Small Arms and Security: New Emerging International Norms

This book focuses on a significant topic on the international agenda: the control of the unrestricted availability and proliferation of small arms and light weapons, the main tools of violence in today's conflicts and in crime throughout the world. It examines whether new international norms are emerging to regulate the illicit and unrestricted proliferation of small arms. In conflict zones or in violent urban or rural contexts, hundreds of thousands of people die every year, victims of gun violence. Small arms and light weapons are the real weapons of mass destruction, hindering development and increasing cultures of violence and impunity throughout the world. Therefore, the creation of international norms regulating the wide availability of small arms and light weapons is crucial to halting the bloodshed, reducing violence and providing the means for more sustainable post-conflict reconstruction.