Gaps in arms inspections in Chile

Goods category: War materiel

In 2016, SECO inspected Swiss self-propelled howitzers and repeating rifles with the Chilean army and submachine guns with the police. Around 70 per cent of the material could be physically checked on site. For the remainder, the delegation accepted written statements because the weapons could not be brought together in one place. It nevertheless assessed the inspection as very good. The inspection details published in 2017 raised questions about how meaningful such checks were.

Effect of the proposed War Materiel Act revision

Under the new Article 22b, the Federal Council could depart from all the licensing criteria in Article 22a under vaguely defined ‘exceptional circumstances’. The public would not have to be informed. The Federal Council could add Chile to Annex 2 by amending the War Materiel Ordinance. This would remove the exclusion criterion based on participation in an armed conflict and make approval the rule. The Federal Council could refuse a licence only in exceptional cases. Article 18 paragraph 1 would abolish non-re-export declarations in the vast majority of cases. Weapons for Chile could thus easily be supplied through a subsidiary or intermediary in a third country. The United States could serve as a third country, having, according to SIPRI, supplied substantial quantities of war materiel to Chile in recent years (468 million TIV).

Countries

Chile

Time period

Deliveries before 2016; end-use inspection in 2016

Sources

SonntagsZeitung, 16.07.2017, S. 5: Schweiz kontrolliert Waffenexporte – aber mit Einschränkungen (Christian Brönnimann)