Gun trade-in a success: report

The stockpile of weapons left over from decades of war in Cambodia was greatly reduced by a European-led project that exchanged arms for bespoke development projects, according to a new report authored by one of the project participants.

Robin Poultan, an academic whose research focuses on small arms, helped develop a project for the EU’s Assistance on Curbing Small Arms (EUASAC) that was implemented in Cambodia from 1999 to 2006. In a new account published by the Virginia Commonwealth University, Poultan describes how the project succeeded in having around 143,000 weapons destroyed by “flames of peace”.

“In Cambodia, we literally exchanged weapons for development projects chosen by the villagers,” Poultan wrote. “[But] collecting weapons is pointless unless there is a favourable political context that allows disarmament to bring peace. It was the politics behind our EU-ASAC programme that made [weapons for development] successful.”

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