Smuggled in Plain Sight:  The Gendered Blind Spot in Maritime Small Arms Trafficking

'High-profile port seizures consistently disprove a long-held assumption regarding arms trafficking - demonstrating that the world's most destabilizing volumes of illicit weapons move not across land borders, but by sea. The Global Study on Firearms Trafficking 2020 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that while interceptions from vessels constitute only 6% of global customs cases, they account for roughly 33% of all firearms seized by customs. Traffickers favour using maritime routes for high-volume bulk consignments over carrying smaller quantities by land. West Africa's seizure record underscores the magnitude of the maritime trafficking threat: at Tema port, the Ghana Revenue Authority announced the seizure of 436 pistols in 2020, then customs officials intercepted three assault rifles concealed as 'personal effects' in 2021, while at Apapa port, Lagos, Nigerian customs seized 2,686 weapons between March and September 2017.

Focusing narrowly on vessels at sea fails to capture the onshore financiers who keep supply chains running. Yet the major arms control instruments were built around a land- and state-centric logic, with maritime enforcement receiving relatively little attention in the United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (UN PoA) and the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Two elements further reinforce this gap: first, the 'article-by-article' approach of the ATT to inter-agency cooperation - focusing on individual articles rather than considering supply chain and broader land–sea dynamics as a whole; and second, the framing of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) solely as UN PoA outcomes - instead of examining how gaps in SDG implementation can create conditions conducive to illicit trafficking. Furthermore, where gender analysis exists, it usually focuses on the gendered impacts of armed violence and the meaningful participation of women in arms control processes, leaving the gendered structure of arms trafficking supply chains unexamined. This institutional framing creates a blind spot.'

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