The proliferation and misuse of small arms has also made the delivery of this assistance all the more difficult. Civilians and aid workers are now regarded as legitimate targets for extortion, threat, theft, rape, and brutality by armed actors. Red Cross, United Nations, and other aid agency workers are increasingly threatened and murdered in the course of their work, principally with guns and grenades. Even when a conflict has ended, refugees and IDPs are often afraid to leave camps and return home because of the substantial amounts of weapons that remain. Small arms also militarize refugee and IDP camps, causing refugees and IDPs to become vulnerable to threats and intimidation, including rape, injury, forced prostitution, slavery, as well as forced recruitment into armed service.
Small arms limit the access of aid workers to affected populations.
Although International Humanitarian Law requires that aid agencies have access to populations that need humanitarian assistance, approximately 50 percent of populations in conflict regions live in areas that are not accessible to relief campaigns due to armed security threats. Small arms-fueled conflict and violence often cause aid operations to be delayed, suspended, or canceled. Relief supplies are also often stolen by armed combatants to help finance the conflict or to gain valuable resources. The dangers of small arms to aid workers and the difficulty of providing humanitarian assistance diverts resources away from relief supplies into budgets for security services. In some countries it has become too expensive, both in the cost of human lives and cash, for outsiders to provide much needed aid, and populations are forced to endure the horrors of war alone.