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

PREFACE
The illegal proliferation of small arms and light weapons is a global
crisis. One consequence of the illicit trade in weapons is that regions
become flooded with small arms before, during and following a violent
conflict. After a conflict, guns often stay in the region, kept for personal
security or for use in violent crime and the death and injury rate from the
guns can remain extremely high in post-conflict societies. Even if peace and
sustained development become rooted in a community and small arms and
light weapons are traded in for more useful commodities, arms dealers
often sell them on to people embroiled in a conflict in another part of the
world. And so the vicious cycle begins again.
Practical measures have been introduced in many post-conflict
situations to collect and destroy weapons so that they cannot be sold on to
fuel violence elsewhere. However, large surplus stockpiles exist in some
parts of the world, and new weapons are constantly being manufactured;
many of these are diverted into the illegal markets, making their way into
the hands of those who will use them to kill in conflict or in crime.
The world may be awash with a surplus of illegal weapons and
although peacemakers may be draining hundreds of thousands out through
weapons collection and destruction programmes, the tap of illegal diversion
is still flowing.
One of the problems is that we do not know where, when and how
legally manufactured weapons are being introduced into the illicit trade in
small arms. Weapons that are collected following conflicts often yield few
clues by themselves as to how they arrived and from where they most
recently came. States that legally manufacture and sell small arms and light
weapons thus have a clear interest in preventing diversion into the illicit
trade, since they are often otherwise identified as the likely proliferators.
To prevent illicit diversion, one necessary (but not sufficient) measure
is to mark weapons in an easily identifiable and coherent manner and to
maintain databases of the production of marked weapons and their legal
transfers, so that any illegally diverted weapons can be traced back to the
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