Weapons on the Weak : The impact of Small Arms and Major Conventional Weapons Imports on the Intentional Targeting of Civilians in Intrastate Conflicts

Academics and practitioners often assume that arms and violence against civilians are positively correlated. Existing research on small arms and light weapons (SALW) and major conventional weapons (MCW) imports, however, find that arms are a weak explanatory factor for intrastate violence. When the focus is on arms imports’ impact on the level of one-sided violence (OSV) specifically, earlier studies’ findings suggest that the comparative organisational size of armed actors is an important conditioning variable that influences the direction and magnitude of the impact arms imports have on rebel and government perpetrated OSV. Using OLS regression models, this thesis finds that increasing SALW imports are linked to no increase in the level of rebel perpetrated OSV and a marginal decrease for the level of OSV perpetrated by large government forces. MCW imports have a negative correlation for large rebel groups and governments, but no impact for small rebel groups or government forces. In all specifications, the magnitude of the impact arms imports conditional on troop size have on rebel or government perpetrated OSV remains small. This suggests the need for policymakers to focus on humanitarian and economic interventions, rather than arms when pursuing protection of civilians