United Nations Biennial Meeting
of States on Small Arms and
the Programme of Action:
7-11 July 2003

The UN Biennial Meeting of States (BMS) on Small Arms is the first major follow-up to the 2001 UN Small Arms Conference. It will take place in New York from the 7-11 July 2003.

The BMS will consider national, regional and global implementation of the Programme of Action (PoA) agreed at the 2001 UN Conference. The BMS presents an invaluable opportunity to promote IANSA’s analysis of what governments have been doing (or not doing) to solve the small arms problem.

The PoA commits governments to:

•	Make illicit gun production/possession a criminal offence
•	Establish a national coordination agency on small arms
•	Identify and destroy stocks of surplus weapons
•	Keep track of officially-held guns
•	Issue end-user certificates for exports/transit
•	Notify original supplier nation of re-export
•	Disarmament, Demobilisation & Re-integration (DDR) of ex-combatants, including collection and destruction of their weapons
•	Support regional agreements and encourage moratoria
•	Mark guns at point of manufacture for identification and tracing
•	Maintain records of gun manufacture
•	Engage in more information exchange
•	Ensure better enforcement of arms embargoes
•	Include civil society organisations in efforts to prevent small arms proliferation

The PoA sets the first global norms of good behaviour to reduce small arms proliferation. By agreeing to this document, all countries have formally committed themselves to take action. However, the PoA provides no international mechanism for monitoring compliance, and the UN’s role has been limited to compiling information submitted by states on a voluntary basis. For that reason, much of the responsibility for reporting on states’ actions or inaction has been taken up by civil society.

The purpose of the BMS in July 2003 is for governments to report their progress and lessons learned in the first two years of implementing the PoA. IANSA and its member groups will make their own independent report on governments’ activities, as well as showcasing the important contributions that NGOs themselves are making to stop gun violence.

The International Week of Action Against Small Arms will be held 1-7 June 2003, one month before the BMS. NGOs in many countries are using this opportunity to draw attention to the promises governments have made, and to raise public awareness of the damage caused by small arms proliferation. With member groups in 100 countries, IANSA will keep NGOs and the media informed about the Week of Action, the BMS and the global movement against gun violence.

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