General Assembly - UNIDIR

A/56/359
48. A collection of papers from selected authors in
Sierra Leone was published in 2000. Contributors to
the volume, which is entitled Bound to Cooperate:
Conflict, Peace and People in Sierra Leone and was
edited by Anatole Ayissi and Robin Edward Poulton,
represents a wide range of civil society and other actors
in Sierra Leone. In addition, a collection of papers
from local NGOs in Liberia is currently in the editing
process.
49. In both Sierra Leone and Liberia, national debates
have been initiated on civil society, small arms and
security in West Africa, organized around the ideas
expressed in the commissioned papers, which have
been widely distributed to civil society organizations,
the media, political authorities and other stakeholders
in the implementation of the moratorium. These
national debates are significant opportunities for civil
society organizations to communicate their findings
and recommendations to decision makers and, through
the media, to the wider public.
50. The next stage of the project will be to develop a
long-term strategy for confidence-building in the
region, building on the work that UNIDIR has carried
out and extending it to neighbouring countries such as
Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea.
2. Weapons destruction and stockpile
management in South Africa
51. In 1998, the Government of South Africa made a
decision to destroy its surplus stockpile of small arms
and light weapons. With the financial support of the
Government of Norway, South Africa has, since
August 2000, destroyed over 260,000 weapons. In
addition, the Government has put in place a
comprehensive stockpile management programme, thus
ensuring that weapons are tracked and surplus weapons
are destroyed, thereby reducing the likelihood of
weapons being diverted to national and regional illicit
markets. UNIDIR and the Small Arms Survey plan to
conduct a study of South Africa’s experiences. The
purpose of the project is twofold. First, the aim is to
inform other countries, particularly in the southern
Africa region, about the destruction and stockpile
management programme in the hope that such
countries will be inspired to establish similar
destruction and stockpile management programmes for
themselves, thus contributing significantly to regional
security. Secondly, the aim is to provide an in-depth
study of the programme so that lessons can be learned,
thus encouraging best practices.
3. Weapons for development
52. Increasingly, the international community is
turning to weapons collection programmes to absorb
the large surpluses of small arms that remain following
a conflict. Different types of incentive schemes have
been tried in several different regions: buy-back
programmes; token rewards; gift vouchers; farming
tools; and the more ambitious weapons-fordevelopment
programmes. UNIDIR aims to provide a
detailed analysis of selected weapons collection
programmes in order to assist policy makers, donor
countries, specialized agencies of the United Nations
system and international non-governmental
organizations, to devise better strategies to collect
weapons from civilians and former combatants. Using
participatory monitoring and evaluation techniques,
UNIDIR will identify the criteria for success for
weapons collection, analyse and detail the
characteristics of the best incentive schemes to collect
the weapons and attempt to identify the best practices
in collection methods, collecting locations and storage
facilities to be used. The project is designed to be
completed within two years and will produce usable
material for the duration of the project.
4. Regional and cross-regional perspectives on
illicit trafficking in small arms
53. In 1999, UNIDIR began a project to study the
flow of illicit small arms throughout the world. The
first part of this project focused on the flow of illicit
arms through Central Asia as a consequence of the
protracted conflicts in Afghanistan. This work was
carried out by visiting research fellow Bobi Pirseyedi
of Finland and was published in mid-2000. Funding is
being sought for the next stage of the project, focusing
on the flow of illicit weapons through the Russian
Federation, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, with
particular attention to the role of organized crime in
that region in the practical details of arms smuggling.
A further stage of the project will study the flow of
small arms through South Asia into North-East Asia.
Future stages could include the study of the flow of
illicit arms in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the
Americas, thus providing a coherent map and analysis
of the main trafficking routes in the world and their
impact on, and connection with, violent conflicts.
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