CIAO DATE: 10/05

Silencing Guns: Local Perspectives on Small Arms and Armed Violence in Rural Pacific Islands Communities

Abstract

At a time when the funding for weapons reduction and armed conflict prevention work is at an all-time high and still growing, the lack of accessible, standard evaluative tools is becoming more and more conspicuous. Though this partly stems from a debate within the disarmament community as to what the right set of measures should be, it is also a reaction to the practical difficulty—in some cases, outright impossibility—of collecting quantitative data on armed violence, especially in rural areas. Clearly, there is a great need for alternative means of assessing and reporting on the impacts of both small arms availability and misuse, and efforts to reduce those impacts.

The Pacific is a particularly extreme example of this situation. With more money per capita invested in armed violence reduction in the region than across all of Africa, there is a surprising absence of programme evaluation, despite persistent signs of ineffectiveness. Even more worrisome is that further long-term projects are being planned without the benefit of a firm evidence base.

Full text (PDF, 72 pages, 791.6 KB)