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| 4.3.5.1 The United Nations. The UN can develop centers for excellence pertaining to certain aspects of the problem area, such as arms collection programs, security sector reform and security arrangements for post-conflict development. Technical and financial resources are needed and the UN can play a role in mobilizing these resources. 4.3.5.2 The international donor community should cooperate with affected states in the establishment of incentive-based weapons collection programs as well as other mechanisms to identify and promote best practices and to ensure adequate financial support. States such as Japan, and organizations such as the G-8 and the EU have shown particular leadership in this regard, and are to be emulated. The establishment of an international trust fund, in some mutually agreed upon form and authority, represents a prescient initiative. 4.4 Improving stockpile management and security. At a more tactical level, a major channel through which licit arms find their way into the illicit market is through their theft from government stockpiles and holding facilities. In many instances, such official stockpiles, whether stored for military or policing purposes, are poorly guarded and poorly maintained, making inviting targets for groups desiring to procure arms for their own, unofficial purposes. Efforts to improve this problem should proceed on several levels, and should be promulgated and supported by the SACR. First, passive measures, such as bunkers, lights and alarms, are simply sensible. Second, states should implement active measures to assure stockpile security. Specifically, assuring that armed sentries watch over arms stockpiles, armed guards twenty-four hours per day should complement the passive measures discussed previously. Third, often inventory management, accounting and control are lax in such facilities. Reforming, streamlining, and assuring that these practices meet commonly-accepted standards is a simple way to reduce flows of arms from licit stockpiles to the illicit trade. Finally, states should implement stiff penalties for loss or theft of a weapon, both to provide incentives for government personnel to take seriously their responsibilities to safeguard arms stockpiles, but also to deter those who might consider "losing" arms to be resold for personal gain. Accountability is a fundamental value in this instance. Small Arms Control: Goals, Norms, and Strategy 4.5 The proliferation of small arms constitutes a serious threat to international security and economic development. At the same time, lack of security, real or perceived, and expanding economic needs are root causes of proliferation. The dual challenge of peace and prosperity necessitates a comprehensive approach to (a) small arms nonproliferation, (b) collective security, and (c) economic-scientific cooperation. Such a triad, however, is in turn predicated on evolving partnership between developed and developing countries, rather than unilateral action taken through national export controls alone. 4.6 The changing operant dynamics of modern warfare, in which small arms inflict the majority of casualties on civilians, make concrete and realistic steps in curtailing the proliferation of small arms imperative, for a present danger, threatening people in countries the world over, must be met by an early and joint response. Thus a desire to broaden the UN's mandate in the small arms arena and widen the scope of burgeoning global small arms action is at the center of the EPG's call for a global small arms control regime. UN leadership on small arms nonproliferation can alleviate current imbalances in political approaches and bridge the gap between variable political, security and economic interests. The SACR, broad in scope and global in reach, would allow the international community to address small arms proliferation promptly, flexibly and efficiently. 4.7 Small arms violence poses as much a humanitarian as an arms control challenge. As a particular threat to the international community curtailing the proliferation of small arms is increasingly viewed as an integral part of arms control and disarmament, preventive diplomacy, peace enforcement (i. e. UN Charter chapter VII action), peace-keeping, and peace-building, five areas for action by the international community that are at the core of advancing, under UN auspices, multilateral talks on curbing illicit trafficking in small arms. Elements of a new international consensus need to be explored which take into account both the issue's global dimension, the linkages between the illicit and licit trade and synergies between security and development. 4.8 In adopting GA resolution 54/54 V of 15 December 1999 the international community took account of the fact that with all the convulsions in global society, only one power is left that can impose order on incipient chaos: it is the power of principles transcending changing perceptions of expediency. Reducing the number of small arms requires a multisectoral and comprehensive approach, encompassing a whole range of measures, both operative and normative, which must be dealt with both within the context of conflict prevention and conflict resolution. Small arms action must address both security, humanitarian and developmental concerns. Continued |