Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) do not stir up emotions as much as their nuclear, biological and chemical counterparts. Yet, during the past decades they claimed far more lives than those three categories of Weapons of Mass Destruction altogether - more than half a million people each year. They are one of the most urgent security and disarmament problems not least because their uncontrolled proliferation undermines peace processes, facilitates displacement, aggravates violations of human rights, increases violent crime and forestalls the development of entire regions.
Until the late 1990s the problem was largely neglected, and today it is still only inadequately understood and dealt with. On the supply side, it is caused by an easy availability of small arms and light weapons; on the demand side, one finds explanations in a bundle of political and socio-economic factors. Combating the SALW problem does not imply globally banning those weapons, but controlling their proliferation in a comprehensive manner, i.e. from the supply as well as the demand side. Thereby national, regional and global measures of arms control, disarmament, development and combating crime have to be interlocked in a complementary manner.
Grundlagen
Analysen
Waffeneinsammlung und –zerstörung
Ausgewählte Literatur
von Claudia
Walther
Aktuelle Literatur
erstellt von der Bibliothek und Dokumentationsstelle der
DGAP, Stand März 2004
