In terms of illegal weapons, we know that it’s quite a serious threat to the safety and security of citizens in any society, said the President of CIVIL, Xhabir Deralla, in the introductory part of the panel “Illegal weapons and organized crime: Everything is connected“, which was held on February 16, organized by CIVIL.
It’s also known that illegal arms trade itself is connected to organized criminal groups which, in order to secure their product or service, must have some kind of weapons beside them, have armed people in the structure who will provide the transit, the production, the delivery of services or products of that criminal call, that is, in that criminal structure in which they are in.
Namely, we are neither the first and certainly I hope neither the last who will conclude that uncontrolled small arms and light weapons is a major destabilizing factor that enables terrorism and organized crime, as the Parliamentary Forum on Small Arms and Light Weapons would say in a report, which is a big international organization that includes many parliamentary representatives and former and current members of parliament of many countries worldwide.
In this work of ours, we have had a very in-depth view of things, we tried to see what arms control looked like in the past, what it looks like now, what the perspectives are and certainly organized crime was also in our focus. With that goal, my colleagues in CIVIL and I finalized a research project last year that addressed these aspects, with the support of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Resilience Fund, which helped us implement that”, pointed out Deralla.
Deralla also reflected on the origin of the weapons with which most terrorist acts are carried out in Europe.
“We can right now share a piece of information, and that is that most of the terrorist acts carried out in Europe in the past 10 years and even more, have been carried out precisely with weapons originating from the Balkan countries, from the former Yugoslav republics and from Albania. It concerns huge quantities of weapons that criminal and terrorist groups operating in the European Union actually use, a big part of those weapons are still functional and date back from the Yugoslav People’s Army.
What comes also from the Army of Albania, when that system in 1997 disintegrated, are many pieces of weapons that were stolen from the depots of the police and army”.
As to the gender balance in regards to the possession of small arms, Deralla pointed out that more than 95 percent of it is in the hands of men.
“It must be said that in the region, at least according to the data of the Southeast European Small Arms Control with headquarters in Belgrade, which is part of the UNDP program, it’s said that more than 95 percent of those weapons are in the hands of men. We as an organization consider weapons even when they are inactive, when there is only some knowledge that a certain group or certain persons have weapons that potentially could be used to force someone to do something, which in itself is a potential for violence, which in itself can be understood as a threat and applies even more so to the home, when a women knows that there is a weapon at home that might even be illegal, and this immediately sets totally different relations in the family, where woman most often suffer, and certainly other members of the family or of that community”.
“What I would say is very disturbing in the whole story is that the countries themselves cannot do anything, because it is a very well-organized underground business that penetrates into all levels of society, in the system in the country and so on, and serious action is needed and continuous connection and updating of data, which we also heard from the Minister of Interior at the very beginning of our meeting today, but participation of civil society organizations is absolutely important, the NGO sector is called upon to be here for the strengthening public awareness, for monitoring analyses, certainly, to help in creating legal regulations that can stop this black business.
CIVIL has long years of experience, I would say 21 years of experience on this topic, and is a veteran organization internationally, according to what has been done in the past 21 years in this respect. The organization has existed for 22 years, has over 20 major projects implemented, and of course we have participated in numerous international campaigns for fight against illegal arms, against the cult of weapons and many other international legal processes, such as the “International Arms Trade Treaty” that CIVIL brought in our country in 2012 in a cumbersome long-lasting campaign that we implemented. Otherwise, at the end of the year, in CIVIL’s financial report it was stated that this campaign that brought the “International Arms Trade Treaty” in the country, helped in the ratification in the parliament, cost a fantastic 250 denars, equivalent to around four euros was our campaign to have the “International Arms Trade Treaty” adopted in our country, to have it included in our system, and of course, in our efforts we were among the three most successful countries in the world in regards to this process”, outlined Deralla.
А. Mehmeti, D. Tahiri
Camera: Goran Naumovski
Realization and editing: Arian Mehmeti
Translation: N. Cvetkovska
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