Should We Sell Arms to Human Rights Violators? What the Public Thinks

Asif Efrat and Omer Yair

This post is based on the article:
Efrat, Asif and Omer Yair. (2024). Should We Sell Arms to Human Rights Violators? What The Public Thinks. Defence and Peace Economics, 35(6), 694–712. https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2023.2225401.

In recent years, awareness has grown regarding the enormous damage caused by the conventional arms trade: weapons used in international and civil wars and also serving as tools for governments to suppress their opponents. This awareness has led to pressure on arms-exporting countries to act responsibly and reduce the risk that the weapons they sell will be used to violate human rights. Many countries have indeed committed to maintaining arms exports that meet moral standards, but in practice they continue to sell weapons indiscriminately based on security and commercial interests.

In our article, which was published in the journal Defence and Peace Economics in 2024, we sought to examine what the public thinks about the idea of restricting arms exports based on human rights considerations. Do citizens believe that arms exports should be based solely on cold interests, or do they believe that arms sales should meet human rights standards? Until now, this question has received almost no attention in academic research.

Our answer to this question assumes, first, that people prefer their country to promote human rights in its foreign policy. This assumption emerges from research on other foreign policy issues that raise ethical questions, such as aid to developing countries: studies show that citizens oppose providing aid to governments that violate human rights. We believe that, in citizens' eyes, the weight of human rights in arms exports will be even greater than in foreign aid: when a country supplies means of killing, it itself becomes a potential partner in human rights violations! Of course, citizens are aware of counterarguments: restricting arms exports for human rights reasons could harm the arms industry and cause economic damage. But it is likely that the unwillingness to feel complicit in human rights violations will outweigh interest-based considerations.

Note that Israel is a "hard case" for examining the hypothesis that citizens will support restrictions on arms exports for human rights reasons. The Israeli arms industry plays a central role in Israel's security efforts, and Israelis may not want to impose restrictions on it. Additionally, after many years of international criticism regarding human rights violations by Israel, many Israelis have developed cynicism toward the idea of international human rights. Therefore, we expected that Israelis, relative to citizens of other countries, would be less sensitive to the impact of weapons on human rights and would express less support for restrictions on arms exports.

support for restrictions on arms exports.
We examined public opinion in Israel regarding arms exports through a survey experiment involving 1,824 respondents. All participants read a fictional text about a country in Central Asia where a civil war is unfolding. According to the text, a rebel group in the country seeks to overthrow the government, and the government approaches Israel to purchase weapons for its security forces. As part of the manipulation we performed, some respondents read the following sentence: "According to reports, the security forces, as part of their efforts against the rebels, use torture, conduct mass arrests, kidnap citizens, and kill many civilians." The other respondents did not receive information about human rights violations in the Central Asian country.

After reading the text, respondents were asked whether they support a deal in which Israel would sell the requested weapons. They were asked to indicate their level of support on a scale ranging from 1 (strong support) to 5 (strong opposition). If our hypothesis is correct, we expected that respondents who received information about human rights violations in the weapons-requesting country would express more opposition to the deal. The data indeed support this expectation. An exposure to information about human rights violations increased the rate of opposition to the deal by approximately 22 percentage points—a highly significant increase. Among respondents who did not receive information about human rights violations, about one-third (33%) opposed selling the weapons; but the rate of opposition reached a majority—55%—among those who were told that the weapons would go to security forces that violate human rights.

Our experiment examined two additional possible effects.

First, we tested whether people tend to oppose selling weapons to human rights violators less when the weapons-requesting country has economic or security ties with Israel. To our surprise, we found that opposition does not weaken. The majority of respondents expressed opposition to selling the weapons even when told that the requesting country maintains security or economic ties with Israel (51% and 59% opposition to the deal, respectively).

Second, we examined whether opposition to arms deals with human rights violators is affected by the type of weapon: conventional (such as rifles) or cyber. Conventional weapons shoot and kill, and their impact on human rights is more immediate and clear, in a way that might increase opposition to selling such weapons. However, we found that the majority of respondents, at similar rates, oppose selling rifles (54%) and cyber weapons (55%) to countries that violate human rights.

In conclusion, we found that a small majority of the Israeli public is concerned about exporting weapons to countries that violate human rights and prefers to avoid such exports. If this is the case with the Israeli public, which tends to be skeptical of international law and human rights, it is likely that in other countries public concern about the implications of arms exports is even stronger. This public concern stands in contrast to the indifference of many governments that choose to allow arms exports even knowing that the weapons will be used irresponsibly, including for violations of human rights. Activists for responsible arms exports should be able to use public opinion, as revealed in this study, to pressure countries to restrain arms exports. Governments may choose to give greater weight to human rights in arms sales if they know this is what the public wishes.

Asif Efrat is a professor of government at Reichman University.
Dr. Omer Yair is a research fellow at the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University.