Michael Renner
About 300,000 people are killed by small arms (handguns, hunting rifles, machine guns, etc.) each year in armed conflicts; another 200,000 people are killed annually in non-war gun violence, and 1.5 million are wounded. The dispersal of guns to private armies and militias, insurgent groups, criminal organizations, and private citizens feeds a cycle of violence. No one knows how many of these weapons exist; estimates run to 639 million, of which military-style weapons are believed to number 240 million. Global production is estimated at 7.5–8 million units per year. Weapons flow through government and commercial channels, but illicit flows include the capture of arms by insurgent forces, the looting of military and police depots, and transfers from one hotspot of the world to another.
An array of regional agreements addressing arms manufacturing, transfers, and stockpile management are now in place, though most are not legally binding. Tackling the small arms scourge requires not only tighter export controls, codes of conduct and embargoes, but also a reduction in the number of weapons in circulation through gun buyback programs and other collection methods. More than eight million surplus arms from government stocks have been destroyed since 1990.
In countries recovering from armed conflict, demobilizing ex-combatants is essential. Reintegrating them into civilian life is difficult where warfare has destroyed a large portion of public infrastructure, economic activity remains handicapped, and national treasuries are depleted. Many former combatants have limited or inappropriate skills and the world’s 500,000 child soldiers require special support.
It has proved easier to secure funding for disarmament than demobilization. The reintegration component, which tends to have less visibility and requires longer-term commitments on the part of donors, has been particularly shortchanged. In the interest of human development, disarmament needs to proceed; in the interest of disarmament and security, sustainable development is indispensable.