Arms watching: integrating small arms and light weapons into the early warning of violent conflict

By the mid 1990s it had become clear to the international community that the promise of a post-cold war world free of conflict was not going to be fulfilled. The intra-state violence in Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa, Mali, El Salvador, Albania, Mexico, and a host of other states meant that preventing, monitoring, and resolving armed conflict was still a major challenge to the international community.In response to the continuation and changing nature of conflict, particularly complex and violent humanitarian crises resulting from these armed conflicts, the issue of early warning and its role in conflict prevention grew in importance. Actors at all levels of the international community, including academics, began to develop indicators and warning systems in an effort to predict, prepare and, in the worst case, manage these humanitarian crises. The goal was clear: to improve the predication of the massive flow of refugees fleeing from conflict in order to a better job of humanitarian relief. Parallel to this development a similar urgency evolved regarding the tools of violence used in these complex and violent humanitarian crises: small arms and light weapons such as assault rifles, hand grenades, and anti-personnel landmines. Analysis of these same conflicts produced a body of knowledge and action which increasingly demonstrated that the proliferation, accumulation, availability, and misuse of small arms and light weapons is directly linked to the outbreak, escalation, resurgence and lethality of these conflicts. At the moment there is little interaction between these two bodies of expertise and experience. The goal of this report is to promote the merger of these two fields so that early warning scholars and practitioners can begin to integrate weapons-specific early warning indicators into the important work of modeling and preventing violent conflict. In the introductory chapter, Edward Laurance of the Monetary Institute of International Studies examines both of these fields in detail, demonstrating how the introduction of weapons-specific indicators could enhance the early warning process to prevent conflicts that lead to humanitarian crises. His chapter develops eighteen indicators that could be used by those working in conflict and-conflict prone areas. After a discussion of the sources for these indicators military forces, conflict resolution organizations, human rights monitors, humanitarian relief and development personnel, and media – Laurance addresses the early warning and early response debate. While it is true that information was available about weapons build-ups and availability during some of these crises, not enough was done to make more of the International Community aware of the human on sequences of the lethality and coercive power of these weapons. The report then presents three area-specific treatments of early warning and small arms and light weapons. The goal of these three case studies is to demonstrate that weapons-specific early warning is already underway in some regions, and has the potential and International Organizations.