UNIDIR, Conflict Armament Research (CAR), Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Uppsala University will reconvene the community of practice of arms monitors and early-warning experts for an interactive online meeting. Participants will exchange on where we stand as a community and how to move ahead.
Amid high levels of rearmament and armed conflicts, early warning remains a key tool for conflict prevention and mitigation. In the UN’s Pact for the Future, States agreed to strengthen conflict early-warning mechanisms. Access to all relevant data helps improve the performance of early-warning efforts. While data on weapons proliferation and misuse can be highly relevant for this, its use often remains sporadic and underexplored.
In response, UNIDIR, CAR, PRIO and Uppsala University launched the “Arms Flows and Early Warning (AFEW)” initiative in 2024. It seeks to strengthen the utility and use of arms data for more effective conflict early warning. In a participatory process in 2024, leading experts charted pathways to action to strengthen data collection and suitability, enhance knowledge sharing and capacity, promote policy action and facilitate partnerships. A community of practice meeting in 2025 and the Data for Peace Conference in 2026 highlighted that substantive progress is being made in how arms data is collected for – and used in – early-warning initiatives. To further accompany practitioners, AFEW partners decided to document lessons learned and scale up the “Arms Flow Data and Early Warning Dashboard” into a more effective support portal.
Seeking to foster knowledge sharing and inspire further action and partnerships, the meeting specifically aims to:
- Discuss and complement preliminary research findings on achievements, “what works” and lessons learned in strengthening the utility and use of arms data for conflict early warning
- Chart additional and realistic pathways of what more needs to be done to further operationalize the use of arms flow data in early warning, at operational, data collection, research and policy levels
Agenda
15:00 – 15:05 | Welcome
15:05 – 15:15 | Where do we come from: Recap of 2024 expert exchanges – key findings and pathways to action
15:15 – 16:00 | Where do we stand: Complementing preliminary research findings on using arms data in early-warning initiatives
16:00 – 16:40 | Where do we go from here: Concretizing further pathways to advance utility and use of arms data in early-warning initiatives
16:40 – 16:45 | Closing and next steps
When and where
Tuesday, 24 November 2026 | 15:00 – 16:45 CET | Online
Check your local time here.
Participants
This meeting will bring together arms data collectors and conflict early-warning experts from the United Nations, international and regional organizations, academia and research institutes, and civil society – across science, implementation and policymaking. It will converge the AFEW community of practice with new experts interested to join the community.
The meeting will be held in informal format to foster open exchanges and interactive sharing of ideas. To that end, participants are encouraged to reflect on the pathways to action, identified in expert exchanges in 2024, and on contributions that they may have started to undertake or could potentially undertake towards their concretization.
RSVP
For participation, please register on this page by 20 November 2026.
Further information
For any questions, please contact Joshua Bata at joshua.bata@un.org and George Tyler at george.tyler@un.org.
In partnership with
