International legal context

Disarmament Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)	State Party
1980 CCW Protocol I (Non-Detectable Fragments)	State Party
1996 CCW Amended Protocol II on mines	State Party
1980 CCW Protocol III on incendiary weapons	State Party
1995 CCW Protocol IV on blinding laser weapons	State Party
2003 CCW Protocol V on explosive remnants of war	State Party
2001 Firearms Protocol	State Party
Optional Protocol to the CAT	State Party

International Humanitarian Law Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1949 Geneva Conventions	State Party
Additional Protocol I of 1977	State Party
Additional Protocol II of 1977	State Party

International Criminal Law Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court	State Party
Amendments to the Statute on the crime of aggression	State Party
Amendment to the Statute on blinding laser weapons	Not Party
Amendment to the Statute on the intentional starvation of civilians in NIAC	Not Party

International Human Rights Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1966 Covenant on Civil and Political Rights	State Party
Optional Protocol to the ICCPR	State Party
1966 Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights	State Party
1969 American Convention on Human Rights	State Party
1948 Genocide Convention	State Party
1984 Convention against Torture	State Party
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)	State Party
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict	State Party

Organisation	Status	Comment
United Nations	Member State
International Court of Justice	Accepted compulsory jurisdiction
Organization of American States	Member State
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)	Member State	Safeguards agreement in place

Domestic Legal Context

Imports, exports, and supplier base

Costa Rica is overwhelmingly an arms importer with very limited exports. SIPRI Arms Transfers Database records nineteen deliveries of major conventional weapons to Costa Rica between 1955 and 2019, the great majority light aircraft and helicopters. The earliest recorded transfer is notable for a State with no standing army: four P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft, ordered from the United States delivered in 1955, in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 civil war and the following year’s constitutional abolition of the military. Later light-aircraft and helicopter deliveries occurred between 1956 and 1986. Two Coast Guard patrol vessels – a Swiftships-105 (in 1978) and a Cape-class boat (in 1989) – were both supplied by the United States.

Costa Rica has also imported armoured personnel carriers (APCs) notwithstanding its demilitarized status: a UR-416 from Germany (1984), three M-113s from the United States (1986), and a single Nemesis APC delivered by the United States in 2018. The most recent recorded delivery is a King Air MP maritime patrol aircraft from the United States (2019), consistent with an ongoing US-financed maritime-security procurement described below.

On the export side, SIPRI records only three transfers by Costa Rica: a B-26 Invader bomber delivered to Honduras in 1969, a Bell-206 light helicopter delivered to Guyana in 2008, and – of relevance to the Diversion and Re-export assessment below – a Mi-17 transport helicopter delivered to the Republic of the Congo in 2009. This last transfer establishes that Costa Rica has, on at least one occasion, re-exported a previously imported military-type helicopter to a third country.

Costa Rica’s own Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) Annual Report for calendar year 2025 reports actual imports of 6,328 small arms – 5,295 pistols and revolvers and 1,033 rifles and carbines – sourced from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Czechia, Israel, Italy, Slovakia, Türkiye, and the United States, all declared with Costa Rica as final destination for commercial use. It also reports actual ammunition imports of 5,792,545 rounds across a wide range of calibres, sourced from Czechia, Türkiye, and the United States. On the export side, Costa Rica filed a formal zero-export report for 2025, confirming no export authorizations were issued and no arms were exported.

Small arms and light weapons trade reporting to the UN Register on Conventional Arms (UNROCA) confirms that civilian-market imports are substantially larger than State procurement. In 2025, Costa Rica recorded imports of 5,082 revolvers and self-loading pistols — from Argentina, though sourced from various manufacturers and a range of countries of origin, including also Austria, Czechia, , Slovakia, Türkiye and the United States. A total of 980 rifles and carbines came via the United States, all recorded as destined for commercial/civilian use.

Domestic legislation relevant to the Arms Trade Treaty

National framework

The principal legislation governing the domestic circulation and control of weapons is Ley de Armas y Explosivos No. 7530 of 10 July 1995, as amended, which assigns the Ministry of Public Security, through the Dirección General de Armamento (DGA), control and oversight of the acquisition, possession, registration, carrying, sale, import, export, manufacture and storage of arms, ammunition, explosives and powder (Arts. 1 and 4), and which the DGA administers together with Costa Rica’s National Register of legally held weapons.

