Why Disarmament?

From the inception of the Global Action project, we have understood the extent to which war and armed conflict impact communities and even civilizations, destroying infrastructure, impeding access to development and public services, creating often lifelong trauma, serially violating human rights and wreaking havoc on local and global ecosystems.  

While a large focus of our work in this area was originally on nuclear disarmament, we increasingly shifted our energies to the proliferation of and  trafficking in small arms and light weapons. We not only concerned ourselves with weapons diverted from the licit trade to illicit uses, but we have called into question the logic of “licit” weapons grounded in  vast levels of production and distribution which have served to impede human development and make the conflicts we say we wish to prevent that much more likely. 

The links below will give the reader some examples of we have come to understand disarmament obligations and the steps we have taken with others to address the challenges of a world literally “awash” in weapons including the willingness of humans of all stripes to make more weapons and put those weapons to use.