MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union

MISSING PIECES
tive structures, existing governmental and non-governmental initiatives
on security and related issues, among other areas.
Another example of holistic research for devising initiatives to reduce
gun violence is El Salvador’s ‘Firearms and Violence Study’, undertaken
jointly in 2001 by a number of research centres, the National Bureau of
Statistics and the civilian police. 1 Compelling findings helped shape legislative
and institutional reforms, as well as several outreach and communication
activities to targeted populations (especially young men, gun
owners and manufacturers).
WHAT INFORMATION NEEDS TO BE COLLECTED?
To appropriately design small arms control and violence reduction initiatives,
a range of quantitative and qualitative information should be collected,
such as:
• Types of violence (e.g. political, criminal, sexual violence, organised
crime, intimate partner violence, violence in schools, family violence,
youth gangs) and the prevalence of weapons use
• Social, economic and psychological costs of violence (e.g. to individuals,
families, health systems, policing, public safety, transport, tourism, education,
economic production)
• Levels and type of weapons/ammunition in circulation
• Categories of weapons owners, holders and users
• New sources of guns and supply routes (e.g. legal trade, cross-border
smuggling, poorly secured armouries, illicit production, theft of licensed
weapons), including recycling of weapons and ammunition from one
conflict zone to another
• An assessment of the needs of survivors of armed violence—civilians
and combatants—and existing services and strategies
• An assessment of attitudes and perceptions of guns and insecurity,
including motivations and means to acquire/possess guns (e.g. disaggregated
by age, gender, ethnic identity)
• Vectors of peace (e.g. existing or previous values, civil society groups,
models of leadership, music and arts, sports, etc.)
• Existing and planned laws, policies and processes (e.g. changing national
gun laws; violence prevention processes; poverty reduction strategies;
judicial and rule of law institutional reform)
Based on this information, a set of priorities can be developed in the
NAP. The discrete activities contemplated by an NAP should be as detailed
as possible in terms of what the objectives of each activity are; who is responsible
for implementing and overseeing each activity; where the activity
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