ABSTRACT
Over the last few decades, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons has emerged as a threat to political and socio-economic security at a national, regional and global level. Even though “small and light” may tend to trivialise the lethality of such arms, in reality their destructive capability ranges from intimidation to actual killing of innocent people. The root causes of the arms trade have both military and non-military facets. On the military side, the transformation of the world order at the end of the Cold War unveiled arms stockpiles in Europe, North America and Asia and created a glut in the world arms market of used, but quite modern, weapons. Black marketeers often buy guns from the US domestic market and then sell them elsewhere. In South and Southwest Asia there are arms bazaars near conflict areas where arms of different models and price ranges are sold.
