International legal context

Adherence to all treaties

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	State Party
Amendment to the Statute on the intentional starvation of civilians in NIAC	State 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

Membership to International Organisations

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

Uruguay is overwhelmingly an arms importer and has no significant arms export activity. According to the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, Uruguay’s inventory of major conventional weapons has for decades been assembled through second-hand purchases, donations, and limited new-build orders rather than large-scale procurement. The main surface vessels in its navy for more than three decades were five Commandant Rivière-class frigates: three bought from France and two from Portugal. The last of these five frigates was decommissioned in 2022.

Uruguay’s armoured units for its arm have been assembled in the same piecemeal fashion from a wide range of suppliers. SIPRI records 22 M41 Walker Bulldog light tanks from Belgium (delivered 1981); 15 EE-9 Cascavel fire-support vehicles and 18 EE-11 Urutu armoured personnel carriers from Brazil (delivered 1980); 18 M113 armoured personnel carriers from the United States (delivered 1971); and 100 MILAN anti-tank missiles from France (delivered 1985). In the mid-to-late 1990s, Uruguay took delivery of 78 OT-64A armoured personnel carriers, 15 BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, 3 RM-70 122mm multiple rocket launchers and 6 2S1 122mm self-propelled guns from Czechia, and 15 Israeli-modified TI-67 tanks (rebuilt T-55s) in 1997.

Uruguay’s own UNROCA returns extend this record further back and add detail not captured in the SIPRI database: in 1998, 5 BVP-1 combat vehicles and 80 122mm multiple-launch rockets from Czechia; in 1999, 1,248 SBAT-70 rocket motors from Brazil; in 2000, 3 MTLB armoured vehicles and 30 OT-64/OT-93 armoured personnel carriers (15 each) from Czechia; and in 2002, a military tugboat from Germany, 124 MK-82 bombs from South Africa and 10 LAU-130A rocket launchers from the United States.

Since the mid-2000s: 48 GAZ-3937 armoured vehicles have been procured from Russia (delivered 2006); 3 new M113 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) from Belgium (delivered 2008); and 147 Piranha-1 APCs from Canada (delivered 2009). SIPRI records 15 M-41B light tanks bought from Brazil (delivered 2018). Brazil has also transferred 11 further EE-11 Urutu APCs and 10 M108 105mm self-propelled guns (both delivered 2022).

Current modernization is centred on the Air Force and on counternarcotics and border-security equipment. SIPRI records an order for 6 Embraer A-29 Super Tucano light attack/trainer aircraft from Brazil (2024); per Embraer and Uruguayan defence-press reporting, this comprised a firm order for one aircraft in August 2024 and an option for five more converted to a firm order in January 2025, with the first two delivered in February 2026. SIPRI also records three US patrol boats delivered in 2022; per the US Embassy in Montevideo, these were donated in November 2022 under the US Excess Defense Articles programme, with a value of US$8.69 million.

This gradual modernization is being financed by a defence budget that has risen sharply in relative terms. According to SIPRI’s Military Expenditure Database, reported via MercoPress in May 2026, the military budget rose from US$320.9 million in 2020 to US$577.2 million in 2025 — an increase of nearly 80 per cent in five years, and one of the steepest relative rises recorded anywhere in South America. Yet Uruguay’s import volumes are still too small in trend-indicator-value terms to appear among SIPRI’s list of the forty largest global arms recipients for 2021–25.

Uruguay’s own arms exports (and re-exports) are negligible and confined, on the SIPRI record, to two transfers of surplus aircraft to a single regional recipient: 8 P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft to Bolivia (delivered 1960) and, four decades later, 11 T-34 trainer aircraft, also to Bolivia (delivered 2000).

Beyond major conventional systems, Uruguay’s UNROCA returns since 2019 include a voluntary annex on small arms and light weapons (SALW), itemizing consignments by supplier, type and quantity and pointing to an ongoing, multi-year renewal of police and military service weapons from a broad supplier base. Recent returns record more than 1,300 Austrian pistols (2021, almost certainly Glocks, consistent with the National Police’s 2013 purchase of 2,500 Glock G17s — (see Key Weaponry in Law Enforcement Agencies below); further pistols and rifles from Argentina, Brazil, Czechia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Spain, Türkiye, and the United States (2021–22); 766 US rifles and 984 Spanish-sourced machine guns (2022); 592 Colt M4A1 rifles from the United States (2024); and a further 400 Colt M4A1 rifles, 200 Glock 19 pistols, and 50 CZ Scorpion EVO3 sub-machine guns, all reported as acquired in 2023 (2025 return).

Domestic legislation relevant to the Arms Trade Treaty

Uruguay became a State Party to the ATT in 2014. While Uruguay has established a comprehensive regulatory framework governing civilian possession, commercial transactions and illicit trafficking of firearms, publicly available legislation does not establish a dedicated arms export control statute. Instead, regulation of firearms and related materials relies upon a combination of domestic criminal legislation, administrative regulations, and obligations arising from regional and international instruments.

National Framework

The principal domestic legislation is Law No. 19,247 of 15 August 2014, which governs the possession, carriage, commercialization, and trafficking of firearms, ammunition, explosives, and other related materials. Article 1 prohibits the possession and carrying of firearms, ammunition, explosives, and related materials unless duly authorized by the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defence, or both, depending on the nature of the weapon or activity. The law further establishes criminal offences relating to illicit international trafficking, unlawful manufacture, alteration of identifying markings, and illegal possession of firearms, while requiring the Executive to regulate authorization procedures through implementing legislation.

