March 11, 2011

Guns, war and the domestic battlefield

As guns proliferate in a worldwide market with few controls, many get diverted from state and rebel armies to petty criminals and 'the man in the street'. Sexual and domestic violence is becoming more deadly, reports Cynthia Cockburn

8 March 2011: "There is a class of weapons known to arms manufacturers, arms traders and arms control activists as ‘SALW’: Small Arms and Light Weapons. The ‘small arms’ part of the category refers to revolvers, self-loading pistols, rifles and shotguns - the sort of firearm a police officer, security guard, criminal or law-abiding hobbyist might own. It also includes the assault rifles and sub-machine guns that are the weapons of choice of army patrols and insurgent militias. The ‘light weapon’ category refers to bigger stuff, up to and including the portable anti-aircraft missile launcher.  SALW do not excite as much public concern as nuclear devices and chemical weapons, but arguably, given their daily worldwide toll of death and injury, they too could be seen as ‘weapons of mass destruction’. 

The Small Arms Survey  estimates there are currently around 900 million such weapons in circulation worldwide and that they cause around half a million deaths annually. These arms are produced by more than a thousand manufacturing companies located in nearly a hundred countries. Recorded world trade in SALW, including parts and ammunition, hovers at around $300 billion a year. The USA is by far the biggest single exporting country, with more than three times the figure of its nearest competitor, Germany. Only a quarter of small arms and light weapons are thought to be in the armouries of state security sectors, the remainder are in the hands of non-state militias or civilians. Three-fifths of the deaths they cause occur in armed conflict, while two-fifths take place far from the battlefield – or rather they happen in the battlefield of everyday life, in murders (56%), suicides (14%) and accidents (5%).

Research and policy discussions reflecting a concern about the proliferation of SALW began in the early 1990s, as the collapse of the Soviet Union released huge numbers of second-hand weapons into shady markets. By the millennium there had been sufficient investigation, documentation and agitation by concerned governments and international NGOs to stir an official response. In July 2001 the United Nations organized a Conference on the Illicit Trade of Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects. It was a high-level inter-governmental affair, but non-governmental organizations were present too, lobbying for action. Key among them was the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), a global alliance of 800 civil society organisations in 120 countries working to stop the proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons. The NGOs scored a notable success. The Conference resulted in a UN Programme of Action committing every signatory country to a series of steps to curb the manufacture, trading and possession of small arms and light weapons. Governments were required to establish an agency, some kind of ‘national focal point’, to have oversight of the efforts of the several ministries, departments and agencies that in any given country would be concerned in implementing the Programme.

Men are overwhelmingly the sex that, whether legally or illegally, manufactures, markets and transports, buys and sells, and eventually fires guns" ...

Read full article here

See Cynthia Cockburn's work with Women say No to NATO on our site.