The Law is not confined to civilian holdings: it separately obliges State bodies, autonomous institutions and public enterprises to maintain and report inventories of their own weapons (Art. 5), requires State-owned weapons to be marked with the national seal or the initials ‘GCR’ (Art. 6), and reserves the prohibited-weapons category for police and military use (Arts. 24–25). Costa Rica having no armed forces, its public-security procurement therefore falls within the same domestic legal framework as civilian firearms control, rather than a distinct military-procurement regime.

Its implementing regulation, Executive Decree No. 37985-SP of 12 September 2013, sets out the prohibited-weapons list – covering, among other items, armour-piercing, tracer, incendiary and explosive ammunition of any calibre, and firearm suppressors (Art. 18) – together with the registration, licensing and import/export permitting procedures administered through the Ministry’s online control system.

Costa Rica’s parliament approved the Arms Trade Treaty through Law No. 9164 of 10 September 2013 and ratified it by Executive Decree No. 37951 of 19 September 2013. Executive Decree No. 41084-RE-MP-MSP of 14 May 2018, established Costa Rica’s National Control System for ATT implementation, together with its governing body (composed of the Presidency and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Public Security), an Executive Secretariat housed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a Committee for Evaluation and Verification drawing on the Directorate of Intelligence and National Security, the Special Intervention Unit and the DGA. Under this framework, every international transfer of controlled items is evaluated case by case against the Treaty’s prohibition and risk-assessment criteria (Art. 19 of the Decree), and the governing body must decide within ten working days of receiving the preliminary evaluation; its decision is binding on the DGA (Arts. 20–21).

Executive Decree No. 41445-MP-RE-MSP-H of 6 November 2018 established the National Control List itself, subject to review by the governing body at least once a year. The National Control List was last updated in 2018. UNIDIR’s 2026 WAM assessment found the list’s definitions insufficiently clear and stated that it did not adequately incorporate ammunition or recent technological developments, limiting its practical application. That is so, notwithstanding the decree’s own requirement that the list be kept current with technological developments.

The broader transfer-control framework also operates alongside Law No. 7557 of 20 October 1995, Ley General de Aduanas, which provides the general customs framework relevant to the import and export of controlled goods.

Transparency and reporting

Assessment of Costa Rica’s ATT submissions by the ATT Monitor project — reviewing its Article 13(3) reports for 2019–23 — found consistent annual filing with descriptions and comments provided for all reported imports and exports and ammunition disaggregated by voluntary category, but also continued aggregation of some source and destination States, obscuring specific trading-partner data in those cases, and the omission of transaction values, meaning transfers can only be assessed by item count rather than monetary value.

Costa Rica’s UNROCA reporting record shows a substantial gap, having submitted Nil returns for 1998 and 1999, and each year from 2000 to 2008 inclusive. No UNROCA submission was made for the following sixteen years, 2009–24. Costa Rica resumed reporting in 2025.

Costa Rica also participates in the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons (PoA) reporting processes though on an irregular basis; national reports were filed in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2015, and 2016, and most recently in 2024.

Key weaponry in the armed forces

Costa Rica has no standing armed forces. The sections below therefore concern the operational posture of the country’s police and other public-security services.

Strategic position and defence posture

Costa Rica’s security posture is oriented toward internal security, policing, border and maritime surveillance and counter-narcotics operations rather than conventional territorial defence: no active violent non-State armed or separatist groups were identified, and the country faces no significant conventional military threat. Costa Rica relies substantially on international security cooperation – particularly with the United States – for training; equipment and capability development, including continuing operational cooperation with US counterparts on border security; information exchange; and counternarcotics operations.

The principal security challenge is transnational organized crime and drug trafficking. Costa Rica is an important trans-shipment point for cocaine moving from South America toward North America and Europe, and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s (GI-TOC) 2025 Organized Crime Index assigns the country a criminality score of 5.90 – comprising a criminal-markets score of 5.60 and a criminal-actors score of 6.20 – against a resilience score of 5.63. Within that index, Costa Rica’s cocaine-trafficking score (8.0) is markedly higher than its arms-trafficking score (5.0), alongside scores of 8.0 for mafia-style groups, 7.5 for foreign criminal actors, and 6.0 for criminal networks. Arms trafficking, addressed further under the section below, ‘Risk of Diversion and Re-Export of Imported Weapons’, forms one component of a wider organized-crime environment in which cocaine trafficking predominates.

