Non-accountability as post-colonial harm: rethinking the responsibilities of arms producers

Abstract Despite the inherent dangers of arms production, the responsibility of arms companies to prevent adverse human rights impacts in their business is too often surrounded by silence. What is more, the responsibilities of arms companies are rarely subject to critical historical interrogation, with contemporary arms trade literature paying primary attention to singular export control decisions from a lens of methodological nationalism. This forum contribution brings a post-colonial analysis to the (lack of) political and legal responsibilities demanded of arms companies over time by zooming in on apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Grounding in the discursive and material struggles between South African civil society actors and European arms manufacturers/states over the terms of responsibility, we suggest that limited notions of historical responsibility are themselves productive of non-accountability and contemporary harms. The article advocates for a broader understanding of responsibility in the arms sector, and calls for more critical attention and research to be directed towards the historical and transnational situatedness of arms companies and their home states. Such a focus must include recognition of the ways that the denial of reparations serves to (re)produce harm.