IV. Potential national action and policy

Discussion

There was a consensus that a priority should be to thoroughly analyse and understand the problem in order to establish a credible position on it. It was considered essential to recognize the need for different approaches in each geographic region and the value of involving people at the local level in both analysis and the search for solutions. Discussion then turned to the need to establish minimum standards for all governments and the specific means by which States could act individually to arrest small arms proliferation.

The need was emphasized for more hard data regarding the effects of small arms and light weapons in all domains to back up attempts to bring about tighter controls. The priority was to understand the problem.

A speaker stressed the need for good analysis. More was required than statistics as not all approaches could be quantitative – some must be qualitative. The information on which arguments are based must be totally credible – unassailable.

Action should be taken by authorities at the international, national and local levels, but one should not forget community-based action and research. Local organizations were most knowledgeable about local problems.

Another expert agreed. Each region was different, and outsiders were rarely capable of discerning the proliferation routes, analysing local weapons manufacture, etc. As for legislative controls, he believed that adopting appropriate legislation would pose little problem in most parts of the world. Yet even with the right laws in place, the problem would remain how to ensure their successful implementation.

Another declared that a consensus was clearly beginning to emerge among the participants. This consensus was firstly that every country producing and/or transferring small arms and/or light weapons needed a set of guidelines, of minimum rules. Secondly, there was a need for the cooperation and involvement of local people. Different situations were not comparable and attempting to find a standardised solution would not be useful.

The need was cited to study attitudes towards specific types of weapons within conflict-ridden communities in order to find more effective ways of controlling them.

Another expert agreed, arguing that those from whom information was gathered would also be a good source of ideas for solutions. Which brought him to a second point: arms proliferation was to a large extent a gender problem, i.e. a male problem. Many of those who could be identified as local partners in humanitarian endeavour were women, and they should be listened to.

Indeed, there was no real need for further information – it was already known what the problem was and also what the solution was. If you asked people they would tell you: STOP! Stop producing and transferring small arms and light weapons. A moratorium should be declared on transfers that were not in strict accordance with strict guidelines. If you could not prove that your proposed transfer met those conditions, you should not be allowed to go ahead with it.

One participant felt that the ICRC was well placed to furnish early warning of problem areas as well as to ask supplier States for more openness about their transfers.

It was suggested that in countries where private companies were selling small arms and light weapons abroad, governments should stop granting them export credits. Companies left to fend for themselves would think twice about selling to unstable regions, for fear of non-payment. Moreover, if a way could be found to bring about transparency in government dealings, many of the worst offenders would be embarrassed by the sudden exposure of their unsavoury transactions.

Among other measures, governments should adopt two policies: refusing to allow the transfer of weapons to be used for internal repression and demanding end-user guarantees. Many companies currently operated outside the law; they must be resigned in.

Another expert observed that it was all very well to say that you mustn't do what you mustn't do, but whatever measures individual governments took, local enforcement would often prove impossible owing to ineffectual policing, etc.

The point was made that when weapons grew old, the original end-users tended to be less concerned than before about what happened to them now that their monetary value had dropped. And the more time passed, the more their interest waned. In southern Africa today there were 40-year-old weapons – transferred quite legitimately by the Germans in the 1950s – that were now finding their way into the hands of absolutely anyone who could pay the modest price for which they were being sold. Governments should sell only to other governments, never to agents. The South African police had stopped selling off their outdated weapons because they had realized that there was no real way they could control what became of them. Instead, they now destroyed them. One possibly useful measure would be to require that if you re-equipped a country's weaponry, you must take back its old weapons and dispose of them safely.

Another participant agreed that most illicit weapons started their "life cycle" as licit weapons. One remedy would be a tax on weapons possession. If it could be proved, for example, that weapons were being exported to a country that had a legitimate need and was itself unable to produce the weapons required to meet that need, the tax could be waived. Apart from anything else, this would be a means to promote transparency.

The experts were warned that steps must be taken to ensure that those who consented to transparency were not punished for what was revealed by it while others, who refused transparency, suffered no negative publicity.

The need was stressed to have the same international standards for everyone, to overcome the argument for government that "If we don't do it, somebody else will." Moreover, any code of conduct that failed to cover internal security and law enforcement would leave a gaping hole through which unscrupulous traders could ship practically whatever they wished under the pretext that their shipment was for police work. It was also important to recognize the main sources of surplus stocks: matériel left over in the wake of armed conflict, obviously, but also weapons that had become superfluous after budget-conscious governments downsized their armed forces.

The point was made that comprehensive information was needed if for no other reason than to refute spurious arguments. In South Africa, for example, the point had been made that firearms accounted for only a small percentage of murders there, the overwhelming majority of which were committed with knives. While true, this ignored the fact that the percentage for shootings was rising rapidly while knives were falling out of favour as firearms became more freely available.

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