SALW (Small Arms and Light Weapons)

Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) is the umbrella term used in arms-control diplomacy for portable lethal weapons designed for use by one person (small arms) or by a small crew (light weapons). The standard working definition originates in the 1997 UN Panel of Governmental Experts report on Small Arms (A/52/298), which distinguishes:

• Small arms: revolvers and self-loading pistols, rifles and carbines, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, and light machine guns.
• Light weapons: heavy machine guns, hand-held and mounted grenade launchers, portable anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, recoilless rifles, portable launchers of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missile systems, and mortars of calibres less than 100 mm.
• Ammunition and explosives associated with the above are typically treated as a third, linked category.

SALW are politically salient because they are the principal tools of injury and death in most civil wars, insurgencies, organised crime, and intercommunal violence, and because they are durable, easily concealed, and widely diffused through both licit trade and illicit trafficking.

The main multilateral framework is the UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (UNPoA), adopted in July 2001, supplemented by the International Tracing Instrument (ITI) adopted by the General Assembly in 2005. The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which entered into force on 24 December 2014, also covers small arms and light weapons in its scope (Article 2). Regional instruments include the ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons (2006), the Nairobi Protocol (2004) in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa, and the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms (CIFTA) (1997).

SALW control measures typically combine marking and tracing, stockpile management, brokering controls, export licensing, and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes in post-conflict settings.