United Nations Member States will meet in New York this week for the UN Preparatory Committee for the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA PrepCom). The objective of this meeting is to prepare the agenda for the Second PoA Review Conference (to be held in August and September), which will assess progress made in meeting the wide-ranging commitments laid out by the PoA to address the problem of small arms proliferation and misuse.

Weapons Tracing and Peace Support Operations: Theory or Practice? (Issue Brief 4) examines the normative frameworks and practical mechanisms that could be used, specifically by Peace Support Operations (PSOs), to trace conflict weapons; and considers some of the reasons that have so far prevented PSOs from tracing weapons.

Also available in FRENCH.

Ammunition marking—including all the marks applied on individual cartridges and their packaging, containing information crucial for their identification—facilitates accounting for ammunition use, safe transportation, storage, and quality control. Within the international arms control community there is an ongoing debate about how useful marking is in helping to trace transfers of ammunition from one user group to another.

Since the adoption of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA) in 2001, more than 80 per cent of UN member states have submitted at least one PoA national report on their implementation of the instrument. But many of these reports leave much to be desired.

The Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA) was adopted in 2001, and since then a total of 584 national reports have been submitted by signatories, providing information on how they have implemented the recommendations of the agreement.

The marking of small arms is a necessary component of record-keeping, linking a specific small arm to a unique record for that item. A robust record-keeping system provides the means to trace small arms and investigate the illicit trade, thus helping to limit the illicit proliferation of small arms and light weapons. 

Co-published with UNIDIR.

• Download

Also available in French

South-east European Surplus Arms: State Policies and Practices profiles the policies and procedures put in place by the South-east European countries operating within the RASR Initiative to address their surplus small arms and ammunition. The first section reviews the international and regional political frameworks for addressing surplus and then examines available policy options.

By Sarah Meek and Noel Stott, co-published with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

• Download 

By Sivia Cattaneo and Sarah Parker, co-published with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs (UNDDA).

• Download