1. Introduction: international security, armaments and disarmament

Chapter:

1. Introduction: international security, armaments and disarmament

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2016

Author(s):

Dan Smith

This 47th edition of the SIPRI Yearbook reviews the main trends and events in conflict and security during 2015, and places them in a longer and larger perspective. Taken individually, many of the events were terrible, especially the shattering incidents of terrorism in Iraq and Syria, in Ankara, Istanbul and Paris, in Tunisia, in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. The background to this was state and non-state violence in an increased number of armed conflicts, with notable degrees of escalation in some of them during the year. Meanwhile news headlines and political attention in Western Europe were occupied for months on end by the flow of a million refugees and migrants from conflict-affected countries. From a wider perspective, the totals of 60 million refugees and displaced people and a further 10 million stateless people were the highest such figures since the foundation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950.¹ At the same time, tensions between North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states and Russia increased in the face of continuing disputes over Ukraine and policy differences over Syria. From all this and more, it was not difficult to characterize 2015 as one of the darkest years for international stability and human security since the end of the cold war in 1991.²