Arms Control

"There is not enough monitoring of international arms trade transfers", said Rob Thomson, lead researcher of the Ceasefire Campaign South Africa. His organization issued a report on the nation´s arms transfers, asking that international standards on arms transfers be met and making the information, for the first time, public.

More centralized firearms data, less guns circulating, more guns seized, a 90% drop in gun sales and significantly less gun licenses issued, and more importantly, over five thousand lives saved in less than three years. These were some of the major advances resulting from Brazil’s gun control law enacted in December of 2003.

In deliberations in the United Nations since 2006, the project for a global, legally binding, arms trade treaty enters a new phase: determining the content and shape of the treaty, enactment is expected for 2012. Experts hope the treaty will bring arms trade out of invisibility and lower the negative impact of guns over civilians.

Balance of the balance: Exports and imports of small arms, light
weapons (SALW) its parts and ammunition to Africa, Latin America, and
the Caribbean, from 2000 to
2007.

Public Security Programme Coordinator of the UN-LiREC, the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, William Godnick gave InterCambio an exclusive interview on his new police training course and comments on the role of police training in lowering youth violence.

Preliminary findings of a Viva Rio and Brazilian Congress' Subcom Firearms and Ammunitions Control Office survey say that there is much to be improved in gun control in the country. Survey cites irregular data provision as key problem for gun control as a strategy to lower levels of violence.

An exclusive article for the montlhy newsletter “En la mira – The Latin American Small Arms Watch.” Click here for subscriptions and for previous issues.

In writing this piece I was asked to share my thoughts on what I had learned in working with Pablo over the years. Quite a difficult question as I looked to Pablo as a peer and much of the learning was probably implicit and part of a process of giving and receiving feedback on ideas, research and hypotheses about the nature of public security illicit arms trafficking in Latin America.

Presented at the Joint Conference of the International Studies Association and Associação Brasileira de Relações Internacionais PUC/RJ, 23nd  July 2009, Rio de Janeiro

I am grateful to the organizer of this panel, particularly to Kai Michael Kenkel, for the honor of inviting me to make the eulogy of  Pablo Dreyfus.

Emmy award winner Canadian documentary filmmaker Shelley Saywell talks to Comunidad Segura about her work: 20 years focusing on the effects of conflict, war and violence in a number of films that have taken her from Gaza to South Africa, from Bosnia to Afghanistan. Her film The Devil's Bargain examines gun running, starting in Somalia and connecting the dots to Europe and North America.