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South Africa focus: recording lost police guns

The South African Police Service (SAPS) have reported that 3,856 firearms were lost, stolen or misplaced between May 2006 and 2007. This is a 68% increase in lost or stolen weapons since 2005/6 and a five-fold increase since police began reporting missing firearms in 2002.

20 dead in ammunition explosion, Albania

Explosions at a military ammunition depot killed at least 20 people on 15 March 2008. Over 350 people were injured, including 40 seriously. The accident occurred during a program to destroy ammunition at the depot in Gerdec, which is near Vore village. Doctors expect the final number of deaths to be higher. Click here to read a UN situation report.

Viktor Bout (top) was arrested in Thailand on 6 March but Guus van Kouwenhoven (bottom) was released by the Dutch Court of Appeal on 10 March.

As one sanctions buster is arrested another walks free

Just a few days after one international gunrunner was arrested, another has been set free. Russian Viktor Bout, known as the ‘Merchant of Death’, was detained in Thailand on 6 March for conspiring to supply arms to Colombian FARC rebels. Four days later a court in the Netherlands overturned the 2006 conviction of Guus van Kouwenhoven, a Dutch citizen who had been sentenced to 8 years in prison for violating the UN arms embargo on Liberia.

Members of the Women's Network address delegates at the CSW

IANSA at the UN: Keep women safe from guns

As millions of women around the world celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March, IANSA calls for the end of gender-based violence at gunpoint.

IANSA Women’s Network members marked IWD with a series of events at the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN.  The Office for Disarmament Affairs held a joint event with IANSA on the impact of guns on women’s lives.