Costa Rica’s principal operational response is consequently centred on counternarcotics, organized-crime enforcement, border control, and maritime surveillance, rather than conventional military operations. The Fuerza Pública, Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), Policía de Control de Drogas, and the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas are the principal bodies involved in these activities. Costa Rica’s geographic position between South America and North America, together with its Pacific and Caribbean coastlines, make land-border and maritime interdiction particularly important components of its security posture.

The absence of conventional armed forces correspondingly reduces Costa Rica’s exposure to risks associated with large military stockpiles, major conventional-weapons accumulation, or force projection; the principal arms-related vulnerabilities instead concern the diversion and illicit circulation of firearms and ammunition into criminal markets, as addressed below.

Composition of the Armed Forces

Costa Rica abolished its army by constitutional provision in 1949 and maintains no standing military. As noted, security functions are instead performed by a set of civilian public security forces under the Ministry of Public Security – the Fuerza Pública (general uniformed police), the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas (Coast Guard), the Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea (Air Surveillance Service, SVA), the Policía de Fronteras (Border Police) and the Policía de Control de Drogas (Drug Control Police) — together with the judicial-branch Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ). This profile treats these bodies together in place of the Army section used in profiles of States with a standing military, given the absence of any separate armed-forces institution in Costa Rica. The composition of these forces is reviewed under the section below, ‘Key Weaponry in Law Enforcement Agencies’. This section addresses the air force and navy roles performed respectively by the SVA and the Coast Guard, consistent with Janes’ categorization of these bodies.

Air force

The SVA is a small, under-resourced force responsible for Costa Rican airspace integrity, support to the land and maritime security forces, counternarcotics patrols, and search-and-rescue, operating a special-forces rapid-reaction unit, from San José International Airport, with fewer than ten helicopters.

The fleet is built almost entirely from aircraft impounded during counter-narcotics operations and US donations. Major US contributions include a Cerro Azul radar base (2009, US$15 million); four Bell UH-1H ‘Huey’ helicopters (2018–19) that more than doubled the helicopter fleet; a Beechcraft King Air 250 (2018/19) and Cessna C-208B Caravan (2020); and a US$13.7 million SOUTHCOM package (2023) providing a command-and-control system and six AeroVironment Puma UAVs for counternarcotics and border-security missions, plus two further Puma UAVs donated in 2024.

The fixed-wing fleet totals 14 aircraft: a De Havilland C-7A Caribou, four Cessna 210 Centurions, one each of the Piper PA-31-350 Navajo Chieftain, PA-31-325 Navajo, PA-34-200T and PA-34-220T Seneca III variants, a King Air 250 and a C-208B Caravan, plus three Cessna 206H Stationairs. The rotary-wing fleet totals 7 helicopters — one MD500E, two MD600Ns and four UH-1Hs — all in a surveillance role.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Up to eight AeroVironment Puma UAVs – six from SOUTHCOM’s 2023 assistance package, two more donated in 2024 – small surveillance systems for counternarcotics and border security; none identified as armed.

Navy

The Coast Guard’s naval element became the National Coast Guard Service (Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas, SNG) in 2000, subordinate to the Ministry of Public Security and operating closely with the US Coast Guard under a 1998 combined patrol agreement. It polices Costa Rica’s 584 nautical-mile Pacific and 112 nautical-mile Caribbean coastlines and a claimed 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), from two commands (Atlantic and Pacific) with seven naval bases. It is assessed as small but well-trained and efficient for its current, limited role; extending this to full policing of the exclusive economic zone would require further patrol vessels – a requirement the service has itself identified, specifically four new large patrol craft to replace its ageing fleet.

Janes’ inventory lists twelve vessel classes in SNG service, led by the Eduardoño series (46 vessels across four variants, commissioned 2015–16) and including the Libertador (Island) class (three in service), a single 85 ft Metal Shark Defiant 85-class vessel, three Point Class, two SAFE Boats 33 Interceptors, and four Swiftships-class craft.

Recent and current operations

Costa Rica has contributed police personnel to United Nations peacekeeping operations and has historically participated in regional peace and security operations conducted under the auspices of the Organization of American States. Its contemporary international security contribution is primarily police-based, consistent with the country’s abolition of its standing armed forces.

Compliance with IHL and Human Rights by the Armed Forces

Accordingly, the assessment of compliance by armed forces with international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law is not applicable to Costa Rica in the conventional sense. Issues concerning the conduct of Costa Rica’s security personnel, including compliance with human rights law and applicable standards governing the use of force, are instead assessed in the following section.

