New UN Report Links Rising Military Spending to Stagnating Global Development

The UN Secretary-General is all set to launch a new report, titled The Security We Need: Rebalancing Military Spending for a Sustainable and Peaceful Future, at the New York based UN Headquarters, on Tuesday. The report, a direct outcome of the Pact for the Future, looks at how the unprecedented military spending surge in recent years is occurring as global security deteriorates and progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, the world’s blueprint for a more equitable future, is falling short.

In a statement issued here, the New Delhi based United Nations Information Centres stated that as per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a staggering $2.7 trillion was spent on militaries in 2024.

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The report, titled Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2024, was authored by Xiao Liang, Dr Nan Tian, Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, Lorenzo Scarazzato, Zubaida A. Karim and Jade Guiberteau Ricard, and released in April 2025.

World military expenditure rose to $2718 billion in 2024, meaning that spending has increased every year for a full decade, going up by 37 per cent between 2015 and 2024. The 9.4 per cent increase in 2024 was the steepest year-on-year rise since at least 1988. The global military burden—the share of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to military expenditure—increased to 2.5 per cent in 2024. Average military expenditure as a share of government expenditure rose to 7.1 per cent in 2024 and world military spending per person was the highest since 1990, at $334.

For the second year in a row, military expenditure increased in all five of the world’s geographical regions, reflecting heightened geopolitical tensions across the globe. The decade-long growth in global spending can be partly attributed to spending increases in Europe, largely driven by the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war, and in the Middle East, driven by the war in Gaza and wider regional conflicts. Many countries have also committed to raising military spending, which will lead to further global increases in the coming years.

This SIPRI Fact Sheet examines the regional and national military expenditure data for 2024 and trends over the decade 2015–24. The data, which replaces all military spending data previously published by SIPRI, comes from the updated SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, an overview of the report on the website read.