New Briefing Paper on Weapons Technical Intelligence in UN Peace Operations

Over the last decade, UN peacekeepers and their beneficiaries have been the targets of threats from hostile actors armed with small arms and light weapons, rockets and mortars, IEDs, and related weapons. Assessing and countering these threats requires peacekeepers to have the capacity to focus on hostile actors’ access to and (mis)use of weapons and the destabilising effects of arms proliferation.
 
Exploiting Evidence, Improving Protection: Weapons Technical Intelligence in UN Peace Operations is a new Briefing Paper from the Small Arms Survey’s Security Assessment in North Africa (SANA) project. The paper discusses the current and possible future deployment of weapons technical intelligence (WTI) roles and activities in UN—as well as hybrid and non-UN—peacekeeping operations. It also examines the contributions that WTI could make, if leveraged, for situational awareness, force protection, and mandate implementation, including the protection of civilians and human rights investigations.

Read: Exploiting Evidence, Improving Protection: Weapons Technical Intelligence in UN Peace Operations

For more, check out:

• Persistent Perils: Illicit MANPADS in the MENA Region (April 2024)—a Report that provides an in-depth analysis of the proliferation of MANPADS in North Africa and the Middle East from 2015–23
• Continuity and Change: Extremist-used Arms in Mali (January 2024)—a Briefing Paper that investigates the arms, ammunition, explosives, and other materiel used in extremist attacks in Mali from 2015 to 2022, and the sources and pathways through which they were obtained
• The SANA project page
• Other SANA outputs in our Resource Library

Other news from the Survey:

• New podcast - Road to RevCon4: Privately made small arms and other non-industrial weapons
• New podcast - Road to RevCon4: Linking small arms control to national development frameworks—RevCon4 opportunities
• Launch of a public service campaign from IKAR, supported by the joint CENSS-Small Arms Survey micro-grant programme
• New Situation Update on Taliban weapons controls in Balkh Province, Afghanistan
• New SANA Report on the illicit proliferation of MANPADS in the MENA region