Strategic overview of armed violence data collection and analysis mechanisms (South Eastern Europe)
Strategic overview of armed violence data collection and analysis mechanisms (South Eastern Europe)

Author(s): Author Not Specified
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Security and defense
Published by: The South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SEESAC)
Keywords: SALW; Small Arms and Light Weapons; Data Collection; South Eastern Europe; Armed Violence Monitoring; Public Policy Integration
Summary/Abstract: Armed violence data gathering systems in SEE countries vary in quality and coverage of the population. No single country embodies best practices by itself. In existing research, because of the lack of continuous monitoring, data has sometimes been generated by research that attempts to recover information on armed violence retrospectively. Different methods for doing this offer differing degrees of reliability; analysis of media reports and perceptions surveys offer an important substitute for continuously gathered data, but are unreliable for a number of reasons. Other studies have been obliged to recover data from past records, which were not designed for storing data specifically on armed violence. In other cases, individual institutions have conducted their own data gathering, and have supplied useful fragments of a comprehensive picture of the problem. More rarely, information specifically covering armed violence has been gathered systematically on a national level. In these cases, lack of standard equipment, variations in the qualification, motivation or availability of staff, poor facilities, lack of structures for handling data and other problems can hamper the quality of information produced. Even where information is gathered routinely with modern standardised equipment, a tendency in SEE to gather records only for the sake of doing so means that analysis is either not made or makes no difference to public policy. Nowhere in SEE is continuously gathered, reliable information on injuries inflicted by small arms and light weapons (SALW) clearly connected to policy-making circles, and made a routine part of national strategies, action plans and other laws or initiatives. This could be altered through concerted investment in more comprehensive national or regional systems to gather information routinely on SALW-related injuries, offences and prosecutions.

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