Working Paper submitted to the Ninth Biennial Meeting of States of the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons by the European Union, its Member States, and the Small Arms Survey.
Available in: ENGLISH
The choice to pursue sustainable peace requires moving towards preventive responses that also tackle the underlying drivers for the demand for weapons and for engagement in armed violence. Integrating small arms control within multisectoral and preventive public health approaches, armed violence reduction strategies, and community engagement initiatives can offer more sustainable pathways to peace.
Since the end of the Cold War, US unipolarity gave Washington considerable influence over Sudan’s political trajectory. That relationship has changed. As the world moves towards a more multipolar order, US leverage over Sudan has sharply declined, while Sudan’s military leaders and influential regional states have gained greater latitude to pursue their own interests. The result, this Briefing Paper argues, made ending Sudan’s civil war difficult.
Working paper presented by Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the Small Arms Survey to the Twelfth Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty, August 2026.
'High-profile port seizures consistently disprove a long-held assumption regarding arms trafficking - demonstrating that the world's most destabilizing volumes of illicit weapons move not across land borders, but by sea. The Global Study on Firearms Trafficking 2020 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that while interceptions from vessels constitute only 6% of global customs cases, they account for roughly 33% of all firearms seized by customs. Traffickers favour using maritime routes for high-volume bulk consignments over carrying smaller quantities by land.
'On the afternoon of 26 January 2022, the Philippine Senate voted in favour of Resolution №960 - with 16 votes for, none against, and six abstentions. The vote saw the Senate give their formal concurrence (agreement) to the ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), thereby marking the end of a years-long legislative process. Two months later, on 24 March 2022, the Philippines became the 111th state party to the ATT after depositing its ratification at the UN, and on 22 June 2022 the Treaty entered into force.
Despite a 20-year international campaign to combat the threat from illicit man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS), acquisition and use of these weapons by non-state armed groups continues, especially in the Middle East and North Africa region.
What are civilian attitudes to and experiences with firearm safety and training in Ukraine?
In line with the Small Arms Survey’s on-going monitoring of the impact that war has had on Ukrainian citizens and their relationship with small arms and light weapons, this infographic updates our key findings based on the results of our latest population survey conducted in October 2025.
In the war against the Sudanese Armed Forces, the Rapid Support Forces have relied on external backing and regional partnerships that extend well beyond Sudan’s borders. While these relationships have developed within different local and historical contexts, the ways in which armed actors mobilise support, resources, and legitimacy reveal important behavioural patterns that lend themselves to a comparative look.
On 10 December 2025, the Small Arms Survey and the Center for Security Studies 'CENSS' held an event for the launch of a new report titled 'Weapons Compass: Proliferation and Control of Arms and Ammunition in Wartime Ukraine'