Article 7 requires firearms, ammunition and related materials that have been seized, confiscated or voluntarily surrendered to be destroyed within six months, unless they remain subject to judicial or administrative proceedings. Article 8 criminalizes the import, export, acquisition, sale, transfer, or transportation of firearms and related materials across international borders without the prior authorization of all States concerned, thereby incorporating the concept of international illicit trafficking into domestic criminal law.

Law No. 19,247 is implemented principally through Decree No. 377/016 of 5 December 2016, which replaced the previous regulatory framework established by Decrees Nos. 17/987 and 231/002. The decree establishes detailed administrative procedures governing civilian acquisition, registration, possession, importation and transfer of firearms, introduces the Título de Habilitación para la Adquisición y Tenencia de Armas (THATA) as the national authorization required for civilian acquisition and possession, and laid down a twelve-month regularization period for previously unregistered firearms.

The decree also establishes important restrictions concerning military-style weapons. Automatic firearms, automatic shotguns, and automatic or semi-automatic rifles and carbines intended for military or police use are reserved exclusively for the National Police, National Army, National Navy and Uruguayan Air Force, and are prohibited for civilian importation, acquisition or possession. Civilian ownership is generally limited to manually operated sporting firearms and specified semi-automatic rimfire rifles subject to technical restrictions, while large-calibre military rifles, including .50 BMG firearms, are expressly prohibited.

Importation of firearms, essential components and related materials is subject to administrative controls involving both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of National Defence. Commercial importers must be duly authorized, while imports of firearm components are channelled through companies registered with the Servicio de Material y Armamento (SMA) of the Ministry of National Defence and require prior import certification before customs clearance under Decree No. 377/016, as further detailed by Decree No. 345/020 of 18 December 2020, which sets out the specific requirements for firearms registration and declaration. The regulatory framework therefore combines criminal prohibitions with administrative licensing procedures designed to maintain governmental oversight of civilian firearms circulation.

This licensing framework sits on top of an older legal layer. Uruguay’s national reports under the PoA cite Decreto-Ley No. 10,415 of 27 February 1943, Uruguay’s original Ley Nacional de Armas y Explosivos, as a source of continuing legal authority in every report filed since 2005.

The legislation described above concerns civilian possession, carrying and trade in firearms; it does not regulate the Armed Forces’ own procurement of weapons and ammunition. Military procurement instead follows Uruguay’s general public-procurement code, the Texto Ordenado de Contabilidad y Administración Financiera (TOCAF, Decree No. 150/012 of 2012). Article 33 sets competitive-tender thresholds and lists forty-four enumerated exceptions permitting direct purchase without tender; none of these is framed specifically around ‘weapons’ or ‘ammunition’ as a category but section D(9) frames an exception ‘where circumstances require that the operation remain confidential’. In practice, the armed forces have used the direct-purchase-by-exception procedure to acquire firearms outside the standard tender process: per an Infodefensa report in January 2014, the army acquired 1,000 Glock 17 pistols and related accessories from Glock América S.A. for approximately US$497,825 by this route.

Uruguay’s firearms control regime is reinforced by the incorporation of regional and international instruments addressing illicit trafficking. The Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA) was approved through Law No. 17,300 of 22 March 2001, while the United Nations Firearms Protocol was incorporated by Law No. 18,233 of 22 December 2007. The terminology adopted by Decree No. 377/016, including the definition of ‘other related materials’, closely follows the definitions contained in CIFTA.

Law No. 19,247 criminalizes unauthorized international transfers and Decree No. 377/016 sets out licensing and administrative controls, but neither expressly requires licensing authorities to assess the risks identified in ATT Articles 6 and 7, nor establishes statutory risk-assessment criteria, mitigation obligations, or mandatory export-denial provisions equivalent to the ATT’s obligations. Transfer decisions therefore appear to remain largely a matter of executive discretion. This gap is of limited practical significance, however, given Uruguay’s negligible role as an arms exporter.

Uruguay’s Initial Report to the ATT confirms this in its own terms: it checked ‘No’ to having export risk-assessment or prohibition-assessment procedures under Articles 6 and 7, to assessing or addressing diversion risk under Article 11, to regulating brokering under Article 10, and to having enforcement measures under Article 14, attributing each gap to the ‘lack of internal regulation’ implementing Law No. 19,225 related to ATT approvals. It also had not yet notified a national point of contact or transmitted a national control list covering ammunition and components, and named the Servicio de Material y Armamento as the competent authority throughout, consistent with its role under the civilian licensing framework described above. Decree No. 377/016, adopted the following year, addresses civilian firearms licensing in detail but does not appear to have closed these ATT-specific gaps.

Transparency and Reporting

Uruguay has a consistent public reporting record across the three principal international transparency mechanisms relevant to conventional arms transfers.

The ATT Monitor’s country profile records show that Uruguay submitted a publicly available ATT annual report for every reporting year from 2016 to 2023 (the full run of years for which ATT Monitor has published country-profile analyses), with the reports for 2017, 2020, and 2021 submitted after ATT Monitor’s cut-off date but not withheld from publication. Its fullest substantive return is 2022: imports from eight States (five States Parties and three signatories), comprising 21 major conventional arms items (battle tanks and armoured combat vehicles) and 3,706 SALW items (mostly rifles/carbines and light weapons ‘others’, with a small share of pistols and revolvers), with Austria, Brazil, and the United States identified as the leading SALW suppliers. That said, Uruguay did not report the final exporting State for 56.4 per cent of its reported imports, a transparency gap the ATT Monitor specifically noted.

