‘A serious threat to peace, reconciliation, safety, security’: An effective reading of the United Nations Programme of Action

Abstract

Evaluations of the 2001 Conference on the illicit trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons and the Programme of Action (PoA) which it produced cover the gamut from success to failure. This essay does not seek to explain the success or failure of the Conference, nor does it look forward to the 2006 Conference and beyond to see what possibilities there are for global public policy on SALW. It is concerned, rather, with the topography of the issue which will come to the table in 2006. By means of Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘effective history’, the essay investigates the problem that the PoA has produced. It shows how that problem is constituted around two key features: small arms and light weapons as a particular category of technology, and the division between the licit and illicit trade. It demonstrates both the contingency of this framing and the effects that it has produced. In particular, it shows how this framing makes possible a set of ‘proliferation control’ practices similar to those applied to other forms of military technology, and how it masks forms of gun violence, particularly those directed against women.

Notes

1. Camilo Reyes Rodriguez, ‘The UN Conference on Small Arms: Progress in Disarmament Through Practical Steps’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol.9, No.1 (2002), p.173.

2. Aaron Karp, ‘Laudable Failure’, SAIS Review, Vol.22, No.1 (2002), p.178. Emphasis added.

3. See also, for example, Loretta Bondi, ‘Disillusioned NGOs Blame the United States for a Weak Agreement’, SAIS Review, Vol.22, No.1 (2002), p.229. While clearly disappointed with the outcome, Bondi also notes the importance of the Conference in raising the profile of the SALW issue.

4. Jayantha Dhanapala, ‘Multilateral Cooperation on Small Arms and Light Weapons: From Crisis to Collective Response’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol.9, No.1 (2002), p.163. The Small Arms Survey has found that these figures, particularly the 300,000 figure, are unreliable. Nevertheless, the best estimates the Survey has been able to produce, together with an extended examination of why any estimates are difficult, is that the half-million figure is likely to be rather lower than the actual number. See ‘Behind the Numbers: Small Arms and Conflict Deaths’, Small Arms Survey 2005: Weapons at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.229–265.

5. Karp, ‘Laudable Failure’, p.177. For a text of the statement, see: Statement by John R. Bolton, United States Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, to the Plenary Session of the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects, July 9, 2001 <http://www.un.int/usa/01_104.htm>.

6. The five red lines were that the final document could not include: measures that would constrain legal trade and legal manufacturing of small arms and light weapons; the promotion of international advocacy activity; measures that prohibit civilian possession of small arms; measures limiting trade in SALW solely to governments; and, a mandatory Review Conference. (For the complete text of these five, see Statement by John R. Bolton.) As it turned out, the US did give way, but only on the procedural red line of the review conference.

7. See, for instance, Owen Greene, ‘The 2001 UN Conference: A Useful Step Forward?’, SAIS Review, Vol.22, No.1 (2002), pp.195–201; or Edward Laurance, ‘Shaping Global Public Policy on Small Arms: After the UN Conference’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol.9, No.1 (2002), pp.193–201.

8. United Nations, ‘Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects’, UN Document A/CONF.192/15.§I.2.

9. Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, reprinted in James Faubion (ed.), Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, Vol.2 of Paul Rabinow (ed.), Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984 (New York: The New Press, 1998), p.380.

10. Mitchell Dean, Critical and Effective Histories: Foucault's Methods and Historical Sociology (London: Routledge, 1994), see particularly pp.1–22.

11. Foucault, ‘Nietzsche’, p.380.

12. Reyes Rodriguez, ‘The UN Conference’, p.173. Emphases added.

13. The possibility of finding that problem in the United States, with its widespread private gun ownership and its astonishing levels of gun violence, is presumably part of what led the US delegation to insist on its five red lines, particularly the second, which insisted that the final document imply no restrictions on the civilian ownership of firearms

14. See, for example, Biting the Bullet, Implementing the Programme of Action 2003: Action by States and Civil Society (London: IANSA, 2003); Elli Kytömäki and Valerie Yankey-Wayne, Implementing the United Nations Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons: Analysis of the Reports Submitted by States in 2003 (Geneva: UNIDIR, 2004); Edward Laurance and Rachel Stohl, ‘Making Global Public Policy: The Case of Small Arms and Light Weapons’, Small Arms Survey Occasional Paper No.7 (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2002).

