The Small Arms Survey’s mission is to provide authoritative, policy-relevant information and analysis to help inform policies and programmes. The Survey’s Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) project for Sudan and South Sudan benefits from a network of expert researchers and peer reviewers, and receives feedback from practitioners and others with valuable insights. In response to HSBA Issue Brief 24, Broken Promises, we received a particularly lengthy and thoughtful analysis that we believe would be useful to disseminate to a larger audience. In consultation with the author, Luuk van de Vondervoort, a former member of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan, we agreed to share his remarks with the wider HSBA community.
--HSBA Team, Small Arms Survey
By Luuk van de Vondervoort
The HSBA recently published a detailed assessment of the Darfur embargo regime, concluding that the UN’s arms embargo has largely failed to prevent most types of weapons entering Darfur. It also discussed the potential challenges of enacting and implementing a proposed embargo on South Sudan based on the Darfur example. But there are signs that the UN Security Council may be ready to take this step in South Sudan, and there are important dissimilarities between Darfur and South Sudan that could make an embargo in South Sudan more impactful, with positive implications for the protection of civilians and the stabilization of the security situation.