Uruguay’s full UNROCA reporting history has been uneven except during recent years. Uruguay reported for 1998–2002, then did not report at all in 2003–09; filed a nil return for 2010; did not report for 2011; filed a substantive return for 2012; filed nil returns for 2013–15; and again did not report for 2016–18. Reporting has been consistent since 2019, with substantive returns for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025, and a nil return for 2023. Since 2019, these returns have also included a detailed voluntary annex on small arms and light weapons (SALW) transfers, described together with Uruguay’s SALW procurement noted in the Imports, Exports, and Supplier Base section above.

Uruguay has also filed national reports on the Implementation of the PoA; across every report filed since 2005, the Servicio de Material y Armamento of the Ejército Nacional has served as both the national coordination body and national point of contact, and the same office (through its ‘Registro Nacional de Armas’) is identified as the agency responsible for handling international tracing requests.

On substance, Uruguay’s reports consistently record the fact that no SALW are manufactured domestically. Every report confirms standards and procedures for stockpile security (storage locations, physical security, access control, inventory accounting, staff training, and sanctions for theft or loss), with destruction reported as the sole method used to dispose of surplus SALW. The only quantified destruction and collection figures given appear in the 2018 submission, covering 2016–17: some 3,000 SALW destroyed, comprising items seized, voluntarily surrendered and retired from security-force service, and 200 separately collected and destroyed over the same period. Later reports leave the equivalent fields blank.

Uruguay’s most recent report responded ‘zero’ to the questions about diversion linked to international transfers and left a blank answer to the question related to diversion linked to national stockpile management. As described in Risk of Diversion and Re Export of Imported Weapons below, GICHD’s Ammunition Management Activity Platform (A-MAP) however, documents several confirmed incidents of diversion from Uruguay’s own police and military stockpiles.

Key Weaponry in the Armed Forces

Strategic position and defence posture

A conventional inter-State war is very unlikely, including the historically sensitive tension with Argentina over their shared border river. Transnational organized crime and drug trafficking now drive Uruguay’s defence posture instead – reflected in the government’s so-called ‘shoot-down law’, which authorizes the Air Force to shoot down aircraft violating Uruguayan airspace. InSight Crime and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC) claim that Uruguay is a transit State for cocaine shipments from Paraguay and Brazil onward to Europe and Africa, trafficked mainly by small, family-based clans such as Los Chingas and Los Kamalas. This was assessed as ‘unlikely’ to expand significantly in 2026. The context bears directly on firearms trafficking: the cross-border smuggling described in Risk of Diversion of Imported Weapons, below, runs along several of the same routes into Brazil. Doctrine has shifted accordingly toward sovereignty-enforcement roles – border and exclusive economic zone patrol, and support to security forces and remote populations – at some cost to conventional warfighting readiness, and these capabilities depend on procurement that Uruguay’s constrained defence budget has struggled to deliver.

Civilian control of the armed forces is well established: every president has completed a full term since the restoration of democracy in 1985, and the risk of a military move against the government is low, though senior civilian figures have periodically tested this norm – for example, then First Lady Lucía Topolansky’s 2012 call for the armed forces to remain ‘loyal’ to the ruling Frente Amplio, and former President José Mujica’s 2013 acknowledgment that he had filled senior military posts with officers he deemed politically sympathetic.

Uruguay has been reducing personnel while modernizing equipment across all three services, in pursuit of a smaller, more efficient force. This is reflected in the Air Force’s acquisition of Super Tucanos and the Army’s 2025 service-rifle tender (see Arly and Air Force below). Despite the increasing obsolescence of much of its inventory, particularly the Air Force’s combat aircraft, procurement allocations are not expected to increase significantly in the near term.

Composition of the Armed Forces              

The Uruguay Armed Forces comprise an army, navy, and air force, each constitutionally subordinate to the President as Supreme Commander through the Ministry of National Defence. Total active personnel across the three services are estimated to number 22,100.

Army (Ejército Nacional)

As Uruguay’s largest service branch, the Army comprises four divisions organized around infantry, artillery, cavalry/armoured, and support elements, forming its principal ground combat capability, with mechanised, airborne, commando, and anti-terrorist units. Together with armoured vehicles, APCs, rocket artillery, and engineering units, this is a structure supporting territorial defence, internal security, border operations, and disaster response, as well as Uruguay’s extensive UN peacekeeping commitments.

Janes observes that Uruguay faces no major conventional military threat – prevention of drug and human trafficking are principal security concerns shaping the Army’s posture. An extensive restructuring between 2010 and 2014 reduced the size of the Army from approximately 22,000 to about 15,000 personnel. Approximately 90 per cent of non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel have deployed on international peacekeeping operations, which Janes credits with producing a cohesive and experienced force – Uruguay consistently ranks among the top 20 troop-contributing nations to UN missions – though Janes cautions that this contribution is now at risk from declining investment in equipment availability and force readiness. A gradual year-on-year increase in the Army General Command’s budget between 2017 and 2022 has not, per Janes, been sufficient to meaningfully improve capabilities, leaving the force reliant on second-hand equipment offered by countries with surplus stock, particularly Brazil and the United States. In September 2025, the Army separately opened a procurement process to replace its 5.56×45mm NATO service rifle.

