IV. Interventions and institutions for security and peace

Chapter:

Introduction

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2013

Author(s):

Tilman Brück

The final area for review is to consider what is known about interventions to overcome conflict and to build (or keep) peace and what roles institutions can play in this. This edition of the SIPRI Yearbook offers a wealth of evidence on efforts to build and implement international agreements to curtail stocks, use or trade of weapons—major conventional arms, small arms and light weapons, and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.²⁷ While limited progress on the control of the production and use of certain types of arms have been made in recent years (especially concerning anti-personnel mines), aligning the interests of producing and using states for the tighter legally binding regulation of other convention weapons (such as mines other than anti-personnel mines or cluster munitions) has proved quite elusive, with probably significant though largely undocumented humanitarian costs.²⁸ Other challenges in humanitarian arms control, especially applicable to Africa, are that effective, functioning states are needed to implement international conventions when they are finally agreed, in part to control borders and prevent the circumvention of established rules by transnational armed groups.²⁹ Effective humanitarian arms control therefore needs effective states, not just more agreements on paper.