Running Guns

This volume is about the guns that fuel the huge toll of deaths in the world’s most bloody conflicts today. Whether it is Africa, Sri Lanka or even Chechnya and Afghanistan, it is not heavy weaponry or hi-tech devices that kill the most people, but the flood of cheap, easy to get, small arms that has swept over so many countries in the 80s and 90s. Crime rates involving guns within countries have also soared, as South Africa and Kenya for example have experienced. Yet a lot of this cross-border arms trade is illegal. So much so that several governments, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, are now pressing for rapid negotiation of a new global treaty on illegal trafficking in small arms. This new book seeks to advance our understanding or illegal arms traffic. What precisely is involved? How is it conducted? Who are the players? What are the impacts? What needs to be done? The chapters that follow explore the key issues including the state of play of current international negotiations and agreements.

Author Biography

Lora Lumpe founded the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC in 1991 where she directed its research and advocacy programme until she became director of research at the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers at the Peace Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo, in 1998. In addition to publishing numerous book chapters, magazine articles and op-eds, she edited the quarterly newsletter, Arms Sales Monitor. She coauthored Arms Trade Revealed: A Guide for Investigators and Activists (1998) and is the editor of other recent books on disarmament topics.