Air Force – Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya (FAU)

The FAU is an independent service branch under the Ministry of National Defence. The Air Operations Command (Comando Aéreo de Operaciones, CAO) directs three Air Brigades alongside a separate Logistics Air Command, a structure separating operational from sustainment authority. CAO’s mission is to plan and conduct air operations across Uruguay’s jurisdictional airspace; it comprises an Air Operations Centre, the Air Brigades and their squadrons, the Policía Aérea Nacional, and specialist meteorology and remote-sensing services, concentrating flying, surveillance, airspace-enforcement and special-operations capacity under a single operational commander.

The FAU operates from three principal hubs: Air Brigade I at Carrasco (transport and helicopter operations), Air Brigade II at Durazno (the FAU’s primary combat and training centre, which underwent infrastructure upgrades in 2026 to support the incoming A-29 Super Tucanos), and Air Brigade III at Montevideo (high-command and surveillance functions). Like the rest of Uruguay’s armed forces, the FAU is all-volunteer, with no peacetime conscription; enlisted personnel enter as ‘voluntarios contratados’ through Ministry of National Defence recruitment, generally aged between 18 and 29 years.

Janes assesses the FAU’s combat capability as limited, provided by a handful of ageing A-37B Dragonfly light attack aircraft, and that the service lacks the means to intercept illegal flights despite relatively good 2D/3D radar coverage of Uruguayan territory; its dozen or so transport helicopters are, per Janes, insufficient to fully support both peacekeeping deployments and domestic requirements. Beyond air defence, the FAU’s roles include tactical and logistical support to Uruguay’s army and navy and to civilian agencies, internal security and airspace control, and ‘public good’ operations including search-and-rescue and medical evacuation; the force is deployed mainly in the Montevideo area. Budget constraints confine FAU modernization largely to second-hand acquisitions, which Janes notes does not allow a systematic approach to closing the service’s most acute capability gaps.

Navy (Armada Nacional)

The Navy is headed by the Comandante en Jefe de la Armada (COMAR). Six major commands sit directly under COMAR covering law enforcement and maritime combat capabilities. The Navy’s central hub is the Main Naval Base and Comando General de la Armada at Punta Lobos, Montevideo, which shares crowded commercial and tourist harbour space that complicates military operations. The Navy has thus been transitioning operational assets to a newer facility at Cerro de Montevideo, although central command is expected to remain at Punta Lobos. The Navy is a professional, all-volunteer service; conscription was abolished in 1997. Voluntary enlistment is open to those aged 18 to 22 years (against 18 to 30 for the Army and Air Force), with specialists eligible up to age 40.

Uruguay extended its maritime jurisdiction from 200 to 350 nautical miles in 2016, substantially enlarging the area the Navy is responsible for patrolling. Janes assesses, though, that the fleet has not been resourced to match. To fulfil its basic roles, Janes estimates the Navy would need, by 2030: two 2,000-tonne multirole vessels, three 500-tonne exclusive economic zone (EEZ) patrol vessels, two general support vessels, three minesweepers, two buoy tenders, six coastal patrol craft, one Antarctic research vessel and six search-and-rescue craft, together with three medium multirole helicopters and an unmanned aerial system for naval aviation. Its stated roles are surveillance and defence of Uruguay’s territorial waters (oceanic and riverine), support to internal security, and welfare-of-the-population operations. Deployment is concentrated in the coastal area near Montevideo, with a growing presence on the Río Uruguay from the Fray Bentos base. Janes assesses that the surface fleet’s limited capabilities do not allow effective control of Uruguay’s EEZ, and that the country continues to suffer illegal fishing by foreign vessels as a result.

Fleet renewal was the Navy’s stated priority for 2025–26. Janes describes an active programme, agreed in 2023, for the Spanish shipyard Cardama to build two offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) – 1,700-tonne, 86.7m multi-purpose vessels with a 50-strong crew, each fitted with a hangar and helideck for a Bell 412, a combat management system, an Oteos-N observation system, a 30mm Sentinel 30 remote weapon system and two 12.7mm Sentinel 2.0 remote weapon systems. First delivery was expected in early 2025 and a second later that year. Separately, however, other reporting used for this draft (see Imports, Exports, and Supplier Base, above) states that the Uruguayan government cancelled this same Cardama order in October 2025, and that the Navy is now reportedly in discussions with the United Kingdom to acquire three River-class Batch I patrol vessels due for Royal Navy disposal in 2028.

Recent and current operations

Janes’ most recent operational reporting on Uruguay’s three armed services centres on internal-security and sovereignty-enforcement tasking rather than conventional warfighting. The Navy maintains continuous riverine patrols and stationary checkpoints along the Uruguay River and the Río de la Plata, focused on interdicting illegal drug shipments and unauthorized cargo transiting the Argentine-Uruguayan border. It also prioritises enforcement of sovereign rights within Uruguay’s Exclusive Economic Zone, with naval and civilian authorities increasingly focused on deterring illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Since the mid-2000s, Uruguayan air contingents have regularly supported UN deployments to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, first under MONUC and then MONUSCO (see the section below, ‘Compliance with IHL by Uruguayan peacekeeping forces’), providing search-and-rescue, medical evacuation, and utility transport using Bell 212 helicopters. Domestically, Janes assesses that the FAU is moving back to active air defence to deter flights associated with regional drug-trafficking corridors. The Army’s most significant operational activity is its sustained contribution to UN peacekeeping missions. Domestically, its role centres on border security, support to internal security forces, and disaster relief.

Compliance with IHL and Human Rights by the Armed Forces

Uruguay is not party to any international or non-international armed conflict, so IHL and international human rights law bear on the conduct of its armed forces principally through two channels: their growing role in internal security and border-support operations at home, and their extensive, long-standing contribution to UN peacekeeping operations abroad.

