Setting national and regional targets in implementing the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons (November 2023)

The proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons (SALW) are evident in various ways at the global, regional, national, and local levels. In response, States and international organisations have launched several initiatives to tackle this issue. Principal among those initiatives is the United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA), originally adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2001. The PoA was supplemented by the International Tracing Instrument (ITI) in 2005, making the PoA-ITI the global framework for addressing the illicit trade in SALW “in all its aspects” which has gained increasing attention throughout its implementation process.

Following an agreement reached by States at the 2018 PoA Review Conference (RevCon3), the idea of encouraging States to set voluntary national and regional targets to implement the PoA-ITI that are measurable and that can be monitored, was elaborated by States at the 7th Biennial Meeting of States (BMS7) in July 2021. This set of commitments followed a recommendation put forth in the 2019 Report of the Secretary-General (A/74/187) to address one of the shortcomings of the PoA-ITI – its lack of measurability of progress – and the BMS7 outcome document included the following addressed to all Member States for their consideration:

• Set voluntary targets at national and regional levels in line with the provisions of the PoA, strengthening national ownership, and taking into account varying local contexts to measure progress effectively (paragraph 50).
• Develop national plans, capacity building programs, and policies covering all weapon lifecycle stages, defining priorities, stakeholder involvement and resource allocation for PoA-ITI (paragraph 51).
• Collect gender-disaggregated data on SALW impacts (paragraph 52).

The process of target setting to effectively implement the PoA-ITI should not be seen only as a technical task but rather one that first requires strategic analysis and decision-making designed to address the threats identified from SALW proliferation and misuse in each context.

Overall, measurable national and regional targets should be reflected in the national action plans (NAP) of all States and aligned with strategies to address the illicit trade in SALW and its consequences in each context. NAPs and national targets are tightly linked, where the NAP can serve as a vehicle to set national voluntary targets.