Curbing the Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons

1 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates that 24,000 people per year are killed or maimed by anti-personnel landmines. While there are no reliable data on combat deaths and deaths from armed crime/violence in all countries, it is safe to assume that small arms affect many more people than do landmines - in the order of hundreds of thousands per year. It is often stated (but with no apparent documentary basis) that small arms are responsible for an estimated 90% of today's war casualties. This assertion is supported by the observation that the low cost and portability of these weapons mean they are used by all combatants - state militaries, militias, and insurgents alike. Their sheer availability and ease of use make it likely that these weapons would be used in a high proportion of the killing. ICRC researchers estimate that, in general, more than 50% of war casualties are civilians. This conservative estimate is based on a case-study from Bosnia and the ICRC's war wound database (David Meddings, letter in British Medical Journal, vol. 317, 31 October 1998, pp. 1249-1250; and Arms Availability and Violations of International Humanitarian Law, Geneva: ICRC and Norwegian Red Cross, 1998). In some conflicts, of course, the civilian mortality rate is much higher. If 200,000 people are killed per year around the world in `combat', a reasonable assumption on average during the 1990s, based on the above assumptions, is that 90,000 of them would be civilians killed by small arms and light weapons - nearly four times the estimated landmine casualty rate.

2 Fairly representative of the government-NGO collaboration that has developed on the issue, NISAT operates independently of, but in cooperation with, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, which has provided significant financial backing for NISAT's efforts to curb the spread and availability of military-style small arms.

3 Coordinating Action on Small Arms (CASA), centered in the Department of Disarmament Affairs, was created in August 1998 to facilitate and harmonize relevant actions among UN agencies responsible for humanitarian affairs, refugee relief, peacekeeping, the special rapporteur for children in conflict, and the crime control commission.

4 The ECOWAS and OAS initiatives are the most developed regionally, but both remain substantially incomplete and untested. The ECOWAS agreement entered into force on 1 November 1998. The document is three pages long, and most of that text is made up of `whereas' clauses, with the operational part contained in one sentence. Now remains the difficult challenge of providing some assurance that the commitment undertaken is being honored. Financial and technical assistance is needed to facilitate demobilization and reintegration of combatants in the region, to promote sustainable development (as an alternative to armed banditry), and to facilitate gun collection and destruction programs. And suppliers must bar their nationals from seeking to export arms to West Africa. ECOWAS members made sure to point out in the brief text of the agreement that the Wassenaar Arrangement export control forum had been briefed and its members had agreed to refrain from exporting arms to the region. Thus far, however, no Wassenaar member-state has implemented laws or regulations barring its nationals from marketing arms to states in the region. The OAS convention entered into force in autumn 1998, with the ratification of two states. In order for other states to ratify the agreement, they will have to pass legislation defining legal and illegal arms importation and exportation, establish effective control mechanisms, and develop a central contact agency on the issue. Governments must commit the necessary financial and technical resources to guarantee implementation of the convention and to assist states that are unable to fund implementation measures themselves. Meanwhile, the international community is pressing ahead with negotiation of a global anti-firearms trafficking protocol in 1999, without first assessing how the OAS convention works. Negotiations began at the UN's Economic and Social Council in Vienna in January 1999. It is imperative that governments place at least equal emphasis on implementation of the extant treaty, so that lessons learned can be incorporated into the global initiative.

5 The most prominent manufacturers are Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

6 According to annual reports now required by the Commerce, State, and Defense Departments, in 1996 the State and Commerce Departments approved more than $590 million of small arms and shotgun exports, and the Department of Defense gave away 75,000 assault rifles and over 5,000 grenade launchers. Thousands more were sold by the Pentagon. Because other governments are not open about their light weapons sales and shipments, it is not possible to determine where the United States ranks in the global small arms trade.

7 For one of the few attempts at this, see John Sislin et al., `Patterns in Arms Acquisitions by Ethnic Groups in Conflict', Security Dialogue, vol. 29, no. 4, December 1998, pp. 393-408.

8 That study will be presented to the 27th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in November 1999 and may lead to advocacy by the ICRC on the issue of small arms control similar to its previous engagement on landmines.

9 The speeches are available on the Internet (http://www.secretary.state.gov/www/statements/1998/). In the UNSC speech, Albright laid out an impressive array of remedial actions, but it is not yet clear how seriously the administration is pursuing these initiatives. Several of the following items remain vague and undeveloped: •States should provide `full and timely' disclosure of arms shipments into African `zones of conflict', and they should enact a voluntary moratorium on arms sales `that could fuel these interconnected conflicts'. (In November Albright defined the region of concern specifically as Central Africa.) •Governments, international governmental organizations, and NGOs should meet to exchange information on regional arms transfers and `to explore further steps'. •UN member-states with relevant expertise should help strengthen the capacity of African governments to monitor and interdict arms flows. •The UN should establish a clearinghouse for technical information to facilitate rapid exchange of data on possible violations of UNSC-mandated arms embargoes. •All states should enact national legislation regulating exports and making violation of UNSC-mandated embargoes a criminal offense. •States should negotiate a global convention against illicit arms trafficking by the year 2000. •States should negotiate an agreement `to restrict' the export of shoulder-fired missiles by the year 2000. •States should establish `an international center to collect and share information on arms transfers'.

10 Of course, the US government used to be a major patron to warring factions in all three places, and this fact points to an important critique of all of the major arms suppliers' policy: it is backward-looking, reactive, rather than forward-thinking about the potential impact of the weapons that continue to be transferred today. Embargoes are always levied after a war has broken out or a (objectionable) coup has occurred. But infantry weapons have extremely long lives, and they quite often outlive the original purpose or government for which they were sent.

11 Department of State, `U.S. Arms Exports: Direct Commercial Sales Authorizations for Fiscal Year 97' (also known as `Section 655 Report, fiscal year 1997'), pp. 20-21.

12 Department of State, `U.S. Military Equipment and Human Rights Violations', sent to Congress on 1 July 1997, p. 3.

13 Ibid., pp. 114-116.

14 Ibid., p. 2.

15 See `Appendix 2: EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports', in William Benson, Light Weapons Controls and Security Assistance: A Review of Current Practice (London: International Alert & Saferworld, 1998), p. 51.

16 Chris Smith, `Light Weapons and Ethnic Conflict in South Asia', in Jeffrey Boutwell et al., eds, Lethal Commerce (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1995), pp. 62-64.

17 See note 9 above.

18 Canadian Foreign Minister Axworthy's response has been that `Canada does not, as a matter of policy, advocate the arming of opposition groups in order to overthrow unpopular regimes. We believe that non-violent means are the best way to effect political change. Governments who signed the convention would effectively be recognizing that principle by doing so.' Notes for a speech to a Conference on Small Arms organized by Project Ploughshares, 19 August 1998.