Under the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms (UNPoA), every Member State is required to file a national, bi-annual report. In these, governments are encouraged to list their priorities for international assistance in areas of support offered by the UNPoA.
African and other governments commonly ask for help in the following areas of weapon and ammunition management and small arms control:
- Record-keeping – 89%
- Tracing – 89%
- Destruction – 85%
- Transfer management – 74%
- Manufacturing management – 74%
- Stockpile management – 70%
- Brokering management – 67%
ArmsTracker provides the leading no-cost solution across these areas, individually customised to each state security agency. Our system delivers simple, yet powerful and tamper-resistant arms and ammunition management, all on low-cost computers and in local languages. Users can easily control record-keeping, tracing, stockpile management, transfer management, imports, exports and destruction programmes.
ArmsTracker has been evaluated and is now being installed by scores of state security agencies in African and other countries. As these stakeholders assist us to tailor and improve our system for their individual national and local arms control needs, ArmsTracker is seen as the flexible solution of choice by an increasing number of governments.
Another area in which assistance is often sought is seizure capacity (70%). Tools to identify, seize and dispose of illicit weapons, ammunition and explosives are key components in our Centre’s latest Aim system to be piloted in Ghana. We expect that over time Aim will help fill another arms control gap in many countries, particularly in Africa.
Photo credit: Sean Sutton / MAG