The SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme noted with sadness the death last month of Ruth Sivard, at the age of 99, an economist who scrutinized world military expenditure for over three decades.
Her 16 volumes of World Military and Social Expenditures (WMSE) reports, published between 1973 and 1996, did not merely present available data for military, health and education expenditures worldwide and by country, but set these in the context of contemporary military developments and social and developmental priorities: armed conflict worldwide, the nuclear arms race and conventional arms races, the international arms trade, poverty and inequality, water, sanitation, maternal health and illiteracy. The data she presented looked at both financial and human resources devoted to the military, health and education, as well as specific topics such as international aid, and relative military and civilian research and development efforts in the USA, the EU and elsewhere.
Taken as a whole, these works provided hard-hitting insight, backed by solid data, into the mismatch between the resources devoted to the military compared to social priorities and needs.
Her work overlapped with SIPRI’s own research agenda, which has always included the provision of comprehensive, consistent and reliable data on world military expenditure, the arms trade and world nuclear forces, as well as (for the past quarter century) the arms industry and international peacekeeping. However, no one to date has stepped into the gap left by the end of the WMSE series, of systematically comparing and analysing this data in relation to social expenditure and priorities.
The international community is currently reviewing the targets set under the Millennium Development Goals, while also preparing to transition to a new set of Sustainable Development Goals, including targets relating to peace and security. With the world also facing the incomparable challenge of tackling climate change, the type of data and analysis provided by Ruth Sivard remains as essential as ever.
By Sam Perlo-Freeman