15. In its own words, ‘The “Geneva Process” on small arms is an initiative of the Geneva Forum that involves governments, international organizations and NGOs in regular informal consultations to promote and monitor implementation of the 2001 United Nations' “Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects”’ <http://www.genevaforum.org>.

16. UN, ‘Programme of Action’, §I.1. Preambles are often undervalued in reading international documents. The substantive clauses of agreements are, of course, the ones that commit the signatories, to the levels they are committed (in international agreements, this is generally either ‘legally binding’ for treaties, ‘politically binding’ for agreements that are not treaties but aim to direct, or simple statements of intent). For the purposes of the kind of reading provided here, however, Preambles are in some ways more important, because these tend to set out the shared understandings of the nature of the problem that inform the substantive clauses. Clearly, the degree to which the substantive clauses match with the preambular clauses is important in understanding the shape of a problem, but the Preamble provides the clearest and most authoritative statement of a collective construction of a problem.

17. Chemical and biological weapons have been treated together for the purposes of export control by the Australia Group. In the past few years a general effort at controlling WMD as a whole has been launched under the label of the Proliferation Security Initiative. Nevertheless, in almost all cases, arms control, disarmament and other regulation on WMD technology have focused on one of these categories of weapon at a time.

18. United Nations Department of Disarmament Affairs, ‘The UN Register of Conventional Arms’ <http://disarmament.un.org:8080/cab/register.html>.

19. In this the PoA was following the earlier UN Panel of Governmental Experts, which produced a ‘definition’ of small arms that was little more than a list of those weapons to be considered SALW. See UNGA, ‘Report of the Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms’, A/52/298, 27 August 1997, §26, pp.11–12.

20. This count excludes the use of ‘illicit’ in references to the name of the conference or other instruments.

21. For a useful discussion of this sort of ‘predicate analysis’, see Jennifer Milliken, ‘The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol.5, No.2 (1999), pp.231–236.

22. The count of the nouns which the adjective illicit is used to modify does not equal the number of times the adjective appears, as there are several instances in which it is used to modify a series of nouns. For example, in the preambular paragraph I have already cited, ‘the illicit manufacture, transfer and circulation of small arms and light weapons’, illicit modifies ‘manufacture’, ‘transfer’, circulation' and ‘small arms and light weapons’.

23. These ten terms are in the order in which they are first used in the PoA. None of them is used often in the text: manufacture (4 times), transfer (2), circulation (2), brokering (4), export (1), import (1), transit (1), retransfer (1), trafficking (2), and control (1).

24. The one significant exception is craft produced weapons. While there is growing attention being paid to craft production as it becomes clear that the technological sophistication of craft producers can be very high indeed, there is also a recognition that craft production plays a very small part in the overall production and trade of SALW. Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2003: Development Denied (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.26–36.

25. Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2004: Rights at Risk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp.142–147.

26. The Covenant of the League of Nations (Including Amendments Adopted to December, 1924), Article 8 <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/leagcov.htm>.

27. The term ‘merchants of death’ is the title of a book on private arms manufacturers from the inter-war period. H.C. Englebrecht and F.C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death (New York: Dodd-Mead, 1934).

28. See David Mutimer, The Weapons State: Proliferation and the Framing of Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

29. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons <http://disarmament2.un.org/wmd/npt/npttext.html>, Art. II. The NPT was first signed in 1968, entered into force in 1970, and was then extended indefinitely in 1995. It serves as the cornerstone not only of the broader nuclear nonproliferation regime, but of the similar regimes controlling the range of weapons of mass destruction and major conventional weapons as well.

