‘A serious threat to peace, reconciliation, safety, security’: An effective reading of the United Nations Programme of Action
Evaluations of the 2001 Conference on the illicit trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons and the Programme of Action (PoA) which it produced cover the gamut from success to failure. This essay does not seek to explain the success or failure of the Conference, nor does it look forward to the 2006 Conference and beyond to see what possibilities there are for global public policy on SALW. It is concerned, rather, with the topography of the issue which will come to the table in 2006. By means of Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘effective history’, the essay investigates the problem that the PoA has produced. It shows how that problem is constituted around two key features: small arms and light weapons as a particular category of technology, and the division between the licit and illicit trade. It demonstrates both the contingency of this framing and the effects that it has produced. In particular, it shows how this framing makes possible a set of ‘proliferation control’ practices similar to those applied to other forms of military technology, and how it masks forms of gun violence, particularly those directed against women.
Programme of action to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects
4. States also acknowledged that the “porosity of borders” is an aggravating element of arms illicit trafficking that allows criminals and traffickers to have a free access to armament through them. This traffic may lead to the prolongation of conflicts, exacerbates violence, undermines the internal security of States and the development, increases the activities of transnational organized crime, corruption and has a close link with other criminal activities such as trafficking in drugs and precious minerals as well as terrorism.
Food security among asylum seekers in Melbourne
Objectives: This research explores food insecurity among asylum seekers who are members of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) in Melbourne, Australia.