Needs Assessment on Small Arms and Light Weapons in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Needs Assessment on Small Arms and Light Weapons in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Denis Hadžović, Amel Kadić, Armin Kržalić, Dragana Lažetić, Arnel Šahurić
Contributor(s): Sanda Puljić-Cadman (Translator)
Subject(s): Politics, Military history, Political history, Security and defense, Military policy, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010)
Published by: Centar za Sigurnosne Studije
Keywords: BiH; military; weapons; policy; small arms; light weapons; need assessment;
Summary/Abstract: Following the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the issue of arms control, their export, and import, destruction of the surplus, and transparent control over this process, has become a highly sensitive issue. The global accumulation of illicit SALW during the past decade has contributed to tremendous human suffering. Without appropriate disarmament-involving the collection of residual small arms and the storage of state-owned weapons in protected areas-programmes for national rehabilitation cannot be sustained. The resulting crime and violence have disastrous effects on the ability of affected countries to implement their nati-onal development programmes. Vital infrastructure needed for development projects is damaged by illicit armsrelated insecurity, while foreign-funded development projects must be cancelled or postponed to prevent the assets from being diverted toward criminal activities. Countries must also allocate large portions of their already limited resources to security measures, thereby decreasing the funds available for development. All these consequences present fundamental obstacles to sustainable human development. Experience however has shown that these dynamics of insecurity can be broken through a set of approaches that simultaneously target weapons availability, the general knowledge about the seriousness and dangers of weapons use as well as state capacity to tackle the issue. Not only that these weapons are obvious threat to individual human lives, but also excessive quantities of weapons in the country do represent a significant source of insecurity. They are not only a direct threat to lives but they are increasingly used in criminal activities and their proliferation is a deterrent to the return of refugees to their homes. Moreover, these arms are a threat to the ongoing peace process.

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