Key Weaponry in Law Enforcement Agencies

Legal Framework

Costa Rica’s civilian public-security agencies – the Fuerza Pública, Policía de Fronteras, Policía de Control de Drogas, Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas, and Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea, all under the Ministry of Public Security (MSP), together with the judicial-branch Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) — operate under the General Police Law (Ley General de Policía No. 7410 of 26 May 1994). The principal MSP-administered bodies are the Fuerza Pública, which is the main uniformed police force, with more than 12,600 officers according to the Ministry, and including a Special Intervention Unit (Unidad Especial de Intervención) for higher-risk operations such as dealing with explosives and mines. Other law enforcement agencies are the Policía de Fronteras (land-border security and anti-trafficking patrols), the Policía de Control de Drogas (established by Article 25 of Law No. 7410, with functions relating to the prevention and investigation of drug offences and associated illicit activity), and the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas and Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea, whose maritime and aerial surveillance roles and equipment are addressed under ‘Key Weaponry in the Armed Forces’, above.

The Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea was constituted as a police body attached to the MSP under Law No. 10061 of 15 November 2021, amending Law No. 7410, with responsibility for surveillance and protection of the airspace and territory, including operations and patrols and the security of airports, aircraft, equipment and armament. The judicial-branch Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) – established by Ley Orgánica No. 5524 of 1974 as an auxiliary body to the criminal courts and the Public Ministry (Attorney General’s Office) – sits outside this MSP chain of command.

Article 10 of Law 7410 requires police officers to respect the Constitution, international treaties, and applicable legislation; to observe individual liberties and rights; to act responsibly and impartially without arbitrary or discriminatory intervention; and to use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their functions.

Costa Rica’s 1949 Constitution supplies the foundational framework. Article 21 provides that human life is inviolable; Article 40 prohibits cruel or degrading treatment and provides that any statement obtained through violence is null; and Article 26 guarantees the right to peaceful assembly without weapons, including for the discussion of political matters and examination of the conduct of public officials, subject to regulation by law for meetings held in public places.

The framework is reinforced by Executive Decree No. 31463-SP of 27 August 2003 (Reglamento de Ética de los Miembros de las Fuerzas de Policía Adscritas al Ministerio de Seguridad Pública). Article 5 of the Regulation provides that officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required by the performance of their duties, that weapons may be used only where there is a grave risk to the life or physical integrity of the officer or a third party, and that such actions are governed by the principles of reasonableness and proportionality.

The principal weapons-specific legislation is the Law on Arms and Explosives (Ley de Armas y Explosivos No. 7530 of 10 July 1995), as amended, which regulates the acquisition, possession, registration, carrying, sale, import, export, manufacture and storage of firearms, ammunition and explosives. Article 11 establishes the Dirección General de Armamento (DGA) within the MSP as the principal authority for their control, comprising the Department of Control of Arms and Explosives, the Weapons Registry and the Arsenal Nacional. The law contains specific provisions concerning weapons held and used by police bodies and other authorized public institutions, including their authorization, control, and use.

Weapons held by these agencies fall within this same statutory framework as civilian firearms control (see ‘Domestic legislation relevant to the Arms Trade Treaty’ above), but Articles 27–30 of Law 7530 and Article 51 of Law 7410 establish police-specific rules, addressed under the section below, ‘Weapons and equipment’.

The Regulation to the Law on Arms and Explosives, Executive Decree No. 37985-SP provides the implementing framework for the registration, acquisition, possession, carrying, import, export, storage, and control of firearms and ammunition. It applies to State institutions and police bodies as well as civilian holders, establishes administrative mechanisms for firearms permits, registration, and control, and provides for controls over firearms issued to police and governs the functioning of the DGA and its Department of Control of Arms and Explosives.

The legal framework is supplemented by disciplinary provisions under Article 85 of Law 7410, which classifies indiscriminate, unnecessary or excessive use of force, arbitrary or discriminatory conduct affecting human rights, abuse of authority, or the maltreatment of a person, and the carriage of an unauthorized or non-regulation weapon as serious disciplinary faults rather than criminal offences (see further ‘Accountability and oversight’ under the section below ‘Police Compliance with the Law of Law Enforcement and Human Rights’).

