Updated Best Practice Guide: Minimum Standards for National Procedures for the Deactivation of Small Arms and Light Weapons
The Best Practice Guide on Deactivation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) suggests minimum standards, approaches and procedures to ensure the permanent deactivation of SALW, and provides recommendations on how to incorporate these into national norms and legislation. The Guide details concrete measures for the participating States to take in marking and record-keeping of weapons and also puts forward technical specifications for the deactivation of SALW. It also contributes to the OSCE efforts in preventing diversion of SALW in the OSCE area and beyond. First adopted in 2018, the Guide has been reviewed and updated to ensure that it remains relevant and applicable. In recognition of the importance of ensuring irreversible SALW deactivation, the OSCE minimum standards have been strengthened by a number of technical updates for rendering SALW and their essential parts permanently inoperable.
The Guide on Deactivation of SALW complements the set of OSCE`s Best Practice Guides on SALW covering all stages of a weapon's life cycle, advising states on responsible conduct in this area, starting with manufacturing, the proper marking of small arms, accurate and sustained record keeping, export control criteria and transparency about transfers, and finishing with deactivation, destruction and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes.
The views, opinions, conclusions and other information expressed in this document are not given nor necessarily endorsed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) unless the OSCE is explicitly defined as the Author of this document.