It's a small-arms-filled world

Stat house
August 2003

It's a small-arms-filled world
Small arms not only kill thousands of people annually, they have become a detriment to economic development in the impoverished world, according to a recent study released by the Small Arms Survey. Each year the survey tracks the sales and numbers of small arms use across the globe with particular attention to their deployment and effects in conflict zones and the developing world.

Small-arms violence has an obvious affect on the ability of individuals to realize their full human potential when it cuts their lives short or leads to their debilitation, but the trade in small arms and their widespread deployment has broader cumulative effects on regional development, accord to the survey. It reports: “The misuse and impacts of small arms on communities can be strong, in particular on economic activity (traders not using the Congo river, for example, in the belief that transport is insecure). Armed violence can also affect the quality of and access to basic services, and have long-term corrosive effects on social and human capital.”

“Small arms . . . constitutes one of the leading causes of fatal and non-fatal injury in many developing countries. The direct effects reach beyond victims’ physical pain and anguish and extend to the costs of treatment and rehabilitation, the opportunity costs of long-term disabilities and the implications of lost productivity on households. In South Africa and Uganda, two countries where firearm injuries are one of the primary causes of death, a significant proportion of victims go into debt to pay medical expenses resulting from their firearm injuries. Moreover, the direct burden resulting from threat to life, combined with the indirect burden of protection and avoidance, constitute a tax on the standard of living of communities.”

The indirect effects of small arms on human development can be devastating but are difficult to quantify precisely, according to the report. “In some cases, armed violence can weaken or destroy the social and economic fabric of households, neighborhoods,and whole societies.” The indirect effects are interrelated and can include a rise in the incidence and lethality of crime, the often rapid collapse or erosion of social services, declines in both formal and informal economic activity, the distortion of investment, savings and revenue collection, and the destruction of social capital and trust. For example, unemployment and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean are considered critical factors in intentional firearm-related violence that disproportionately affects young males aged 15–25.

The SAS estimate of the global value of small arms production remains unchanged from the 2002 report at around $7.4 billion. Although the number of producing countries also remains unchanged at 98, it reports that the number of companies involved in some aspect of small arms production has increased slightly, to 1,134. At least 30 countries are regarded as significant producers, with the United States and the Russian Federation dominating the global market. Between them, these two countries account for more than 70 percent of total worldwide production of civilian firearms.

According to the report, Europe has been significantly affected by the growing availability of firearms. A wave of serious gun crime, including recent massacres in France, Germany, and Switzerland show that random, large-scale firearms violence is not an exclusively US phenomenon. In Europe, it is estimated that there are some 84 million civilian firearms in the 15 states of the European Union. About 80 per cent of European arms are in civilian hands. The total is still far fewer than the estimated 238–276 million civilian-owned guns in the United States, but more than most analysts previously would have expected.

Other Key findings:

• There are at least 639 million firearms in the world today, of which 59 percent are legally held by civilians.

• Civilians purchase more than 80 percent of all the firearms that are currently manufactured worldwide each year.

• The largest small arms exporters, by value, are the EU and the US. “Somewhat paradoxically, many of the regions worst affected by small arms violence, such as Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, appear to be minor players in the documented legal trade in small arms.”

• The total value of documented firearms and ammunition exports in 2000—the most recent year for which reliable data is available—was approximately USD 2.1 billion. This represents some 52 per cent of the estimated value of the total legal international trade in small arms and light weapons, estimated at USD 4 billion a year. The illicit trade is probably worth less than USD 1 billion a year.

• Small arms violence can have a severe impact on human development, including death and injury, the collapse of basic services, and declines in economic activity.

• Readily available, cheap, portable and easy to use, small arms have been the primary tools of violence in virtually every contemporary conflict or complex humanitarian emergency.

• More than four million small arms have been eliminated from the global stockpile in the last decade as a result of various weapons collection programs.

“[Small arms] have an insidious effect on development: by undermining the safety and security of communities, threatening livelihoods, and destroying social networks,” said Mark Malloch Brown, an administrator with the United Nation’s Development Program. “They at best hold back and at worst contribute to the reversal of hard-won development gains.”

According to SAS researches, the development community, both inter-governmental and non-governmental, remains somewhat reluctant to treat the small arms problem as a pressing development issue.However, they add, there have been some positive developments in recent years. The UNDP’s small arms programme, focusing specifically on weapons in exchange for development, has ongoing, or planned, projects in more than 20 countries.

Various NGOs, many of them part of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), are now engaged in a wide variety of development-related small arms projects in many parts of the world. “Small arms and light weapons are thus emerging not as a single disarmament and arms control issue awaiting one solution but as a cluster of policy issues, with complex linkages between different elements and regions. The challenge is and will be to develop an adequate conceptual, political, and practical framework within which all relevant dimensions of the problem, including the development dimension, can be usefully tackled in the years to come.”

The Small Arms Survey is produced annually by a team of researchers based in Geneva, Switzerland, and a worldwide network of local researchers.

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