Innovative Approaches to Conventional Weapons Stockpile Management in Bosnia and Herzegovina

There are over one billion small arms in circulation worldwide. In 2016 and 2017, over 550,000 illicit weapons were seized, mostly small arms and light weapons (SALW)—many seized by national authorities within countries’ borders (United Nations, 2020). Thus, “firearms trafficking remains a largely invisible phenomenon,” including within national borders (UNODC, 2020). This also holds for Eastern European states with large remnant weapons stockpiles, often vulnerable to diversion, as evidenced in the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris (Bajekal & Walt, 2021). At this nexus of crime, terrorism, and war, it is crucial that international standards for stockpile control are upheld and actioned upon. Technological innovations offer several solutions, while nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have a pivotal role to play in developing host-nation capacity, leveraging their ability to work out of the strictures of customary military assistance.

This paper explores the relationship between effective stockpile management, nation-state accountability, and the use of technological innovations. This briefing argues that there is a unique opportunity in the role of NGOs to implement weapon registration projects to complement ongoing peacebuilding efforts.

National arms control measures are a central part of states’ responsibilities, and successful weapons stockpile management is a practical indicator of effective arms control, which can serve as a gauge of responsible statehood (Perlo-Freeman, 2016). Indeed, collecting and analyzing statistics on mismanaged weapons can help develop an understanding of firearms trafficking and international crime networks. Firearms data management functions as a confidence-building measure while bridging the gap between NGOs and government within the security sector. Ensuring the implementation of such technologies is imperative for enacting international standards and the spread of global norms on arms control within the wider efforts of peacebuilding and development.

Transparent Arms Control

A failure to address small arms proliferation undermines broader peacebuilding and postconflict development policies (Peacebuilding Initiative, 2008). Arms control is the primary tool to address small arms proliferation as it aims to restrict the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons primarily through international agreements and tangible actions associated with the agreements. The control of conventional weapons is an important subset of arms control, which deals with controlling the most widely used weapons in conflict settings—SALW and ammunition. While many agreements represent a total ban on several types of conventional arms, such as cluster munitions, most treaties seek only to limit their use within the remit of international law and restrict their diversion to terrorist groups and gangs. Significant aspects of conventional arms control are the tracking and tracing of national stockpiles limiting the diversion of arms and swiftly investigating any instances of diversion. Thus, weapons marking, and registration plays a central role within the broader framework of international arms control, and that of peacebuilding and development.

While most marking and registration in more advanced nations is implemented by their armed forces without external assistance, in certain low-and-middle-income countries, security forces, often do not possess the necessary capacity or capabilities. NGO-led projects can counter this lack of capacity while also ensuring that national governments maintain control over the registration process, which plays a vital role in determining a country's willingness to implement such schemes. In addition, a successful registration process is a valuable tool for security forces to demonstrate commitment to accountability, transparency, and anticorruption in the fight against illicit firearms trafficking.

Transparency-based methods can have many benefits, delinking conventional arms control from engagement on nuclear weapons. This ensures that progress can be made on conventional weapons while nuclear disarmament talks progress at a strategic level, contributing to broadened multilateral security engagements and, in the long-term, to wider security systems (Durkalec, 2013). Mutual standard-setting increases predictability and regional trust-building, ameliorating the possibility of conflict based on inimical military and security cultures (Lissner, 2021). National and regional standard-setting can be carried out via inspections, verifications, and observations by third parties, such as NGOs, which can also positively contribute to impartiality and transparency (Williams & Lunn, 2020). Within this context, the marking and registration of national stockpiles offers measurable and tangible progress upon which security sector reform can be fostered.

New Technologies Within Arms Control

Arms control presents states with opportunities for both cost reduction and continued peacebuilding (Tannenwald, 2020). New technologies expand on these aspects of arms control and offer chances for engagement by NGOs within bilateral and multilateral frameworks of assistance. Moreover, using new technologies within an overarching transparency-centred approach provides a promising path toward building an effective arms control platform across Europe and beyond. While several new technologies benefit arms control efforts, in the context of transparency and confidence-building measures, two main technologies are worth exploring: weapons marking and data-based stockpile management.

