The choice to pursue sustainable peace requires moving towards preventive responses that also tackle the underlying drivers for the demand for weapons and for engagement in armed violence. Integrating small arms control within multisectoral and preventive public health approaches, armed violence reduction strategies, and community engagement initiatives can offer more sustainable pathways to peace. 

Since the early 2000s, counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) doctrine has been organized around three complementary functions: ‘Defeat the device, prepare the force, and attack the network’. These remain central to C-IED measures today. However, experience over the past two decades has highlighted the importance of looking beyond individual devices and attacks to understand the wider conditions in which IED threats emerge, persist, and evolve.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) continue to represent a persistent and increasingly complex global threat, with profound humanitarian, security, and socio-economic consequences. In 2023 alone, IED incidents resulted in 3,237 casualties across 25 countries, with civilians accounting for more than two-thirds of those affected.

'For years, the response to IEDs was predominantly a military one, focusing on efforts to 'defeat the device', 'attack the networks', and 'prepare the force'. While these steps are important, they are not sufficient. Without tackling the deeper causes of the issue - such as weak governance, marginalization, and lack of trust in state institutions - the devastating ramifications of IEDs will persist.'

On 10 December 2025, the Small Arms Survey and the Center for Security Studies 'CENSS' held an event for the launch of a new report titled 'Weapons Compass: Proliferation and Control of Arms and Ammunition in Wartime Ukraine'

The Caribbean region continues to suffer from high levels of firearm-related violence, with worrying developments that include the recruitment of children and adolescents into armed gangs, shootings in hospitals, and a surge in gang violence. Most of the weapons seized from perpetrators of these and other crimes are handguns, but recent data reveals a rise in trafficking of AR- and AK-pattern rifles and large-capacity magazines to some Caribbean countries.

« À ce jour, les données sur les victimes des UEMS sont rarement ventilées par sexe et il n’existe que peu d’analyses des impacts sexospécifiques des UEMS sur les populations civiles à court, moyen et long terme. Cet article est une première étape pour combler cette lacune. Il s’appuie sur des entretiens menés par une équipe d’enquêteur·rices nationaux·ales dans un quartier touché par une UEMS en Afrique.

In the Caribbean, gun violence has reached crisis levels and regional heads of government have called for a public health approach to inform prevention and control. Feedback loops resulting from work carried out under the ‘Pathway to Policy’ project showed that firearm-related crimes increased the chances of household poverty, national economic costs, deaths and disability and promoted a culture of violence, all of which reinforced gun violence.

Lebanon and Tunisia share a common struggle against extremism, but the social, political, religious, and ideological make-up of each country is quite different. The Small Arms Survey conducted a general population survey in the two countries between September and November 2023, in which 3,339 adults were interviewed about their views on key elements of their lives, violent extremism, and firearms.

This paper investigates how the war in Sudan is transforming Khartoum through acts of urbicide—the deliberate destruction of urban environments. It draws on satellite imagery, eyewitness testimony, and analysis of conflict dynamics to show how the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces have reshaped the capital’s geography.