Conduct in domestic operations

The Armed Forces are constitutionally responsible for national defence, while internal security remains primarily the responsibility of the National Police (Policía Nacional) under the Ministry of the Interior. Military involvement in domestic security has nonetheless expanded in recent years, particularly in border surveillance, protection of strategic infrastructure, and countering illicit trafficking, but remains formally subject to civilian authority and statutory limits. This institutional separation appears to be reflected in a comparatively limited record of allegations directed specifically at the Armed Forces, as distinct from the police, in routine domestic security operations.

This draft did not identify recent, documented patterns of unlawful or excessive use of force attributed to the Uruguayan Armed Forces in contemporary domestic operations. Amnesty International’s Uruguay 2025 report, for example, raises no such concerns; the human rights issues it identifies for Uruguay instead concern prison overcrowding and conditions, restrictions on freedom of expression and access to information, gender-based violence, and accountability for dictatorship-era crimes.

That issue nonetheless warrants flagging: a continuing degree of lack of accountability for crimes committed during the 1973–85 dictatorship, under which an estimated 205 people were forcibly disappeared, per the INDDHH’s May 2026 update (which added eight newly documented cases to the total), alongside 202 extrajudicial executions. Military personnel continue to be prosecuted for enforced disappearance, torture, extrajudicial executions, and other crimes against humanity from that period. Amnesty International’s 2025 report refers to fifteen convictions being handed down during the year against active and retired members of the military and police for torture, abductions, and killings amounting to crimes against humanity, and a former Uruguayan military officer was separately convicted in Rome as part of Italy’s own investigation into Operation Condor; in May 2025, the Ministry of Interior also announced the reopening of intelligence-directorate files covering the dictatorship period. Amnesty nonetheless notes that no substantive progress was made in clarifying the fate of victims of enforced disappearance. This of course reflects continued judicial scrutiny of historical abuses rather than any indication of a contemporary pattern of violations by the present-day Armed Forces.

UN treaty body and special procedures findings

Several UN human rights mechanisms continue to monitor Uruguay’s efforts to address the legacy of human rights violations committed during the 1973–85 military regime. While these findings primarily concern transitional justice rather than the current conduct of the armed forces, they remain relevant to assessing institutional accountability and guarantees of non-recurrence. 

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) has expressed concern over the slow progress of investigations into enforced disappearances, the search for disappeared persons, and prosecutions for dictatorship-era crimes. During its 2022 country visit, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) similarly concluded that Uruguay had yet to establish a comprehensive policy for clarifying the truth concerning past violations and called for enhanced cooperation in Operation Condor-related cases. 

The most detailed institutional assessment of the Armed Forces remains that of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, who concluded in 2014 that Uruguay had not undertaken comprehensive reform of its armed forces following the transition to democracy and recommended strengthening civilian oversight, reforming the defence legal framework, improving cooperation with truth-seeking processes, and avoiding the use of military personnel for internal security functions. 

Since then, Uruguay has adopted Law No. 19.775 (2019), which amended the Organic Law of the Armed Forces by reaffirming civilian command, requiring military missions to be carried out in accordance with international human rights law and IHL, and identifying respect for those norms as an obligation inherent to military service. In its 2021 follow-up assessment, however, the Special Rapporteur concluded that implementation of the recommendations concerning reform and democratization of the Armed Forces remained only partial. 

Conduct in peacekeeping operations

Uruguay has contributed troops to UN peacekeeping operations for nearly 70 years – since 1952, per UN Peacekeeping’s own country page — and has traditionally ranked among the largest per-capita troop-contributing nations. As of April 2026, Uruguay’s largest single contingent (more than 900 uniformed personnel) served with the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). Janes affirms that the next most significant deployment of Army and Air Force personnel is with the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan Heights, numbering approximately 200 personnel as of an October 2023 troop rotation.

Uruguayan peacekeepers have, however, been the subject of alleged serious sexual abuse. In 2011, mobile-phone video appeared to show Uruguayan marines serving with MINUSTAH in Haiti sexually assaulting an 18-year-old Haitian man at a naval base in the southern town of Port-Salut. The incident triggered protests in Port-au-Prince and the recall of the accused personnel to Uruguay. Reporting on the number of personnel implicated is inconsistent across sources – media reports described five or six marines as having been involved in the assault itself – but only four were ultimately charged, with ‘private violence’ rather than sexual assault or rape. On 18 September 2013, they were convicted of private violence with a sentence of two years and one month while deciding the video and witness testimony did not prove rape. Since the four had already spent just over two months in pre-trial detention before their release in December 2011, and Uruguayan law does not permit a released defendant to be returned to prison to serve out a sentence absent a new offence, none served further prison time. The victim’s US-based lawyer publicly criticized the verdict as reflecting reluctance to seriously punish ‘this brutal crime’.

A separate, less grave allegation involved MONUSCO rather than MINUSTAH: the US State Department’s 2018 human rights report on Uruguay cited an allegation of transactional sex against eight Uruguayan troops serving with MONUSCO in the DRC. The United Nations suspended payments to Uruguay pending investigation, but the allegation was ultimately unsubstantiated for lack of evidence and the case closed without further action. Uruguay’s Ministry of National Defence subsequently established a protocol on Conduct Related to Reports of Abuse, Sexual Exploitation, and Paternity, and the Department of State’s following year report recorded no further allegations against Uruguayan peacekeepers.