Weapons Marking

While marking weapons has been an aspect of arms control since the late 1990s, recent advancements have allowed for expanding marking in both reach and method. Marking weapons is a crucial first step in tracing and tracking. While there are four main methods, each comes with both strengths and weaknesses.

Stamping is the most inexpensive and results in a mark with the highest recoverability. However, it can rarely be used on plastic or composite materials increasingly used in modern weapons and is unsuitable for postproduction marking due to the fragility of certain parts. Thus, it is an ineffective measure for firearms already in circulation.

While more costly than stamping, dot peen is still inexpensive and provides the ability to mark weapons precisely and rapidly. Additionally, dot peen machines can be portable, removing the necessity to transport weapons stockpiles. The machines also require less training. However, they create a mark with less resolution than stamping or engraving methods. Nevertheless, this mark is highly recoverable: the engraving depth makes it almost impossible to remove the marking. Even if shaved off, the mark remains recoverable.

While mechanical engraving creates a mark of high quality, it is more expensive, slower and does not work well on plastics or composite materials. In contrast, laser engraving results in extreme precision and a high-quality mark regardless of the material and has a high automation capacity. While these markings are easier to remove than dot peen markings, they are needed for materials dot peen machines cannot mark. However, it requires advanced safety requirements and is less mobile than other methods. It is also expensive and involves complex training.

Irrespective of the marking method, the weapons, once marked, need to be entered into a systematic database for tracking, tracing, and stockpile management. A data-based approach to this aspect of weapons management is the most effective method for several reasons.

Data-Based Stockpile Management

While weapons marking is fundamental to effective stockpile management, it is essentially valueless without integration into a wider record-keeping system. This is where a data-based approach could be beneficial to the success of any weapons tracing system and ensures its knock-on benefits, including increased transparency and confidence in militaries and governments.

Firstly, secure databases allow for shared access to multiple parties while remaining controlled by a predetermined number of owners, enabling accountable and transparent data management. Secondly, most databases are modular and elastic, theoretically able to hold unlimited data, and can be geared toward any issue, including arms control. Consequently, such databases can be suitable for large and small forces alike, allowing any number of weapons characteristics to be collected (e.g., model, year, origin, and maintenance history). Thirdly, databases can keep qualitative as well as quantitative information. This allows for better strategic decisions on stockpiling and disposal. Lastly, data-based infrastructure is cheap and practical: setting up a database requires few upfront costs and modest staff training.

Approaching weapons registration from a data management perspective also helps to meet diverse international standards. For example, while the UN requires only the weapon's serial number to be marked, the EU Commission requires member states to maintain a data-filing system and to record in it “all information needed in order to trace and identify firearms” (European Commission, 2019). The differences between key international standards show the value of a data-based approach to weapons tracing. Additionally, these requirements show how outdated logbooks, still used in many countries, cannot meet complex requirements.

Currently, weapons marking databases purpose-built for arms control remain offline or on internal servers only. Despite numerous possible benefits, an online database or cloud-based approach to responsible weapons ownership remains a theoretical option only, not yet tested, and comes with, at least, one grave concern: (cyber)security. Ensuring the information security of any database is imperative due to the nature of its contents and the devastating results that a hack or leak could have for weapons safekeeping and (inter)national security. Addressing digital threats requires staff training, user vetting, and the latest cybersecurity measures. These include ensuring the physical security of the data center, enabling data encryption, backup security, and regular audits. Most importantly, staff need to be trained and retrained on cybersecurity measures on a regular basis (IBM, 2022).

Bosnia and Herzegovina

The large part of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)'s recent successes within the realm of weapons security can be attributed to their willingness to work closely with the international community on security-focused projects, including stockpile management and weapons marking and registration, as part of continued efforts to align with wider EU, UN, and NATO regulations.

NGOs have been working in BiH in collaboration with the government and security forces to meet national laws on marking SALW, its obligations under the Dayton Agreement, and to align with NATO, EU, and UN marking guidelines. Research and NGO-led projects have identified three main shortcomings in the existing system of weapon management: (1) missing information on the weapons; (2) separate inventories of SALW at each storage location with no central repository of information; and (3) no history of maintenance (BICC, 2020; Carapic & Holtom, 2018). Remedying these three issues has been a central task of recent NGO-led efforts with the weapons and ammunition management space.

