A QUNO Paper on Controlling Small Arms

The following text is excerpted from the full report on the Nairobi Seminar.
For a printed copy of the full report, contact:   David Jackman

Quaker United Nations Office, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA

Tel: 212 682 2745 Fax: 212 983 0034

Email: [email protected] Web: www.quno.org

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Introductory Note: The effective control of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons requires a host of measures across a wide variety of institutional sectors and involves a very diverse range of actors. The complexity of this effort has been daunting. In an effort to bring some order to the dialogue on small arms issues, observers have commonly divided controls into those concerned with supply issues and those concerned with demand

This distinction has been helpful. Governments and the multilateral system already have considerable experience in arms control and national justice systems which deal with the technological and institutional and diplomatic means to control the supply of weapons. But it is clear that no amount of supply-side effort alone will be able to effectively control the transfer of small arms, if there is sufficiently strong demand. The weapons themselves are small, cheap, easily hidden, produced and stored all over the world and often are easily available to non-state actors.

Looking at Demand Issues

The issue of the demand for weapons must be addressed, but as diplomats often note, this opens a whole new area of issues in conflict resolution, community development, justice reform, youth programming, postwar peacebuilding and attitude change that is far beyond the experience of the ministries of defense and foreign affairs who normally deal with weapons control

Fortunately, these demand-side issues are being addressed by other institutions, notably by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world. Some of these operate locally, others within regions and still others on a global basis. What is lacking among them is a consistent effort to collect the lessons learned by those who are working to curb the demand for small arms and to organize this practical information in a way that would be useful to policy planners, funders and other interested actors.

It should also be remembered that much of this demand-side activity is not focused intentionally on weapons control, but is conducted to end wars, control violence, increase development or empower marginalized populations. Weapons control, for these organizers, is a side effect, albeit a very important one. By identifying the weapons control benefits of such work, there is a greater possibility that these effects can be more easily optimized by organizers and that coalitions can be built between those who seek to control weapons supply and those who can work to curb demand.

Two Seminars Identify Lessons

Starting with this analysis, staff at the Quaker United Nations Offices in New York and Geneva decided to identify some of what is known about effective NGO work on demand-side issues. Along with other partners they organized two lessons learned seminars, one in Durban, South Africa in 1999 and a second event in Nairobi, Kenya in 2000

The lessons that the participants took from these events are provided in the following report Although the primary goal of the seminars was to collect lessons that could be transferred to donors, policy makers and others, the two events also linked the participants in a supportive process . They were able to share new ways to approach their work, to find informal partners, and to end some of the isolation that they felt in their own communities. The organizers who took part had once been child soldiers, paramilitary foot soldiers, angry parents, anti-apartheid workers, witnesses of genocide, and liberation fighters. Now they recognized their unity in a new, and as yet unnamed, profession that was transforming their experience of armed violence into the creation of communities at peace.

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