The Scope and Implications of a Tracing Mechanism for Small Arms ...

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have a more prominent role to play in conflict weapon investigations than
in the case of “ordinary” crime guns.
1.5.3.1 Military Tracing Systems
The importance of military marking, record-keeping and tracing
systems derives from the importance of military source arms in conflict zone
trafficking, noted above.
The armed forces of most countries maintain systems for the marking
and record-keeping of arms and ammunition that are separate from those
for civilian weapons. This poses some special problems. Some arms
manufacturers do not uniquely mark SALW and/or ammunition produced
for the military, enabling the armed forces to apply their own marks as these
weapons enter into service. Large quantities of military SALW held in
reserve storage may be unmarked or inadequately marked. When such
weapons are subsequently diverted to the illicit market through loss, theft
or corruption, they may be difficult or impossible to trace.
Similarly, for institutional and national security reasons, most countries
maintain separate records for arms, parts and components and ammunition
held by their armed forces. While such records are centralized and
computerized in numerous countries—including Australia, Canada, South
Africa and the UK—many others lack centralized national records even in
paper form. In some States, different branches of the armed forces maintain
separate records of their SALW inventories, with no detailed central
database. 40 Further complicating the picture, many countries also maintain
several security forces in addition to the military—such as border guards,
interior troops, gendarmerie and special services—each with their own
inventories. This kind of fragmentation of official SALW records can hamper
accurate record-keeping, prevent the timely identification of losses, and
obstruct or delay tracing investigations.
While all well-organized professional armed forces have systems for
identifying and tracing losses of arms and ammunition from their own stocks
and units, in many countries such systems are under-developed or underutilized.
International military cooperation in tracing illicit weapons flows to
conflict regions has grown in recent years. Thus, in the Balkans, NATO and