The global trade in conventional weapons grew dramatically from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, a period in which a large number of states became independent and in which the superpowers used arms supplies as one means of trying to manage their respective spheres of influence. The decline that had begun in the later 1980s accelerated after the end of the Cold War as military spending also declined. The combination of reduced military spending by industrial powers and reduced foreign sales led to significant restructuring of the international arms industry, but also to unrivalled US dominance among the suppliers.

During the 1990s the conventional weapons trade was the subject of heightened political attention from governments and non-governmental organizations alike. The first international transparency measure, the UN Register of Conventional Arms (a voluntary tally by UN member states of their annual exports and imports in seven major weapons categories), was established in 1992 with earlier recommendations of a UN Experts Group in which Project Ploughshares participated. Canada was one of the first countries to publish an annual report on the export of military goods 1991, again due in part to the work of Project Ploughshares, a practice shared by a number of suppliers by the end of the decade, Sweden, South Africa, UK, among others.

The persistence of armed conflict and criminal violence worldwide underlines the pressing necessity of tightened restrictions on the international weapons trade. The ecumenical community, while acknowledging that weapons of war will unfortunately continue to be a feature of the international political system, is committed to working with governments and civil society to ensure that the distribution and acquisition of weapons are controlled and monitored through international regulatory systems in order to reduce the availability of the weapons that transform political and social conflict into war and violence.