In the case of marking SALW held by the armed forces of BiH, dot peen machines were chosen due to their cost efficiency, mobility, and high recoverability of the marks. In cooperation with members of the BiH armed forces, this approach has resulted in the marking of approximately 62,000 small arms and light weapons, the entire stock of the Bosnian Armed Forces (AFBiH). The systematization of marks involved in the marking process ensures that any information required is marked on each weapon and cannot be modified once applied. Furthermore, to ensure the necessary tracing of completed weapons stockpiles, this approach also involved designing and creating a unique computed-based database for housing the records of each marked weapon in collaboration with the AFBiH and the Ministry of Defence. However, this database remains offline and does not involve an online or cloud-based aspect (Newton, 2020).

Before implementing an NGO-led process, the AFBiH did not have a nationwide inventory for its weapons stockpile, and data was kept, locally, in dozens of separate notebooks and excel spreadsheets, lacking uniformity and, thus, was practically inaccessible. By creating a comprehensive weapons catalogue, an NGO-led approach enabled creating a database capable of holding information on all major types of SALW (The HALO Trust, 2021). This project showcased that an NGO-led process is fundamental in postconflict zones particularly in countries where political considerations restrict activities. BiH, a unique case, greatly benefited from three factors: the presence of a Coordination Board for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons, an inter-institutional body founded by the Council of Ministers of BiH, a law on SALW and ammunition marking, and willingness of the AFBIH to collaborate with a third party—all enabling the NGO-led project (Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2020; Newton, 2020). The contemporary database system is customizable and includes a weapons catalogue as the backend to self-populate fields, such as weapon specifications and maintenance information, to reduce the likelihood of human errors. It also has fail-safe measures to prevent misuse: it requires authorization for use, does not allow for amendments, and deleted entries can be recovered. Additionally, the database allows for different users with varying access levels to be established by system administrators and is housed on internal servers only reducing its vulnerability from cyberattacks (BICC, 2020).

Integrating Practice and Policy

Solidifying and expanding the success of the project with the AFBiH to other entities within BiH, such as regional police forces, and beyond, across Eastern Europe, requires integrating the means and methods of the project into wider practices and policies of conventional arms control, on a regional, national, and international level. This is a central concept of a transparency-centric approach to arms control, which is necessary to ensure long-term holistic arms control—key to sustainable peacebuilding efforts (ODA, 2020). However, integrating data-based weapons management on any scale comes with its own set of unique challenges.

Unobstructed access to government or local stockpiles and pertinent information is vital to the success of any marking and registration project. Another challenge is presented by the multitude of agreements that attempt to govern conventional arms. In the case of BiH, there are currently seven politically or legally binding agreements. Ensuring compliance of any database with all these instruments is a monumental task. Tracking compliance—another. A different potential hindrance to this approach is the development of standard operating procedures for the marking of stockpiles of conventional weapons and the input of the subsequent information. While many of the agreements above include relevant procedures, they may not be appropriate for each forces’ stockpile and thus must be made fit for purpose and alterable to ensure relevancy as agreements and policies change over time.

Constraints in technology transfers offer a further challenge. Rapid developments in the field of computing and data management are raising difficult questions about whether, how, and when controls on transfers of technical data should be applied. Reliable cybersecurity also remains an issue (Bromley & Maletta, 2018). This is also complicated by the willingness of national and local authorities to share data on their weapons caches, either nationally or internationally.

Conclusion

Despite conceivable limitations, an effective NGO-led weapons management project can have tangible benefits. The central element, a secure database for weapons management, is an effective tool for weapons tracing and stockpile management and carries a series of positive knock-on effects. Increased transparency can act as an indicator of responsible statehood, allowing for easy inspections by international organizations and monitoring forces. Its ease-of-use and mobility allow for a swift deployment with low start-up costs, little training, and in virtually any location. The successes of the AFBiH project showcase the importance of NGOs as a third party to liaise with government agencies to ensure initial and long-term buy-in and to enable effective capacity-building initiatives. The importance of innovative technologies is demonstrated by the successful marking of the AFBiH stockpile and its inclusion into a reliable and secure database. The continued use and development of the relevant technologies are integral to continued success in the conventional arms control realm, both in BiH and beyond.