Small arms misuse obstructs aid and development

Small arms in the hands of ill-disciplined civilians and armed groups are a primary threat to development and humanitarian assistance, limiting access to beneficiaries and resulting in the suspension of operations and projects.

Violent assaults on humanitarian and development workers remain at an unacceptably high level, but until recently the threat of armed violence on workers has not been well documented. The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Small Arms Survey gathered information from more than 2,000 workers in 96 countries about how the misuse of small arms affects humanitarian and development agency staff and their beneficiaries. ‘No Relief’ represents the largest victimisation survey of humanitarian and development workers ever undertaken.

Respondents described widely variable security environments, but reported consistently large numbers of civilians to be in possession of small arms. In violent security environments time may be lost due to evacuations and delays in reaching beneficiary populations and operations may even be suspended.

Key findings include:

• In addition to threats from armed groups, civilians with guns—particularly criminals and petty thieves—are a primary cause of worker insecurity.
• More than one fifth (21 percent) of all respondents claimed that 25 percent or more of their beneficiary target groups was inaccessible in the previous six months due to routine armed threats.
• One third of all respondents (33 percent) reported having suspended operations or projects in the previous six months due to armed conflict, while 26 percent had suspended operations due to armed crime.
• The hardening of targets—particularly through the contracting of private security—is an increasingly common response to mitigating insecurity. Some 32 percent of all respondents reported the use of guards.
• Fewer than half (44 percent) of all respondents indicated that they had received safety training from their current agency but that training was more common among expatriates than nationals.
• The most acute levels of violence were reported by personnel in Guinea, Nepal, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Uganda, Kenya and Iraq. Moreover, respondents from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo-Brazzaville and Uganda registered the highest levels of prevalence and misuse of small arms and light weapons.

The pervasiveness of small arms has led to a situation where they are often treated as an unavoidable aspect of humanitarian and development work. The following recommendations are provided to governments and humanitarian and development agencies:

• Improve the coverage and analysis of the reporting of small arms misuse and availability, including documentation of security incidents and the impacts of gun violence.
• Redress the disparity between expatriate and national workers access to security training.
• Provide support for coordinated non-governmental organisation security initiatives to lead to harmonised responses and information collection.
• Engage in armed violence prevention policies and advocacy activities, including small arms control at various levels including the implementation activities underway for the 2001 United Nations Programme on Small Arms.
• Develop a greater awareness of national firearm legislation in the countries where agencies work and engage in the process of strengthening those laws where needed.

Source(s):
‘No Relief: Surveying the effects of gun violence on humanitarian and development personnel’, by Cate Buchanan and Robert Muggah, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Small Arms Survey, June 2005 Full document.
‘In the Line of Fire: Surveying the perceptions of humanitarian and development personnel of the impacts of small arms and light weapons’ by Ryan Beasley, Cate Buchanan and Robert Muggah, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Small Arms Survey, November 2002 Full document.

Funded by: DFID (2004-2005)

id21 Research Highlight: 19 September 2005

Further Information:
Cate Buchanan
Human Security and Small Arms Programme
Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue
114 rue de Lausanne
Geneva, 1202
Switzerland

Tel: +41 (0) 22 9081130
Fax: +41 (0) 22 9081140
Contact the contributor: cateb@hdcentre.org

Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva

Robert Muggah
Small Arms Survey
Ground Floor
47 Avenue Blanc
1202 Geneva
Switzerland

Tel: +41 (0)22 9085777
Fax: +41 (0)22 7322738
Contact the contributor: smallarm@hei.unige.ch

Small Arms Survey

Other related links:
'Small arms – big bills'

'Arms are out of control: how inappropriate weapons sales exaggerate poverty'

'Ending the gun culture: can small arms and light weapons be decommissioned?'

Small Arms Survey 2005: Weapons at War

No Guns Please, We Are Children, UNICEF publication