Armed actors

Armed groups ¹ have long been a favoured subject of research for think tanks, academics, and students of security studies, counterterrorism, international humanitarian law, and political science. ² Most of this analysis is relevant to the small arms process mainly in that it increases general understanding of the motivations and structures of armed groups, weighs the significance of their role in armed conflict, and discusses the relevance of international law in addressing the challenges they pose. But these efforts usually do not tackle the more fine-grained nexus between small arms and armed groups in great detail. ³ As a result, researchers working more directly within the framework of international small arms control processes have progressively developed their own research agenda on armed groups, extending it to encompass more diverse types of users of small arms, both state and non-state, and referred to here as armed actors. ⁴