The Security Council has stated that: 'the illicit transfer, destabilizing accumulation, and misuse of small arms and light weapons fuel armed conflicts and have a wide range of […] consequences […], including the disproportionate impact on violence against women and girls and exacerbating sexual and gender-based violence in conflict.'

Ammunition diverted from legal to illicit markets is a central concern in small arms control, but its impact is understudied. A new Briefing Paper from the Small Arms Survey and the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs explores how authorities can go about better monitoring the role it plays in violent crime.  

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is the first legally binding agreement linking international conventional arms transfers to gender-based violence (GBV), but there has been limited practical application of these specific provisions to date.

'The increasing recognition to the role of gender perspectives in arms control; has produced implicit and explicit requirements to incorporate gender into arms control architecture, instruments, policies, and programmes. Much work has been done—especially since the official dawn of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in 2000—yet much remains when it comes to translating principles to action.

'When women are killed it tends to happen in the domestic sphere, and the perpetrator is often a current or former partner (Alvazzi del Frate, 2011, p. 114; Shaw, 2013, p. 18). Depending on the circumstances, such violence can be categorized as femicide, which is a form of gender-based violence (GBV).

'Following the fall of Qaddafi, instability continues to persist in Libya. Numerous analyses have been published on the ever-changing dynamics on the ground (a few from the Small Arms Survey include papers on armed groups in Tripoli; struggles at Libya’s borders; and how neighbouring countries have manoeuvred the ongoing crisis), but few exist on the role that women played, and continue to play...'

The 57th  session of the Commission on the Status of Women, from 4 to 15 March this year at the UN headquarters in New York, focuses on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls.

The Small Arms Survey, as part of its work on armed violence in support of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, in particular the far-reaching Global Burden of Armed Violence, makes an important contribution to ongoing debates on this issue, examining the widespread but often neglected problem of femicide.

On 1 June the Public Panel Discussion “Women and Armed Violence: Peace and Gender Equality” was hosted at the Maison de la Paix in Geneva. Part of the Terre des Femmes Switzerland annual speaker series, Voix des Femmes, the event was also organized by the Small Arms Survey and the Graduate Institute’s Programme on Gender and Global Change (PGGC).

The Small Arms Survey 2014: Women and Guns considers the multiple roles of women in the context of armed violence, security, and the small arms agenda. The volume’s thematic section comprises one chapter on violence against women and girls—with a focus on post-conflict Liberia and Nepal—and another on the recent convergence of the small arms agenda with that of women, peace, and security. Complementing these chapters are illustrated testimonies of women with experience as soldiers, rebels, and security personnel.

The year 2018 was characterized by a decrease in lethal violence in several of the world’s hotspots, primarily due to a significant de-escalation of the armed conflicts in Iraq, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Syria. The homicide rate also decreased marginally due to population growth outpacing the nominal increase in killings between 2017 and 2018. These two trends jointly resulted in a modest positive change in the rate of violent deaths globally in 2018 which, at 7.8 violent deaths per 100,000 population, is at its lowest since 2012.