Talk:United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms

POV issues

The second paragraph of this article states: 'The PoA was predicated upon a hypothesis that the illicit trade in small arms is a large and serious problem requiring global action through the UN. This hypothesis was ultimately disproven through progressive improvements in scholarship in the 2000s. The global size, scope, and impact of the entirely illicit international trade in small arms turned out to be much smaller and less of a concern to countries themselves than first hypothesized, with internal societal factors rising in relative importance.'

The evidence for this is... a single source. That's nowhere near good enough for such a strong claim; undoubtedly, there are many who would disagree with it. (The fact that the United Nations is continuing to discuss the issue is evidence of that.) This section should probably be rewritten to say 'some scholars argue...', and include alternative views. Robofish (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Importance of arms trafficking

I believe that Wikipedia's conflict of interest rules prevent me from editing the article, but I'll make a comment here.

Regarding the following paragraph from the article:

The arms trade treaty, like the PoA, is predicated upon a hypothesis that the illicit trade in small arms is a large and serious problem requiring global action through the UN. According to a well regarded 2012 Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution publication, "the relative importance of diversion or misuse of officially authorised transfers, compared to international entirely illegal black market trafficking has been thoroughly confirmed."[6] The authors go on to elaborate that "For most developing or fragile states, a combination of weak domestic regulation of authorised firearms possession with theft, loss or corrupt sale from official holdings tends to be a bigger source of weapons concern than illicit trafficking across borders."[7]

As one of the authors of the quoted text (and editors of the book: Owen Greene and Nicholas Marsh eds 2012 Small Arms, Crime and Conflict: Global Governance and the Threat of Armed Violence. London and New York: Routledge) we certainly did not state that the illicit trade in conventional arms is unimportant and by extension that either the ATT or PoA is unnecessary. To say that domestic sources are more important in some cases does not mean that internationally trafficked weapons are irrelevant. Moreover, the PoA addresses the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons "in all its aspects". That includes transfers which take place within a State (eg by corrupt sale from official holdings).

Owen Greene and I did write (page 164) that:

Moreover, SALW production and flows have major cross-border, regional and international dimensions; requiring regional and international governance mechanisms to enable information exchange, lesson-learning, coordination, risk management, aid, and cooperative controls.

We then go on to describe those international governance mechanisms and point out how they could be strengthened (pages 169-182). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicholas Marsh (talk • contribs) 12:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Notice on two old discussions: "POV issues" and "Importance of arms trafficking"

I merged this article into Small arms trade and made a section of it: United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade of Small Arms. The ONLY talk-page discussions here were "POV issues" and "Importance of arms trafficking." I have COPIED those to the Small arms trade talk page in case those discussions need to be revisited in light of the merge. Lightbreather (talk) 01:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, re: Wiki projects

This article was tagged as of interest to three Wiki projects. I have added those tags (two of three were already tagged there) to the other article Small arms trade now. Lightbreather (talk) 01:50, 13 February 2014 (UTC)