On 6 July 2021, UNODC’s Global Firearms Programme (GFP) has facilitated the organization of the 3rd Meeting of the Working Group on Firearms-related Data Collection in Ukraine. The overall objective of the Working Group is to ensure submission of high-quality information to UNODC’s Illicit Arms Flow Initiative (IAFI) on regular basis.
The members of the Working Group represent different departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and National Police of Ukraine. The Working Group has continued with the review of the answers provided by Ukraine in response to UNODC questionnaire and at its 3rd meeting has focused the discussions on data collection related to Part One “Arms seizures”.
Based on the information exchange between the 2nd and 3rd meeting of the WG and on additional research, the experts have returned to the analysis of questions 1.4 (1) “Industrially manufactured arms with no signs of alteration or deactivation”, 1.5 “Total arms seized by marking of the arms” and 1.6 “Total arms seized by country of manufacture.”
The conclusions of the experts is that information about these questions is available in various places within the Ukrainian criminal justice system. The main difficulty for collecting the information is based on the lack of internal processes and mandates for its collection and use. The experts have reached a conclusion to propose to Senior Management of MIA options on: 1) unit responsible for collection of data; 2) formulation of legal grounds for collection of data; 3) identification of registries where information will be kept; and 4) procedure for sharing the collected information with internal and external counterparts.
The Working Group will conduct its next session in September 2021.
This activity is supported through a generous contribution by Germany.
