The Chronicle interview.

• Position: IBRAHIMA E. SALL, Director of the Programme of Assistance and Coordination for Security and Development (PCASED - UNDP - Interview

IBRAHIMA E. SALL is the Director of the Programme of Assistance and Coordination for Security and Development (PCASED), a UN Development Programme (UNDP) Africa regional programme designed to combat the proliferation of small arms and to be the implementing instrument of the Moratorium on importation, exportation and manufacture of small arms, signed by the 15 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Mr. Sail, a graduate of HEC Business School (France), the Wharton School of Finance of the University of Pennsylvania (United States) and the University Paris La Sorbonne, was formerly Minister of Planning Economic Development and International Cooperation of Senegal and a staff member of the International Finance Corporation. He has also worked as a consultant for international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

On the proliferation of small arms and light arms

Since the end of the Second World War, tens of millions of people have been killed by conventional weapons, mostly small arms and light weapons, such as rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Easy to buy, easy to transport and easy to use, these military-style weapons are the weapons of choice in low-intensity conflicts and have become the tools of the trade of drug smugglers, terrorists, rebels and criminals, corroding the fabric of civil society.

There are more than half a million small arms and light weapons currently in circulation. More than 50 per cent of the weapons that proliferate in Africa--an estimated 8 million in West Africa alone--have been used to fuel bloody conflicts in that subregion, as well as in the Mano River Basin, Guinea Bissau and the Cassamance region, and more recently in Cote d'lvoire. Recurring cycles of violence, erosion of political legitimacy and loss of economic viability--all of these deprive affected Governments of their authority and ability to cope with the accumulation, proliferation and use of small arms. The resulting "weaponization' of society fuels further cycles of violence, despair and, ultimately, State collapse.

The first step in breaking this vicious cycle is to recognize and understand a problem that until recently received little attention from diplomats and disarmament experts. One important development is the first United Nations International Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons In All Its Aspects, held in July 2001...