Less lethal weapons misuse during protests

Published:

12 October 2023, as part of Amnesty’s “The Repression Trade - Investigating the transfer of weapons used to crush dissent” web report.

Data collection methodology:

Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab and the Digital Verification Corps analysed more than 500 images and videos from protests from 2017 to 2023, verifying more than 100 incidents where police officers deployed law enforcement equipment and hunting ammunition unlawfully. Using open-source techniques and weapons analysis, corroborated with trade data, previous Amnesty International research and reports from other organizations, Amnesty International also identified 23 major producers of less lethal and other equipment whose goods were used unlawfully in more than 50 protests in 25 countries worldwide. While it is not always possible to trace precise chains of custody for specific types of weapons, this evidence strongly indicates longstanding patterns of irresponsible trade in both equipment designed for law enforcement and hunting ammunition.

The data below represents a selection of cases investigated by Amnesty International where photographic evidence is available. This repository includes both the dataset of events and the images we published in our web report.

Contact information:

Milena Marin, [email protected]

Data structure and definitions:

Field Definition	Values
ID	Unique ID for each event. Use this ID to match with the photographic evidence available in this repository.
Event description	Short description of the protest event where Amnesty documented abuse of less lethal weapons.
Location	Country or territory of the protest event.
Year	Year of protest event.
Manufacturer	The manufacturer of the less lethal weapon used irresponsibly during that event.
Image credit	Credit for the image used in the web report and available here in this repository.
End User	State or institution that used the weapon.
Weapon type	Type of less lethal weapon or munition.
Weapon model	Exact model of weapon where available.
Country producer	Country of the company who produced the weapon.
Company name	Name of company who produced the weapon.
Headquarters	Headquarters of the company who produced the weapon.
Source URL	Source URL for photographic evidence.
Source URL 2	Additional source URL or photographic evidence.
Source URL 3	Additional source URL or photographic evidence.
Source URL 4	Additional source URL or photographic evidence.

Want to know more about the work in other Amnesty GitHub accounts?

You can find repositories from other teams such as Amnesty Web Ops, Amnesty Crisis, Amnesty Tech and Amnesty Research in their GitHub accounts