Controlling Small Arms

Consolidation, innovation and relevance in research and policy

Peter Batchelor,Kai Michael Kenkel

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135005429
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Thema: Controllo degli armamenti

This edited volume takes stock of the state of research and policy on the issue of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW), ten years after the UN first agreed to deal with the problem.

The end of the Cold War originated a series of phenomena that would subsequently come to dominate the political agenda. Perhaps most symptomatic of the ensuing environment is the marked escalation in the scale and dynamics of armed violence, driven by the proliferation of SALW. Events in Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia seared into global consciousness the devastating effects of this phenomenon, and of the necessity to engage actively in its limitation and prevention.

This edited volume explores and outlines the research and policy on the SALW issue at this critical juncture. In addition to providing a detailed telling of the genesis and evolution of SALW research and advocacy, the volume features a series of essays from leading scholars in the field on both advances in research and action on SALW. It reflects on what has been achieved in terms of cumulative advances in data, methodology and analysis, and looks at the ways in which these developments have helped to inform policy making at national, regional and international levels. Alongside situating and integrating past and present advances in advocacy and international action, Controlling Small Arms also outlines future directions for research and action.

This book will be of much interest to students of small arms, peace and conflict studies, peacebuilding, security studies and IR.

1 The small arms problem as arms control

A policy-driven research agenda

Edward J. Laurance

At the beginning of 2013, the problems associated with the proliferation, availability and misuse of small arms and light weapons (SALW) remained a key issue on the global policy agenda. Loose weapons were leaking out of failed states, a variety of groups were creating armed violence, and deaths from crime using SALW were on the rise, espe-cially compared with deaths in conflict. So were the efforts to solve these problems at the local, national, regional, and global levels—the United Nations (UN) Programme of Action on Small Arms (PoA) (UN, 2001), the negotiations for an Arms Trade Treaty, the development of International Small Arms Control Standards, and the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development.

Thanks to a vibrant epistemic community¹ producing hundreds of studies, research on SALW&f2000) baseline data did not exist, the epistemic#x2014;its causes, effects, and solutions—is now in full development. Conducting surveys to establish empirical baseline data is now the norm to be met. Research using experimental and control groups to empirically test hypothetical policy options has been established. Data analysis to ascertain statistically verifiable effects from SALW programmes and policies has become a required part of policy research. The use of valid and reliable indicators is a necessary part of this hypothesis-testing. The full range of research methods from different academic disciplines is being employed by the SALW epistemic community to establish the causes and effects of SALW proliferation, availability, and misuse that can then be used to develop effective policies and programmes.

When the problems associated with SALW first surfaced in the early 1990s, research on SALW looked quite different. In the first ten years of researching SALW (1991–2000) baseline data did not exist, the epistemic community grew very slowly, and what passed for research in many cases was either atheoretical or little more than the researcher's (or advocate's) favourite theory as to what should be done to solve the problems related to SALW. In some cases research was being conducted on armed violence that met the strict requirements of social science research (in areas such as anthropology, criminology, and public health). However this research was not connected most of the time to the growing knowledge based on efforts within the United Nations, which was driving the SALW policy (and later research) agenda.

Today there is a better understanding of how and why the small arms epistemic community was formed (Krause, 2001; Laurance, 2002; Garcia, 2006; Rogers, 2007). While these histories are referenced in this chapter, the main focus will be to explore how the formation and activities of this epistemic community shaped the types of research, data generation, and analysis that accompanied the growth of this community, and how it shaped the significant increase in the quality and quantity of research by Small Arms Survey, the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), governments, and others after the PoA was signed in 2001.

In the beginning

The early research on SALW was concerned mainly with why the SALW problem was new and global in scope. In 1994 Michael Klare gavenine reasons that quickly formed the basis for consensus (1995, p. 40):

• breakup of the former Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Federation into separate states;

• ethnic warfare within the successor states of the former Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Federation;

• breakdown of central government authority in Russia and the other former Soviet republics;

• diminished superpower control over ‘proxy forces’ in internal Third World conflicts;

• surplus stocks of light weapons;

• proliferation of ethnic, tribal, and religious conflicts;

• growing social, political, and economic disorder within societies;

• growing importance of nonstate actors;

• growing vibrancy of the global underground economy.

In addition, the introduction of the concept of ‘human security’ in 1994 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 1994) served to confirm that interstate conflict with its focus on national security, had been diminished by intrastate conflict, and the focus on the security of individuals within a state. The ethnic and intrastate conflicts masked by the Cold War began to surface as armed conflicts requiring only small arms and light weapons, not major conventional weapons. Some wars generated by the strategic Cold War rivalry began to end in Central America and Africa, but these wars left in their wake massive accumulations of weapons not collected by the parties to the conflicts. Major manufacturers of small arms, especially in the former Soviet Union, continued to manufacture at Cold War levels, creating huge inventories of weapons. This surplus began to find its way into newly emerging armed conflicts. Most importantly, as with major conventional arms, there were no global controls on either the trade in or use of SALW.

