 6.78% of the attacks against civilians specifically targeted women.[14] Yet, this is a rising trend. In the top 20 countries exporting weapons between 2011 and 2023, more than half have experienced 6 or more years of EVAW, and 10 of them are also among the top countries for EVAW.
On average, conflict countries tend to have a lower level of female empowerment, the average for non-conflict countries between 2011 and 2023 was approximately 75.7%, as opposed to 63% in conflict countries – with a global average of 72.2%. The discrepancy of over 10% between conflict and non-conflict countries is significant to note.
However, the striking element is not the level of empowerment in conflict countries or those with high levels of EVAW, but rather in the top suppliers of weapons. As illustrated in the previous section, most suppliers of weapons to countries highest on the EVAW index often score above 85%, and as high as 95% on the female empowerment scale, as in the case of Germany and Sweden, which have both introduced feminist foreign policies[15]This raises questions of misalignment between domestic values and foreign policy choices.
While this analysis illustrates some important patterns and insights for future research and studies, there are many challenges to fully assessing the links between arms transfers and explosive violence against women. Among the biggest problems is the type of perpetrator, where a third of perpetrators are unknown armed groups or individuals. This can be attributed to the low quality of recording attacks, and the lack of gendered reporting in media, as well as the strategic incentive of the agents of violence to remain anonymous.[16]
The quality of reporting also poses challenges to advocacy and initiatives, such as in AOAV’s Explosive Violence Monitor, which can only record when women or girls are explicitly mentioned in the media reports, potentially underreporting female casualties. Relatedly, SIPRI’s data on weapons transfers does not include most categories of small arms or light weapons (SALWs), and some small parts and technological support that may be relevant to the arms industry and has sparse data on how rebel armed groups access explosive weapons.
In some regions, such as the Caucus and Central Asia, perpetrators are primarily rebel armed groups, making it further complicated to map out patterns of arms transfers. For attacks committed by unknown actors, this complexity makes it even less likely to link arms transfers to the perpetrated attacks.
Nevertheless, with such constraints in mind, it remains highly relevant to consider the implications of increased arms trade on casualties from explosive violence, and on gendered differences in such a phenomenon, particularly the growing use in conflict countries. Case studies would be useful to shed light on the intricacies and detail how and when weapons are transferred, along with the impact of international mobilisation, whether through sanctions, revised policies, or protests on such transfers, and considering the female empowerment indices in exporting and importing countries.