The Balance of the Balance

An exclusive article for the montlhy newsletter “En la mira – The Latin American Small Arms Watch.” Click here for subscriptions and for previous issues.

    The Balance of the Balance: Exports and imports of small arms, light weapons (SALW) its parts and ammunition, to Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean from 2000 to 2007.

Júlio Cesar Purcena e Natasha Leite*

All countries are supposed to declare their SALW transfers, and the information is available in several databases, however, the task of creating a realistic picture of SALW, parts and ammunition transfers is not the simplest one.[1]  Fortunately there are excellent global initiatives overcoming such challenges, among them the Small Arms Survey Yearbook internationally recognized as important source of information concerning SALW production and transfers. Another pioneer initiative is NISAT, the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers that has, since 1962 kept a database of all transfer records.

In spite of these very important initiatives, there is a lack of information on regional markets, especially in the case of the Latin American, Caribbean or African markets. In order to fill that gap, “En La Mira”  has, every year since 2007, devoted a whole issue in SALW, parts and ammunition transfers in those regions (Purcena e Dreyfus, 2007; Purcena e Dreyfus, 2008).

In this issue, we included a region that with respect to armed violence, has similar problems to Latin America and the Caribbean: Africa. Africa presents answers to many of the very basic questions about armed violence: What creates armed violence? Is it related to poverty, inequality?

Africa and Latin America have indeed very different and specific contexts, however we have identified in Africa a window of opportunity to prevent the levels of armed violence that we see in Latin America today. We hope that through this exercise and through our findings, alongside with the work of many others, specific policies of armed violence reduction can be implemented in an African setting.

According to the data analyzed in this report, data provided by NISAT that gathers information from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN-Comtrade or Comtrade), USD 19,5 billion were exported between 2000 and 2007, and USD 19,3 billion were imported. African, Latin American and Caribbean countries represented 6.3% of the exports and 5.5% of imports of the world. On the other hand, 62% of homicides caused by firearms were commited in those regions (Small Arms Survey, 2004). This discrepancy between the volume of transfers and the levels of armed violence is alarming because of its both tragic and very expressive number of homicides.[2]

Our goal here is not to level volume of transfers with homicide rate, but rather clarify the main legal channels of SALW and ammunition entrance and exit, and follow up on their developments. The result of this exercise is this report in which we inform, through a Customs perspective, the SALW, parts and ammunition, legal flux of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean over the last decade. Based on this data we can answer the following questions: Who exported/imported? From whom? What? And when

We also would like to point out that it is not up to this report to provide the answers with respect to the causes of SALW exports and imports by those countries. Besides informing, we hope that through this research, we can foment other researches and initiatives by fellow researchers, activists or government employees so countries can work better on transparency and provide better answers about who is using these weapons and how.

Click here to read the entire report.

* Researchers at the SALW Control Project of Viva Rio.

[1] In this report, we chose to use the Acronym SALW (Small Arms and Light Weapons) to refer to firearms, its parts, accessories and ammunition. For further detail about this definition, please check: Small Arms Survey. Small Arms Survey 2001: Profiling the Problem. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.8.

[2] When we refer to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean we consider the following countries and territories: South Africa, Angola, Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cote D’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Mauritius, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Kenya, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Somalia, Swaziland, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia e Zimbabwe are African countries; Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Granada, Guatemala, Guiana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela are Latin American countries. Autonomous region of Spain: Ceuta, Ilhas Canárias e Melila. Estado Livre Associado aos EUA: Porto Rico; dependências dos EUA; Ilhas Virgens Americanas; territórios ultramarinos da França: Guiana Francesa, Guadalupe, Maiote, Martinica e Reunião; territórios autônomos holandeses: Aruba e Antilhas Holandesas; e colônias britânicas: Anguilla, Ascensão, Bermuda, Ilhas Caimãs, Ilha Gough, Ilha de Tristão da Cunha, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Santa Helena, São Vicente e Grenadines e Turks e Caicos. There are 82 countries and 23 territories under foreign administration, totalling 105 different entities.