30. The International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA Safeguards: Stemming the Spread of Nuclear Weapons IAEA Factsheet <http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Factsheets/English/S1_Safeguards.pdf>. For the detailed description of the safeguards system, see IAEA, The Structure and Content of Agreements Between the Agency and States Required in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons INFCIRC 153 (Corrected) <http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/inf153.shtml>.

31. The language of ‘excessive accumulations’, in fact, derives from the earlier articulation of major conventional weapons to the proliferation agenda in the early 1990s. Prior to the war with Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait (1990–91), proliferation was a concern almost exclusively of nuclear weapons, and to a lesser degree other WMD. Following this war, the formulation that became common was: the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, their means of delivery, and excessive and destabilizing accumulations of conventional arms. See, for example, the statement of the UN Security Council at the first Summit Meeting of the Council at the level of Heads of State and Government: S/23500, 31 January 1992.

32. For discussions of the social and military revolutionary nature of gunpowder and the small gun, see Keith Krause, Arms and the State: Patterns of Military Production and Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Martin van Creeveld, Technology and War: From 2000 BC to the Present, revised edition (New York: The Free Press, 1991), pp.80–149.

33. The rarity and difficulty of production are relative both to firearms and to the basic technologies of other so-called weapons of mass destruction. A committed state, or even large corporation, would have little difficulty with enrichment technology, which has now been around since the 1940s. Plutonium is a by-product of uranium in reactors, which must then be separated from the highly radioactive waste.

34. Notice, for one example among many, that in the quotation at the outset of this article, Aaron Karp calls the UN Conference a failure ‘for those who believe that small arms proliferation is a serious challenge for international peace and security’.

35. For a general discussion of the gendered nature of SALW agreements beyond the PoA, see Vanessa Farr, ‘A Gendered Analysis of International Agreements on Small Arms and Light Weapons’, in Vanessa Farr and Kiflemariam Gebre-Wold (eds) Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons: Regional and International Concerns, BICC Brief 24 (Bonn: BICC, 2002), pp.14–24.

36. See, for example, R. Gartner, ‘Cross-cultural Aspects of Interpersonal Violence: A Review of the International Empirical Evidence’, presented to Crime and Violence: Causes and Policy Responses, an international conference sponsored by the World Bank, Bogota, Colombia, May 2000.

37. Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Missing Pieces: Directions for Reducing Gun Violence through the UN Process on Small Arms Control (Geneva: CHD, 2005), pp.67–68.

38. Wendy Cukier with Alison Kooistra and Mark Anto, ‘Gendered Perspectives on Small Arms Proliferation and Misuse: Effects and Policies’, in Farr and Gebre-Wold, Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons, p.25.

39. United Nations, International Study of Firearms Regulations (New York: United Nations, 1988). For a recent study that includes a review of much of the research on gender and small arms violence, see Control Arms, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives (jointly published by Amnesty International, Oxfam International, and IANSA, 2005), particularly pp.10–19.

40. David Hemenway, Tomoko Shinoda-tagawa and Matthew Miller, ‘Firearm Availability and Female Homicide Victimization Rates Among 25 Populous High-Income Countries’, JAMWA, Vol.57, No.2 (2002), pp.100–104; and Jacquelyn C. Campbell et al., ‘Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multisite Case Control Study’, American Journal of Public Health, Vol.93 (2003), pp.1089–1097.

41. D.J. Wiebe, ‘Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated with Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study’, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Vol.41 (2003), pp.771–782.

42. Wendy Cukier, Address to Women Under Fire, side meeting at the Second Biannual Meeting of States to Consider Implementation of the Programme of Action, 13 July 2005.

43. Hemenway et al., ‘Firearm Availability’, Table 1 and Figs. 1 and 2, 102. These four figures show female homicide rates plotted against a proxy for gun availability. The United States shows both the highest rate of gun availability and the highest female homicide rate by a very wide margin; Switzerland has the second highest rate of gun availability of the 25 states studied, and the third highest female homicide rate.

44. I do not want to suggest that women are only victims of small arms violence. They are also perpetrators and, indeed, tend to be perpetrators in a gendered fashion. See Control Arms, Impact of Guns.