Small Arms - Reasons for Disarmament and Controls

Robert Neild author of Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, economics professor emeritus at Cambridge pointed out that "It has been estimated that there are now about 500 million small arms and light weapons in circulation in the world, one for every twelve people. Gone long ago is the time when we Europeans could subdue other continents because we had firearms and the local peoples had not. In 1999 it was reported that an AK-47 assault rifle could be bought in Uganda for the price of a chicken." (Neild 2002, p.131) Many of these weapons were produced in the countries which form the permanent members of the UN Security Council. In a report by the Control Arms campaign of Oxfam and Amnesty International the 5 permament members of the UN Security Council accounted for 88 per cent of conventional arms exports in 2001.

Yet it is difficult to tell exactly how many small arms and light weapons are being produced and exported. Unlike weapons of mass destruction or those weapons forming the 7 categories of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms (1. Battle Tanks, 2. Armored Combat Vehicles, 3. Large-Caliber Artillery Systems, 4. Combat Aircraft, 5. Attack Helicopers, 6. Warships and 7. Missiles and Missile Launchers) no global SALW control regime exists, which would make their trade and production transparent. The amount of information made public depends on the individual state's willingness to do so. Acording to the Small Arms Survey of 2006 only very few states actually inform about the quantity and quality of their small arms trades. Among these only very few provide detailed and transparent information: USA, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Spain and the Czech Republic. Among the least transparent states the authors count: Bulgaria, Iran, Israel and North Korea.(Table 3.3)

For several reasons, the illicit trade of small arms is very common. One reason is the lack of control by many states over the arms trade, meaning that the "diversion of arms from the state-sanctioned sector to the illicit sphere is very common" (http://www.controlarms.org/documents/arms_report_full.pdf). In the words of Kofi Annan in We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, p.52: "An estimated 50 to 60 per cent of the world's trade in small arms is legal - but legally exported weapons often find their way into the illicit market. The task of effective proliferation control is made far harder than it needs to be because of irresponsible behavior on the part of some states and lack of capacity by others, together with the shroud of secrecy that veils much of the arms trade. Member States must act to increase transparency in arms transfers if we are to make any progress."

Also, exporting states might be more driven by economic and geopolitical reasoning. Instead of considering the impact that these weapons will have and the control that will be placed on them in the importing states, exporters will make decisions based on their own interests.