In 2014, we decided to request a comprehensive dataset from the Swiss state: We asked for a detailed overview of all granted export licenses of arms and military goods. Over ten years later, we run the most comprehensive arms exports database in a European country based on the documents received:
www.rüstungsreport.ch. In our workshop, we take participants on a journey of investigative research, legal struggles, methods, and outcomes.
We'll explain how we managed to create a database of all arms export licenses obtained for armaments and surveillance equipment from Swiss-based companies around the world. We'll take you through a lengthy access process via freedom of information requests. The information was obtained only after a long legal battle against the Swiss state, which we won before the highest Swiss court. We'll also show how we built a database, organised the data, and how this became a tool of transparency, as we kept requesting the data and updating the database every year. Finally, we will showcase stories that came out of the database, uncovering critical company deals and state practices, and their potential for cross-border stories. We'll guide the participants through our investigations into the use of PC-12 from the company Pilatus in the US war in Afghanistan. And how the toothless Swiss export controls in the dual-use sector, coupled with the strong lobbying of the arms industry, made it possible for the Russian war machine to rely on Swiss high-tech.
This session will enable the participants to adapt our methodology to their countries of interest and give them ideas for further investigations into the defence industry. We will hand out a reader with the most important learnings and a template of the freedom of information request we made.