As of 1992, the situation was one of increased availability of small arms and light weapons, little in the way of policy tools to regulate it, and growing evidence of serious negative effects. It was not until 1993 that articles began to appear that characterized this problem as different from those related to the conventional arms trade. Differences included the size, cost, portability and lack of accountability of this class of weapon. In 1994 the first major conference was held to address the new problem, under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was chaired by Klare, an old hand from the conventional arms trade research community and arguably the most influential voice in warning of new challenges and threats based on the proliferation, diffusion, and negative effects of SALW. Most of those present at this meeting were from the conventional arms trade community, mainly from the United States and Europe, and they began to realize that much of what they knew about the control of the conventional arms trade would not apply to this new challenge.

The book emanating from this 1994 conference is a good first look at the state of research at that time. First, most authors brought with them previous research and knowledge, mainly from the arms control/disarmament community, that might apply to the new SALW problem. The first two chapters were by Aaron Karp (see contribution to this volume), recently director of the Arms Trade Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and Klare. Both can be characterized as sounding the alarm that addressing SALW would be very different from the trade in major conventional weapons. R. T. Naylor, an economist specializing in global black markets, applied his knowledge to illicit trafficking in arms (Naylor, 1995).² Four chapters were written by area specialists who illuminated the role of SALW in fuelling armed conflict in four contexts: Angola, South Asia, Russia and the other former Soviet states, and Colombia. In each case data on various aspects of SALW, such as inter alia production and exports, were presented.

As for solutions, the chapter by Jo Husbands, ‘Controlling Transfers of Light Arms’, presented a series of questions that would shape efforts to control the trade in and misuse of SALW (1995). Interestingly, there was no summary by the editors as to what all this information meant and no way forward. For example, Klare states that in regard to his nine changes in the international system creating demand for SALW, it is impossible to produce any statistics to confirm this hypothesis, only anecdotal evidence to lend it considerable validity. Smith suggests controlling ammunition as a promising solution.³ Husbands suggests that controls should be based on the stage of the conflict. But the main outcome of the book was a call for more research, which began to occur soon after the conference.

In 1995, the British-American Security Information Council (BASIC) received a large multi-year grant from the Ford Foundation for its Project on Light Weapons, which would generate work that played a major role in the development of the epistemic community. The major outputs of this effort were papers by an expanding list of researchers, some from the developing world and especially conflict zones such as Pakistan and the Balkans. In October 1995, BASIC co-sponsored a meeting with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the Indian Pugwash Society, and the Indian government-sponsored Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis. It covered more ground than did the Cambridge meeting in 1994, including South Africa and a major chapter on SALW from a sociological perspective.

The book from this conference was published in December 1995 (Singh, 1995). It made transparent a great deal of data on the types of weapons being used in intrastate conflicts, where they come from, and the dynamics of weapons flows. It also produced a study of the synergy between the arms and the drug trades. The editors declared in the summary that ‘formulating the current state of the “disease” in this way would provide a helpful roadmap for future research and political action’ (Singh, 1995, p. 161). The book also contained some of the initial policy prescriptions for addressing the SALW problem: increased transparency, oversight, control (such as improving domestic gun control, eliminating or restricting certain types of weapons). The chapter by Brady, ‘Collecting and Organising Data on the Manufacture of, and Trade in, Light Weapons’, revealed the paucity of data and the magnitude of the effort required to develop such a database. The Project Director, Natalie Goldring, testified before the United Nations Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms in June 1996. One of BASIC's goals was to create a network of researchers—a major component of an epistemic community. She reported that by 1996 there were 200 people in the BASIC network and 45 projects.⁴

In September 1996, the present author and the late Sarah Meek wrote The New Field of Micro-Disarmament: Addressing the Proliferation and Buildup of Small Arms and Light Weapons (Laurance and Meek, 1996). It was based on the research described above, as well as the work of the Program for Arms Control, Disarmament and Conversion (PACDC) at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. It was published by the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) under its mandate to explore the question of surplus weapons. This mandate produced work on demobilization, weapons collection, and the SALW problem. It was the first book that was not an edited collection and as such became the ‘Bible’ for the growing movement toward action to stem the proliferation and misuse of SALW. It contained a history of UN action up to that time, as well as an in-depth effort to shape a description of the types of weapons included in a definition of SALW. Based on the author's research conducted in El Salvador in March 1995, the book suggested that the best way to define SALW is to list all the weapons turned in as part of the conclusion of peace operations by the UN. An appendix listed the complete inventory of weapons used by both sides in the war in El Salvador.

This book also promoted the idea that the extensive research by the domestic gun violence research community in the United States may have some applicability in other contexts. One of PACDC's major research projects was assessing the policy tool of gun buy-backs, and this research was included in the book. It should be noted however that very little research had been conducted to test the hypothesis that weapons collection leads to lower violence. As a matter of fact, what evidence there was indicated the opposite. It was a classic example of the research attitude that dominated this period, that is, something has to be done, even if the evidence is not at hand that it will work.

In November 1996 the Canadian government published a bibliography of works on SALW (Canada, 1996). Part A, ‘United Nations, Regional Organizations...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series: Studies in Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Small Arms Survey
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: the past, present and future of the small arms policy-research nexus
• 1 The small arms problem as arms control: a policy-driven research agenda
• Part I The current state of small arms research
• Part II Innovative contributions to small arms research
• Part III Conclusions and prospects for the future
• Index