Costa Rican legislation does not establish a detailed equipment for each individual police service. Instead, the legal framework establishes the categories of weapons that may be issued to the police, the authority responsible for authorizing them, and a requirement that individual police bodies maintain inventories of weapons, ammunition, explosives, and other equipment necessary for their functions.
Article 27 of Law 7530 provides that the Ministry of Public Security is the sole authority responsible for authorizing the use and import of weapons required by members of the police forces. Article 28 establishes the standard police sidearm as a .38 Special revolver, while trained officers may, when authorized by the Minister of Public Security and warranted by the service, circumstances, or situation, use 9mm or .45-calibre semi-automatic pistols; the same article designates a 5.56 mm selective-fire rifle as the Fuerza Pública’s ‘organic weapon’.
Article 25 classifies as prohibited machine guns and other fully automatic weapons; certain semi-automatic rifles and carbines with magazines exceeding ten rounds; artillery and other explosive-projectile weapons, military combat vehicles equipped with machine guns, grenades, mines, and other explosive or incendiary devices, and certain types of ammunition. Articles 29 and 30 create specific exceptions to that prohibition: Article 29 bars the Guardia Civil, the Guardia Rural, the Border Police, the Policía de Control de Drogas, the special intervention units of the Office of the President, and the reserves of those forces from carrying or using prohibited weapons when intervening in strikes or demonstrations, though the President may authorize their use in that context, subject to an absolute bar on toxic or lethal gases, chemical compounds, viruses, or bacteria capable of producing irreversible physical or mental harm. Article 30 permits specified police forces and the OIJ to use certain prohibited firearms where required by the service, case, or situation, and when authorized by the competent authorities.
Article 51 of Law 7410 states that the different police bodies forming the national police forces shall have at their disposal only the regulation weapons necessary for the proper performance of their functions, and places the National Arsenal under the President’s authority, delegable to the responsible minister. Article 8(k) of the same law separately imposes a general obligation on all police forces to keep up-to-date registers of the weapons, explosives, and equipment indispensable to their functions; the Fuerza Pública’s own current institutional profile confirms this duty operationally, alongside a duty to ensure compliance with the Law on Arms and Explosives and to maintain operational records identifying the personnel involved in policing. The legislation does not comprehensively list firearms actually held by service.

Oversight

Costa Rica does not have an independent civilian oversight body dedicated specifically to police conduct which operates through the disciplinary and administrative mechanisms discussed below; the broader institutional framework for accountability – including the Defensoría de los Habitantes, the Public Ministry, the OIJ’s institutional separation from the MSP, the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture and the Inter-American human-rights system – is addressed under ‘Accountability and oversight’ below.

Weapons-related misconduct by individual officers is addressed through the General Police Law’s internal disciplinary regime (Articles 81–91), administered in the first instance by each Ministry’s Consejo de Personal.

The DGA is the principal institutional mechanism for firearms control within the Ministry of Public Security, administering registration and control functions under Law 7530 and its implementing regulation, Executive Decree 37985-SP. Government weapons – together with those of the wider Arsenal Nacional – are subject to registration and inventory requirements, including identifying the weapon, calibre, serial number, government property number and condition, and the law criminalizes certain forms of unauthorized delivery or facilitation of government weapons by public officials. The existence of these controls should nevertheless be distinguished from their effectiveness in practice.

Police Compliance with the Law of Law Enforcement and Human Rights

Torture, ill-treatment and detention

Costa Rica’s legal framework prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, but UN treaty bodies have identified continuing concerns concerning detention safeguards, prison conditions and the investigation of alleged ill-treatment. In its 2016 concluding observations, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed concern that Costa Rica had not provided information on the investigation and punishment of human-rights violations committed by officials at detention centres or by police, particularly allegations involving torture and ill-treatment. The Committee called for reports of torture or ill-treatment to be fully and diligently investigated and for perpetrators to be brought to justice where appropriate. It also expressed concern about overcrowding, poor detention conditions, and excessive or prolonged use of pretrial detention.

The Committee against Torture (CAT) revisited these issues in its concluding observations of December 2023. It welcomed reforms including the establishment of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture and the 2022 reform of the Criminal Code’s torture provision (Act No. 10213), but found the domestic definition of torture still incomplete: it does not specifically refer to acts committed for the purpose of intimidation, coercion or obtaining information, does not address torture committed with the consent or acquiescence of a public official, and lacks an express criminal provision for attempted torture. The Committee also noted that Article 261 of the Code of Criminal Procedure permits incommunicado detention for up to ten consecutive days, and urged Costa Rica to consider abolishing incommunicado detention while protecting detainees’ rights to contact relatives or counsel. It also recommended that all deaths in custody be investigated promptly and impartially by an independent body, applying the Minnesota Protocol.

