From Research to Road Map: Learning from the Arms for Development Initiative in Sierra Leone

This study presents the findings of a 1,200 person survey on matters related to small arms, light weapons and personal security in Sierra Leone conducted in early 2003. All the work in the survey was designed and conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with support in the final stages by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), which assisted in the analysis of the research findings and the drafting of this document. It is authored jointly and produced a collaborative effort. The study provided the results of a district-by-district survey of small arms and security-related issues. It illustrates the types of security problems people encountered at the time the fieldwork was conducted. The results were used to refine approaches to project design and planning in Freetown. The findings, in almost all cases, are qualitative - that is, concerned with explaining the meaning of the social experiences of the communities interviewed rather than using the interview material to produce measurements. While the latter is important, it was decided early on that the limitations of the interview process made measurements based on their results too uncertain to use for policy analysis.