The paradox of success: Evolutionary dynamics between human rights and small arms

Abstract This article shows how increasingly converging human rights and humanitarian discourses, accompanied by existing structural asymmetries, can reconstitute rights and obligations within a prominent weapons category: small arms and light weapons (SALWs). Its contribution is to theoretically refine and apply a power-analytical approach to the convergence of humanitarian, human rights, and weapons law and, in particular, the nexus between human rights and SALWs. We focus on the dynamics leading to the adoption of two major agreements very different in nature: the UN Programme of Action and the Arms Trade Treaty. Charting multiple, intermeshing, and often contradictory operations of power, we analyze the shifting role of human rights and the emergence of an entirely new phenomenon: human rights-centered arms control. Attention is drawn to the underlying paradox: Although the norm of human rights has risen from obscurity to prominence in arms control, the arms industry has been given stronger political and legal protection. Although policy advocates and norm entrepreneurs have usually preferred complete humanitarian disarmament, what we can abstract from this analysis is that a less ambitious, human rights-centered weapons treaty may well be the preferred model of arms control for a commercially prominent, widely circulated, and often-used category of weapons defying stigmatization. What follows are concluding remarks and a graphic synthesis of key findings (Figure 1).