Constitutional Chamber (Sala IV) rulings between 2020 and 2024 illustrate that these concerns have translated into a recurring pattern of judicially confirmed cases, rather than an isolated incident. In Sentence No. 2020-021315, concerning a roadblock removal in Aguas Zarcas, San Carlos on 11 October 2020, the Chamber found that an officer pinned a detained woman to the ground with his knee, struck her twice in the face, and lifted her violently by the hair; the Magistrate held that she had suffered ‘an unnecessary assault on her physical integrity and a disproportionate use of force’, and the Chamber ordered police authorities to refrain from repeating such conduct.

In Sentence No. 18385-2022, concerning the Centro Nacional de Atención Específica on 22 June 2022, an inmate alleged being beaten by several Policía Penitenciaria officers, sustaining injuries to the head, shoulder, arm, thigh, leg, and ribs; because the facility’s recordings are deleted every 30 days, no video evidence could be produced, and the Chamber partially upheld the petition, ordering an administrative proceeding and the acquisition of recording equipment.

In Sentence No. 2024-11213, concerning an incident in Santa Cruz, Guanacaste on 8 April 2024, the Chamber found that a man detained by Fuerza Pública officers had been laid face down with his hands and feet restrained, beaten in various parts of the body, subjected to electric shocks, and burned with melted plastic; a forensic medical examination documented abrasions and second-degree burns consistent with the account. The Chamber declared the habeas corpus petition well-founded, condemned the State, and ordered the Ministry of Public Security to open a disciplinary procedure against the officers involved.

A more recent death in custody remains under criminal investigation. In Pavas, the OIJ opened a homicide investigation and initially detained nine Fuerza Pública officers after a 44 year-old man, died on 9 February 2025 in the holding cells of the Pavas delegation; an autopsy attributed the death to a heart laceration caused by multiple blows that fractured several ribs, and security-camera footage reportedly showed an officer striking him with tubes and other objects. The Ministry of Public Security characterized the case as isolated. As of 12 January 2026, four of the officers remained in pretrial detention on suspicion of homicide, with other officers facing separate allegations of failure to fulfil their duties.

Indigenous communities and law-enforcement conduct

There are documented concerns regarding police conduct in Indigenous territories. The II Informe de agresiones y violaciones a los Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos Originarios de la Zona Sur de Costa Rica, recorded 63 security incidents across the Salitre, Yamabï Dí (Cabagra), China Kichá and Térraba territories in 2021, of which 26 were attributed to or involved the Fuerza Pública, including alleged police inaction, alleged complicity with private landowners, tear-gas use, and alleged arbitrary detention.

UN mechanisms have independently expressed concern about violence and impunity affecting Indigenous human-rights defenders. In its December 2023 Concluding Observations, the Committee against Torture raised concerns about harassment and attacks against the lives and physical integrity of Indigenous persons, human-rights defenders, and environmental activists, noting that cases such as the 2019 killing of Indigenous leader Sergio Rojas have reportedly been dismissed or remain unresolved, and called for continued preventive measures and protection efforts.

Accountability and oversight

Costa Rica has several avenues for investigating alleged law-enforcement misconduct. The weapons-specific dimension of this picture was addressed above. Costa Rica has no independent civilian police oversight body as such; allegations of misconduct are instead channelled to the Defensoría de los Habitantes de la República. Established by Law No. 7319 of 17 November 1992, the Defensoría is attached to the Legislative Branch but exercises functional, administrative, and decision-making independence. It may investigate complaints, recommend corrective action, and refer conduct that may constitute a criminal offence to the Public Ministry, with public authorities required to cooperate with its investigations (subject to statutory exceptions).

The Defensoría’s reporting gives a sense of the volume of complaints channelled through it: the US State Department recorded that in the first six months of 2017 the Defensoría received 132 complaints of police abuse, arbitrary detention, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and that abuse by prison police was a recurring complaint, though few complainants went on to file formal complaints with the authorities. This figure indicates the scale of reported grievances channelled through the Defensoría, not a count of established abuse. More recent US reporting found no credible evidence of government officials employing torture in 2023, suggesting that documented abuses should not be characterised as evidence of systematic state torture.

