Small Arms and Light Weapons: Challenges in Sri Lanka and Options for the Future

This paper contains the results of a civil society consultation process in 23 districts of Sri Lanka between November 2004 and March 2005. The civil society consultation was designed to assess public perceptions of illicit small arms and to understand the different ways in which small arms impact public and community perceptions of security in Sri Lanka. The authors examine the perceptions of communities regarding the proliferation of small arms and community security, focusing on issues of human security that are raised by citizens themselves such as electoral violence and armed crime. They also explore the human cost of the rise in small arms with a number of personal testimonies and include a case study of a pioneer police-community initiative in Colombo. The paper concludes by outlining a series of recommendations that emerged from the civil society consultation.

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