The UN’s Conduct in UN Field Missions database records, as of extract dated 31 July 2026, fourteen distinct SEA allegations naming Uruguayan military personnel: thirteen arising from MONUC/MONUSCO in the DRC (alleged incidents dating from 2002 to 2025) and one from MINUSTAH in Haiti (alleged 2012–2014, a case distinct from the 2011 Port-Salut incident above, which was handled through direct criminal referral rather than logged in the database). Six of the fourteen allege rape, five of which are against children; the remaining eight allege transactional sex or an exploitative relationship. Of the fourteen, one has been substantiated – a transactional-sex allegation from December 2024, resulting in repatriation and a reported national jail sentence – seven were unsubstantiated, and six remain listed as pending, including four of the six rape allegations. One pending rape allegation concerns an incident from 2010, still unresolved after more than a decade. No allegation has been substantiated as rape.

Key Weaponry in Law Enforcement Agencies

Legal Framework

The National Police (Policía Nacional) operates under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior. Police use of force is principally governed by Law No. 18,315 of 5 July 2008 (Ley de Procedimiento Policial), which establishes principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, and gradual use of force: Article 17 permits use of force only when strictly necessary for the performance of policing duties; Article 18 requires any use of force, including of weapons, to be reasonable, rational, progressive, and proportional, having regard to the risk faced and the legitimate objective pursued; and Article 22 limits use of firearms to situations in which a person offers armed resistance to police action or endangers the physical integrity or life of police or third parties and cannot be reduced or stopped by non-lethal means. Per The Law on Police Use of Force data, this threshold does not fully comply with international law and standards, which permit the intentional use of firearms only to confront an imminent threat of death or serious injury, or a grave and proximate threat to life.

The Constitution does not itself regulate the use of force by law enforcement officials, but several provisions bear on it. Article 7 of the 1966 Constitution (as amended) protects ‘enjoyment of life, honour, liberty, security, labour, and property’, of which no one may be deprived ‘except in conformity with laws which may be enacted for reasons of general interest’. Article 26 prohibits ‘brutal treatment’ but only expressly in the prison context. Article 38 guarantees ‘the right of peaceful and unarmed public meetings’, which may be denied by public authority only in accordance with law and only insofar as their exercise would prejudice public health, safety, or order.

Oversight

Uruguay has no dedicated independent civilian police oversight body. The National Human Rights Institution and Ombudsman’s Office (Institución Nacional de Derechos Humanos y Defensoría del Pueblo, INDDHH), established by Law No. 18,446 of 24 December 2008 and installed in 2012, may investigate complaints against the police, but it is a general human-rights body rather than a specific police complaints mechanism. This is discussed further, including recent case-specific resolutions, under Accountability and oversight, below.

Police Compliance with the Law of Law Enforcement and Human Rights

Use of force connected to political unrest

Uruguay has not experienced a pattern of excessive or lethal police force against demonstrators in recent years. The most serious documented case remains the Hospital Filtro incident of 24 August 1994, when anti-riot and mounted police dispersed demonstrators outside Hospital Filtro in Montevideo protesting the extradition to Spain of three suspected ETA members. Amnesty International concluded that police appeared to have used excessive and lethal force, resulting in at least one death and seventy-five injuries, including police officers, and described the incident as ‘the worst disturbances registered in the country since the return to civilian rule in 1985’. Amnesty expressed concern that the number of civilians who sustained gunshot wounds indicated an excessive and disproportionate use of force. Although judicial investigations continued for several years, no police officer was convicted in connection with use of deadly force during the operation.

Research for this profile identified no comparable incidents in subsequent years in which international or national human rights bodies concluded that Uruguayan police had used excessive or unlawful force against demonstrators.Overall, available evidence does not indicate a pattern of excessive force in the policing of public assemblies in Uruguay.

Use of lethal force

Reporting has, however, documented a marked rise in fatalities linked to police action. According to La Diaria, the number of people killed by police each year multiplied by 12 between 2015 and 2019. This overall trajectory is corroborated by the Committee against Torture’s 2022 concluding observations (see below).

A recurring accountability obstacle is forensic: the 9mm Glock pistols issued to Uruguayan police have a rifled barrel that leaves markings on fired rounds that are too indistinct for reliable ballistic matching, making it difficult to identify which officer’s weapon fired a fatal shot when several are discharged in the same incident. This was documented as early as 2015, when ballistics could not identify the source of the round that killed Rubén Martínez in the Peñarol neighbourhood of Montevideo, and again in the 2019 killing of Gilberto Pellejero, a 41-year-old shot ten times by pursuing officers after he brandished an edged weapon. Investigators were unable to determine which of the 11 police officers involved in the pursuit fired the fatal rounds.

More recently, two fatal police interventions involving persons experiencing apparent mental health crises attracted significant scrutiny. On 5 June 2025, a police officer fatally shot a psychiatric patient inside the emergency department of the Hospital de Clínicas in Montevideo after an attempted restraint. Following an investigation, the National Human Rights Institution and Ombudsman’s Office (INDDHH) concluded in Resolution No. 1640/2026 that the officer’s conduct ‘constituted a direct violation of the right to life’ because less-lethal alternatives had not been exhausted, and issued recommendations to the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Health, and the Hospital de Clínicas concerning the use of force and crisis intervention protocols. The resolution invokes the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ standard in Montero Aranguren and others v Venezuela and, on the family’s post-mortem treatment and access to information, Gutiérrez Soler v Colombia. A separate criminal case against the officer and a civil case against the Ministry of the Interior and the University of the Republic (which operates the hospital) remained pending as of June 2026, with the family publicly describing progress as ‘minimal’.

