Small Arms and Light Weapons - Harry Frank Guggenheim ...

longs a conflict but also brings to a halt the economic,social, and political development needed tobring the conflict to an end. We see this phenomenonin other places. These cases need to beresearched and compared to produce findings thatcan be used by those charged with peace-building.governanceSmall arms have had notable destructive impactson the ability of some states to govern well. As discussedabove, proliferation has raised the cost ofmaintaining public order. This expense divertsresources from investment in the economy anddiminishes a state's ability to help create jobs andraise the standard of living. In turn, all of this promotesthe acquisition and use of arms for bothlegitimate protection and illicit purposes by privatesecurity firms and individual citizens. Manywould argue that in some polities the state has foreversurrendered its role as the primary provider ofsecurity.Research has begun on the growth of privatemilitary contractors and its effect on societies. 15This work has demonstrated how private securitycompanies fuel the legal and illegal markets forsmall arms. In El Salvador, as in much of Centraland Latin America, the state has lost its monopolyover the use of force and the tools of violence.These companies purchased mostly high-caliberweapons for their employees, which probably representeda good share of the more than 50,000firearms El Salvador imported between 1996 and2000. At the same time, it has been documentedthat 25 per cent of the weapons confiscated by theSalvadoran authorities were taken off of privatesecurity agents outside hours of work. 16 In recentyears the numbers of private security agents (some20,000 plus) have surpassed the 16,000 police officersserving in El Salvador. 17Such widespread availability of guns and abreakdown in the rule of law have led to the emergenceof private armed groups in many countries.Such groups are seldom held accountable for therole they play in human rights abuses. Indeed,small arms have become the weapons of choice notonly for political insurgents but also for terroristsaround the world. Nearly 75 percent of the significantterrorist incidents in 2002 were perpetratedby individuals and groups wielding small arms.Small arms create and fuel the conditions in whichterrorist groups thrive. The poverty and desperationexperienced by many post-conflict societiesare often exploited by terrorists, who use the victims'suffering to justify and build support for theiractions. Afghanistan in the 1990s provided suchan environment. Al Quaeda found there a safehaven and could tap into the vast criminal networksthat spring up in the absence of effective lawenforcement.The availability and use of firearms are determinedby the nature of governance in a country.The reverse is also true: firearms influence the waysin which countries are governed. The relationshipbetween firearms and governance is extremely significantfor development, law enforcement, andhuman rights, but it is underresearched.There is now a consensus typology of the effectsof the availability and misuse of small arms andlight weapons, a picture that has emerged fromefforts of scholars working on one or another of themany aspects of the small arms problem. Table 1,from Small Arms Survey 2003, captures this consensusand serves as an excellent guide for furtherresearch.Notes1. Some of these accounts were the basis for a set offact sheets prepared by the U.S. Small Arms WorkingGroup (SAWG) in advance of the 2001 UN Small ArmsConference and updated for the 2003 Biennial Meetingof States follow-up conference. Fact sheets on smallarms and brokers; children; collection, destruction, andstockpile protection; development; human rights; internationalhumanitarian law; natural resources; peacekeeping;public health; tourism; and women can befound at http://www.iansa.org/documents/index.htm.18