Small arms and light weapons

Highly portable, easy to conceal and all-too deadly, small arms and light weapons (SALW) such as hand guns, rifles and automatic weapons, are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.

SUMMARY
DETAIL

Saferworld works in Africa, Asia and Europe to research and address factors driving the proliferation and misuse of small arms. Our work supports communities, law enforcement agencies and governments to work together to produce sustainable approaches to enhancing the control of SALW. In the current security climate the need to prevent the diversion of SALW to unintended recipients is clear. Interest in this issue, which cuts across many aspects of SALW control, from import, export and transit controls, end-use certification and monitoring to customs and border-control procedures and security of arms stockpiles, is growing. Saferworld is working to further this agenda at regional and international levels, including within the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), in East Africa, Central and South Asia and within the UN SALW process.

UN Programme of Action

At the international level the UN Programme of Action on SALW continues. We are encouraging states to focus on the humanitarian impact of SALW control and the need for SALW control programmes to make a significant and demonstrable impact on the problem.

At the national level Saferworld supports research into SALW problems; the development of national SALW policies and action plans; the establishment of national focal points and coordination agencies; weapons management including weapons collection and destruction; law enforcement and border control.

While Saferworld continues to work on these issues, it is our experience that many ‘traditional’ SALW control efforts have tended to focus on the symptoms of SALW misuse rather than the fundamental issues which cause people to procure and misuse SALW. Control efforts have often taken place in post-war settings and have been based on an assumption that enhancing state- rather than community- security was of the highest importance in preventing a return to conflict.

We seek to draw the links between our SALW work and the contribution this can make to broader security-building and conflict prevention programmes. In particular, we explore the role of SALW control in the contexts of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) initiatives, security and justice sector development, post-conflict security building and armed violence reduction.