On 12 May 2025, police officers fatally shot Lucas Pedrozo, a 23-year-old man in Durazno, after family members requested police assistance during a mental health crisis. On 18 June 2025, the INDDHH issued a public statement expressing profound concern over both deaths, describing them as evidence of the need to review institutional practices governing police interventions involving persons with psychosocial disabilities and mental health conditions, strengthen de-escalation measures, and improve inter-agency coordination in accordance with Uruguay’s human rights obligations. In April 2026, El Acontecer reported that a Durazno judge had declined the prosecution’s request to formally charge the officer, accepting a self-defence argument; the Fiscalía confirmed it would appeal, and the case remained open as of writing.

International Standards and Treaty Body Findings

In its 2022 concluding observations on Uruguay, the Committee against Torture expressed concern that Act No. 19,889 (the 2020 Ley de Urgente Consideración) expands the discretion of police and military to use force. Article 1 of that Act extends the concept of ‘legitimate self-defence’ to officials of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence, empowering them to use weapons in a manner that is ‘rational, proportional and progressive, insofar as this is possible’, while Article 49 establishes a presumption of legitimacy of police conduct ‘absent evidence to the contrary’ – a presumption the Committee found troubling in the absence of any legal safeguard against arbitrariness. The Committee also noted concerns raised by Uruguayan human rights defenders about provisions of the Act authorizing retired police officers to carry firearms, and recalled allegations received by the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture of acts of torture and ill-treatment by police units, including the High Intensity Operations Programme and the units known as ‘Los Halcones’ and ‘Los Grecos’, against persons under arrest or in police custody. The Committee further noted a significant rise in the number of deaths linked to police action between 2017 and 2019, alongside the establishment of new militarized police programmes and the enactment of Act No. 19,677 of 26 October 2018, which authorizes the armed forces to operate within a 20-kilometre-wide strip along the national border – representing roughly one fifth of national territory – outside populated centres.

CAT was also concerned about Uruguay’s lack of a statutory definition of torture (which it found impedes the collection of statistics on torture complaints, their investigation, and the sanctioning of perpetrators), poor detention conditions, an increased number of deaths in custody, inadequate medical care for detainees, and insufficient progress in investigating complaints of police violence and grave human rights violations committed between 1968 and 1985.

In 2025, CAT reiterated concerns regarding Uruguay’s failure to criminalise torture as a standalone offence consistent with Article 1 of the Convention and requested updated information on investigations into deaths in custody, allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and excessive use of force by law enforcement officials. Similarly, Amnesty International reported that torture has yet to be fully incorporated into Uruguay’s Penal Code in accordance with the Convention against Torture.

Accountability and oversight

Uruguay has no dedicated independent civilian police oversight body. The INDDHH (Institución Nacional de Derechos Humanos y Defensoría del Pueblo), established in 2008, may investigate complaints against the police, inspect places of detention, and refer findings for criminal investigation.

In Gelman v Uruguay (2011), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that Uruguay’s 1986 amnesty law, which shielded military and police officers from investigation and prosecution for human rights violations committed before May 1985 – including the enforced disappearance of María Claudia García de Gelman and the abduction of her infant daughter during Operation Condor – violated the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons. Gelman is the only known case in which the Inter-American Court has directly adjudicated Uruguayan State conduct in this area.

Risk of Diversion and Re-Export of Imported Weapons

Diversion risk in Uruguay runs along three vectors: cross-border trafficking and transit of civilian firearms and ammunition, principally linked to Brazilian organised crime; diversion from Uruguay’s own police and military stockpiles into the illicit market; and a domestic illicit market in firearms sale, purchase, and repair that enforcement activity in 2024–26 has increasingly targeted. Uruguay’s location between Argentina and Brazil, its extensive riverine borders, the comparatively high rates of legal civilian firearms ownership, and growing role as a regional transport hub all contribute to this exposure.

Cross-border civilian and transit trafficking

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s 2021 Uruguay profile identifies the country as a destination for illegal weapons, and InSight Crime reporting from August 2022 documents Uruguay’s emergence as a transit hub for firearms smuggled from Argentina onward to Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, supplying Brazilian criminal groups including the Comando Vermelho. One reported case, publicly referred to by Uruguayan police as Operación Popular, began with a November 2021 tip to the Dirección General de Información e Inteligencia Policial about international ammunition trafficking from Argentina entering Uruguay via Soriano and Río Negro, using small boats and the islands of the Río Uruguay as exchange points; an eight-month investigation led to raids across seven departments (Río Negro, Soriano, Artigas, Cerro Largo, Treinta y Tres, Canelones and Montevideo), twelve arrests, and the seizure of 24 rifles, three handguns, and roughly 3,000 rounds of ammunition, concluding in August 2022 with ten convictions for international and internal arms and ammunition trafficking and contraband. Separate cases include the 2021 conviction of a serving Uruguayan police officer for smuggling small arms and ammunition across the border into Brazil, and a June 2022 case in which four men were jailed for smuggling ammunition magazines from the United States onward to Brazil.