The Public Ministry and judicial authorities provide criminal-investigation and prosecution mechanisms, while the OIJ operates within the judicial branch and is institutionally separate from the Ministry of Public Security – a separation that is particularly relevant where allegations concern MSP officers.

Costa Rica also maintains a National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture, established under Law 9204 of 2014, which conducts monitoring visits in places of detention; the 2023 CAT examination welcomed its work while recommending it be given sufficient financial resources and specialized personnel.

Costa Rica is subject to the Inter-American human-rights system, providing a regional avenue for complaints. A case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights provides a relevant example. In Matt Shirzad v. Costa Rica, IACHR Report No. 95/14, Petition 671-05 (6 November 2014), the petitioner alleged that Costa Rican State agents subjected him to torture and ill-treatment and illegally arrested him, including through the excessive use of force during his arrest. The Commission declared admissible alleged violations concerning humane treatment, personal liberty, fair trial and judicial protection, as well as provisions of the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture. The report was an admissibility decision and did not determine the merits of the allegations.

Risk of Diversion and Re-Export of Imported Weapons

Illicit firearms trafficking

Costa Rica faces a significant firearms-trafficking problem. According to GI-TOC, Global Organized Crime Index 2025, Costa Rica country profile fewer than 5% of weapons used in the country’s homicides are reported to be legally held, indicating that the bulk of current firearms violence is driven by trafficked, illicitly held weapons. Criminal organizations obtain firearms, including assault rifles, through transnational illicit markets sourced from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the United States. Costa Rica’s location between the Caribbean and Pacific coasts also makes it a key transit and logistics point for the same Mexican and Colombian criminal networks – including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Colombia’s Clan del Golfo – that dominate the country’s cocaine-trafficking landscape.

The number of active organized-crime groups identified by Costa Rican authorities is separately reported to have grown from 35 to 340 over the decade to 2023.

Domestic enforcement data illustrate the scale of this challenge: the Fuerza Pública seized 2,355 firearms and 1,123 less-lethal weapons during 2024 and recorded 7,236 arrests for violations of the Ley de Armas y Explosivos.

The evidence does not indicate that the illicit firearms market is primarily supplied by weapons diverted from Costa Rican State inventories, but is rather connected to transnational trafficking networks and weapons already outside lawful State custody. Costa Rica is nonetheless a State Party to both the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials (CIFTA) and the UN Firearms Protocol and has received sustained OAS/UNIDIR technical support, including a joint weapons-and-ammunition destruction programme with other Central American States.

Documented diversion, theft, and re-export cases

The GICHD Ammunition Management Activity Platform (A-MAP) catalogues at least five cases between 2012 and 2021 involving theft of weapons from State security-sector or private-security holdings in Costa Rica:

2012: 215 Glock 19 9mm pistols were stolen from a Policía de Tránsito (Traffic Police) warehouse at Plaza Víquez, San José, under the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation; A-MAP catalogues this within its table of diversion cases for Costa Rica.
2017: seventeen weapons were stolen from the Fuerza Pública’s Jicaral delegation in Lepanto de Puntarenas; one officer was arrested in connection with the theft.
2018: an Uzi-type machine gun and two sub-machine guns were stolen from the OIJ’s Victims and Witnesses Protection Unit in San José.
2021: seventeen firearms were stolen from the private security company Securitas’ office in Valencia de Heredia — private rather than State custody, but relevant to the security of legally held weapons.
2021: 26 weapons (10 Sig Sauer and 16 Beretta pistols), ammunition, body armour, and radios were stolen from the National Police Academy in San José; two officers were placed in preventive custody on suspicion of facilitating the theft, and all weapons were subsequently recovered.

The 2012 theft provides the clearest evidence of a cross-border re-export pathway and is corroborated across multiple independent sources. Seventeen were recovered by Panamanian police within weeks in a raid in Panama City, and a further tranche (22 weapons in total, seized across separate Panamanian operations) was formally returned to Costa Rican authorities on 19 March 2013, with eight individuals facing arms-trafficking charges in Panama. In August 2013, INTERPOL’s Illicit Arms Records and Tracing Management System (iARMS) matched a firearm seized in an unrelated Panamanian drug-related raid to the January 2012 theft (eighteen months earlier), which INTERPOL publicly described as the system’s first positive ‘hit’, illustrating the tracing system’s value in linking cases that would otherwise appear unrelated.

