The Center of Excellence gets involved in the measurement of firearms possession

On March 20 and 21, the Center of Excellence for Statistical Information on Government, Crime, Victimization and Justice (CoE) participated in the Sub-regional Seminar “Fostering Violence Against Women Prevention through Arms Control. Every woman counts”, organized by the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC).

On this occasion, the CoE talked about the challenges in measuring and collecting data on firearms to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and proposed an alternative way of investigating the firearms market. Specifically, the CoE presented Module F on Illicit Possession of Firearms that is part of the Latin America and the Caribbean Crime Victimization Survey Initiative (LACSI). LACSI seeks to generate reliable measurements on crime, the perception of insecurity and the impact of victimization in the countries of the region, encouraging the production of comparable data according to good practices and international methodological standards.

Module F, that is a pioneer proposal for measuring the presence and possession of firearms in a crime victimization survey, will be implemented for the first time in the Jamaica National Victimization Survey (JNCVS) thanks to the technical assistance provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), through the CoE.

In the Seminar organized by UNLIREC, government authorities from countries of Central America, Dominican Republic, Mexico and Colombia with responsibility in arms control, gender violence and violence against women and girls participated, as well as civil society organizations specialized in these topics.

By participating in this Seminar, the CoE starts to be one of the actors involved in the firearms topic, together with UNLIREC, UN Women and Infosegura Project (United Nations Development Programme), also present in the Meeting.