This proliferation of weapons flowing from the U.S. and other industrialized countries has condemned innocent non-combatants in the poorest countries to a scale of oppression, devastation and suffering probably unprecedented in history. With them, a small group can easily turn a peaceful country or region into a major zone of conflict and a humanitarian disaster.
Small arms rend the fabric of civil society like no other weapons in the world.
Many millions more have become permanently crippled. The numbers of wandering refugees forcibly displaced from their homes, and thus often condemned to a life of wandering and famine without a means of livelihood, have soared to 30 million, creating a massive refugee problem. Agricultural and economic activity in the poorest countries has suffered incalculable setbacks, making famine and disease the lot of survivors. With the end of the Cold War, which brought on the disposal of weapons no longer needed, the magnitude of the disaster has escalated. The UN estimates that in recent years small arms have been responsible for 90 percent of all war casualties.