Arms Control

President Hugo Chavez has created the Presidential Commission for Arms and Ammunition Control and Disarmament Ammunition. It is the most heterogeneous gun-control group in Venezuela to date.

On a visit to Brazil, Salil Shetty, secretary-general of Amnesty International, defends the right to adequate housing and meets with displaced favela residents. The organization will be opening an office in Brazil, to be staffed and led by Brazilians.

The Estación Esperanza project in Estación Central, outside of Santiago, Chile, was born out of an attempt to turn children under 14 in the crime ridden area away from a life of delinquency. "We aim to work closely with children who have broken the law and/or have had their own rights violated; and monitor police proceedings. Our focus is on research and designing individualized plans for each beneficiary," says psychologist Felipe Andrés Fernández Soto, Estación Central's Public Safety Chief.

It has been nearly three weeks since a gunman opened fire on a crowd in Tucson, Arizona, killing six and wounding 19, including U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The shooting has prompted calls for more civil political discourse and raised questions about gun control in the United States. The accused shooter, Jared Loughner, used a legally purchased 33-shot
magazine on his Glock 19 pistol, which he fired at least 31 times before
he was tackled.

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.

Presented at the Joint Conference of the International Studies Association and Associação Brasileira de Relações Internacionais PUC/RJ, 23nd  July 2009, Rio de Janeiro

I am grateful to the organizer of this panel, particularly to Kai Michael Kenkel, for the honor of inviting me to make the eulogy of  Pablo Dreyfus.

International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA)'s Sarah Masters introduces the worldwide Disarming Domestic Violence campaign, a part of the Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence held in 85 countries to draw attention to the human toll of small arms proliferation and misuse. "The main goal is to ensure that anyone with a history of domestic abuse is denied access to a firearm, and has their license revoked."

In 2007, according to information from Comtrade, a UN commercial transactions database, Brazil exported around 84 million dollars in small weapons ammunition. This amount represents approximately 6,4 percent of the global small weapons ammunition exportations in this year, being last data available from Comtrade. Brazil, according to Small Arms Survey, is among the 6 main exporters of light weapons and ammunition. And to talk about ammunition production and small weapons export (MAP) in Brazil is equivalent to talking about the Brazilian Company of Cartridge (CBC - Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos ) the company maintaining a arms monopoly in this country.

Few countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have progressed more than Peru in the path of the effective implementation of United Nations Plan of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons (PoA). Peru is a model country when referring to its annual reports to UN Office for Disarmament Affairs on accomplishment with the PoA, due to the level of details as well as for the regularity in which it is presented.

The article “CASAC: A regional multidisciplinary approach ” was written by Eva Sacasa , Director of the Regional Executive Unit of the joint PNUD and SICA (Central American System of Integration) weapons control project. In her article, the author presents an evaluation of the first year of this program’s execution, centering on four points of performance: legislative; reinforcement of capacities; weapons collection and destruction; and, finally, awareness and prevention.