CIAO DATE: 04/2012
October 2011
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Illicit trade in weapons and materials poses serious challenges to states and disarmament regimes. Although small arms and light weapons (SALW) are quite different from weapons of mass destruction (WMD), both categories are in increasing demand by violent non-state actors, often in relation to organized crime and terrorist activities. For those reasons, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), and the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) convened, with the support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, two workshops to explore this issue. The first workshop took place on 1-2 February 2010 on the topic: “Reinforcing Disarmament: Combating the Illicit Trade in Weapons and Materials – Actors – Synergies – Challenges”. It was designed to map the field and identify possible areas of cooperation among various practitioners. The second workshop was organized on 6 April 2011 around the theme: “Reinforcing Disarmament: Combating Illicit Trade in Weapons and Materials – Regional Challenges”. It addressed inter-related aspects of the illicit arms trade issue: the need for acquiring and managing reliable information; the requirement for effective legal and law-enforcement systems; and the challenge of implementing and operationalizing the existing legal and political instruments. Both workshops brought together experts and practitioners from the field of small arms and light weapons control and the field of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons control: academics and researchers, government officials, military officers, and representatives of civil society organizations from various regions, including some fifteen participants from Africa.
Resource link: Reinforcing Disarmament: Combating Illicit Trade in Weapons and Materials [PDF] - 486K