A separate 2015 investigation illustrates diversion through the lawful import channel. Costa Rican authorities investigated an international arms-trafficking network in which weapons reportedly imported legally from countries including the United States and Türkiye and nominally destined for private-security companies were allegedly sold to third parties in Costa Rica and Panama. Ministry of Public Security premises were among those searched because of suspected facilitation of the importation and registration process; the operation followed a similar network dismantled in 2013. The quantities involved and the case’s ultimate judicial outcome were not established.

More broadly, a 2026 analysis identifies five main channels supplying Costa Rica’s domestic illicit firearms market: weapons stolen from civilian holders and, separately, from security officials; legally held weapons resold illegally by civilians; international smuggling by sea, land and air; homemade firearms produced using 3D printing and metal components; and modular weapons whose parts arrive separately, including via camouflaged imports, for assembly within the country. The reporting does not quantify how much of the illicit market is attributable to theft from security officials specifically, as distinct from civilian holders; the theft cases documented above confirm that theft directly from security-force and other State facilities does occur, though the available evidence does not establish its overall scale relative to the other channels identified.

Security-sector integrity

There is some evidence of individual security personnel being implicated in corruption or cooperation with organized crime networks, relevant to diversion where personnel have access to weapons, weapons records, operational information or interdiction activities. A 2026 internal intelligence assessment reportedly identified allegations against police officers in southern Costa Rica involving assistance to drug-trafficking and contraband operations; the underlying report expressly stated that the intelligence did not constitute sufficient evidence for criminal charges and should therefore be treated as allegations rather than established findings. A separate report on the same intelligence document specified that 122 southern-zone officers were identified as ‘persons of interest’, including at least 27 allegedly coordinating with drug-trafficking organizations and 44 allegedly linked to an alcohol-smuggling ring.

The 2021 National Police Academy theft, discussed above, provides a more directly relevant example of insider vulnerability: two officers were placed in preventive custody for allegedly facilitating the theft, and all of the stolen weapons were subsequently recovered.

National capacity to prevent diversion

Costa Rica has a formal legal framework to prevent diversion – the National Control System (Executive Decree No. 41084-RE-MP-MSP) and National Control List (Decree No. 41445-MP-RE-MSP-H) established for ATT implementation. That said, capacity to prevent diversion in practice is mixed. UNIDIR’s 2026 Costa Rica Weapons and Ammunition Management (WAM) Country Insight, attributes the principal gaps to implementation rather than to the absence of a formal framework: the National Control List has not been updated since 2018 and has insufficiently clear definitions and inadequate coverage of ammunition and newer technologies. Furthermore, weapons and ammunition management across the life-cycle (import, storage, issuance, transfer, recovery, tracing, and disposal) remains only partially systematic. At the operational level, the documented cases demonstrate that these gaps translate into real vulnerabilities in physical stockpile security, insider controls, and pre-authorization diversion risk.

An inter-institutional coordination mechanism on weapons and ammunition management involving the MSP, the Ministry of the Presidency, and other bodies operated between 2014 and 2018. It was, however, found in UNIDIR’s assessment to be inactive or not functioning consistently; Costa Rica’s own most recent PoA National Report marks the (re-)establishment of a national coordination body as ‘in progress’ rather than complete, consistent with that finding.

The same PoA report indicates limited institutional follow-through beyond the coordination mechanisms itself ; a national coordination body remained ‘being established’; no national point of contact was confirmed as designated; and Costa Rica had adopted neither a National Action Plan nor national targets under the PoA. It is similarly equivocal on brokering, providing no information on whether dedicated laws or regulations govern SALW brokering, while noting that what exists should be reviewed and updated to match the evolving typology of offences. Against these gaps, the report records cooperation with INTERPOL on SALW tracing and action taken against groups or individuals for illegally transferring SALW internationally.

The report also indicates that State-held weapons are marked under a national stamping system using the initials ‘GCR’ plus a six-digit asset number; imported small arms and light weapons must be marked by the supplying party in the country of origin with, at minimum, country and year of import, plus serial number, model, brand, and calibre. Date for 2022–23 totalled 2,997 and 1,502 SALW collected, and 2,906 and 1,835 destroyed. These figures sit within UNIDIR’s broader count of more than 65,000 weapons destroyed domestically between 2005 and 2023, with significant support from the OAS Programme of Assistance for Control of Arms and Munitions (PACAM), which facilitated the destruction of nearly 42,000 weapons and more than 3.6 million rounds of ammunition through 2024.