A larger cross-border action, Operación Ares, was executed in April 2026 by the Regional Norte division of the National Police’s Directorate of Investigations (DIPN), with support from the police departments of Rivera, Artigas, Tacuarembó, and Durazno: 35 simultaneous raids nearly 100 firearms and more than 3,500 rounds of ammunition. The operation was described by its director as the largest firearms-specific seizure in the National Police’s records. Investigators found the core network, comprising 561 Uruguayan and Brazilian participants organized through messaging apps to buy and sell firearms, was led from within a Uruguayan prison by an inmate linked to a Brazilian criminal faction operating across the Rivera-Santana do Livramento border; those implicated included a serving and a former police officer. The investigation separately identified three further messaging-based networks, with a combined membership of more than 1,700, also engaged in domestic and international firearms commercialization. In total, thirty-one adults and two minors were formally charged with internal trafficking of firearms and ammunition; the adults received sentences of 18 to 24 months of supervised release rather than custody.

Domestic illicit markets and recent enforcement activity

Uruguayan authorities have also stepped up enforcement against firearms trafficking and illicit dealing operating mainly within domestic markets. In July 2024, the Ministry of the Interior’s Brigada de Investigaciones Departamental de Delitos Automotores conducted Operación Anfibio, a series of raids in Montevideo against a criminal band otherwise dedicated to vehicle theft and illegal resale of vehicle parts; the operation resulted in two people being formally charged with internal trafficking of firearms and ammunition and the seizure of two handguns along with US$24,000 in cash.

A larger case emerged in May 2026, when an investigation by the Dirección General de Información e Inteligencia Policial (DGIIP) into an alleged illegal gunsmith supplying criminal gangs led to eighteen coordinated raids across five departments – Montevideo (twelve), Lavalleja, Maldonado, Florida, and San José – conducted with support from the National Directorate of the Republican Guard, forensic and organized-crime units, Interpol, and, notably, the Servicio de Material y Armamento (SMA) of the Ministry of National Defence. The raids resulted in five arrests and the seizure of 137 firearms and more than 57,000 rounds of ammunition. The support of the Armed Forces’ own SMA to a police-led investigation illustrates institutional cooperation on arms-related enforcement.

Diversion from State stockpiles

Diversion from Uruguay’s own police and military stockpiles is documented in open sources. The Ammunition Management Activity Platform (A-MAP), run by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), records a recurring pattern of diversion from Uruguayan State stockpiles over the past two decades, principally onward to Brazilian criminal groups. In 2007, and again in 2015 (concerning 18,000 rounds), ammunition was stolen from the Santa Bernardina air force base and sold to criminal groups in Brazil; between 2010 and 2012, police officers in the department of Treinta y Tres stole and sold more than 200 firearms from police stockpiles to Brazilian criminal groups; in 2016, there were thirty-two attempted thefts of weapons from military barracks nationwide; and in 2020, ten separate attacks on police officers resulted in the theft of their service firearms.

A particularly well-documented instance of stockpile diversion followed the theft and illegal sale of Army-issued Glock pistols in 2022. On 24 July 2022, a 14-year-old fatally shot a 26-year-old man in Montevideo with a 9mm Glock pistol that military authorities traced to a SMA depot; the ensuing inventory check found two further Glock pistols of the same type missing from stocks, prompting an urgent administrative investigation, a police complaint, and a nationwide inspection of Army weapons depots. On 28 October 2022, the Army’s internal investigation concluded that personnel assigned to the SMA had stolen the three pistols in order to sell them on the illicit market. The Minister of Defence confirmed the same day that eleven military personnel were ultimately sanctioned. This case is significant both because it demonstrates diversion from the institution directly responsible for managing military armaments, and because the diverted weapons are confirmed to have entered the illicit civilian market and, in one instance, been used in a homicide. It also shows that internal Army controls were capable of detecting the loss and triggering administrative and criminal referral.

As noted in Transparency and Reporting above, Uruguay’s 2018 national report on the PoA identified stockpile management as a priority gap, citing the need for updated standards and procedures, training for control officials, improved installation security, and financial and technical assistance for the destruction of surplus stockpiles. The GICHD’s assessment were that these self-identified needs had not been reported as resolved as of the most recent published review, and no more recent Uruguayan national reporting on this point was identified for this draft.

National measures to reduce diversion

Separately from these enforcement operations, Uruguay’s Armed Forces conduct an annual mandated destruction of surplus, voluntarily surrendered and judicially forfeited firearms through the Servicio de Material y Armamento (SMA) — a practice recorded at least as far back as 2012 and required, for judicially held weapons, once they reach a three-year statutory deadline under Law No. 18,087 of 5 January 2007. On 21 November 2024, the National Army destroyed 2,924 firearms by smelting at the Gerdau steelworks, per the Army’s announcement; Gerdau’s own account of the same event separately put the melted volume at 3,665 kilograms of short and long arms, drawn from disused Armed Forces stock, weapons confiscated by the Judiciary, and firearms voluntarily surrendered by the public. On 8 April 2026, in what the Army described as the same annual programme, it destroyed more than 9,000 firearms (6,325 handguns and 2,784 long guns), of which roughly 30 per cent (2,733) had been voluntarily surrendered and the remainder had reached the three-year judicial deadline. The melted metal is reused by Gerdau to manufacture construction rebar.

Uruguay has begun to build dedicated prosecutorial capacity for tracing diverted weapons. In March 2026, Fiscal de Corte sub-specialised a Flagrancia prosecutor to work exclusively on establishing the origin and chain of custody of firearms and ammunition used in crimes. The measure responds to Ministry of the Interior figures indicating that firearms are involved in two thirds of homicides nationally. The Government has also been considering additional legislative measures to strengthen controls over firearms and ammunition, including traceability and access to information.