UN arms embargoes 'ineffective'

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The first study of arms embargoes imposed by the UN Security Council has found they worked in only 25% of cases.

Often arms embargoes completely failed to stop the flow of weapons into a country, with the report citing several West African conflicts.

However, the report found that embargoes were more effective if UN peacekeepers were in place.

The study was carried out by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The UN Security Council has imposed 27 arms embargoes since 1990.

They're supposed to prevent the sale of arms to the countries in question either to stop on-going conflicts or to prevent states from becoming even more of a threat.

Arms embargoes are also designed to have a political impact.

They're meant to change the way a government behaves, but rarely work.

"In all the 27 cases of mandatory UN Security Council embargoes after the end of the Cold War, none of them has completely stopped the transfer of weapons to the target," said Siemon Wezeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"Always there have been breaches - sometimes major, sometimes less."

The Swedish academics studying this found that in only 25% of cases did governments improve their behaviour once an arms embargo had been imposed.

However, if an arms embargo was in action and there were also UN peacekeepers in the country, then the rate of effectiveness went up to 47% percent.

Arms embargoes have often failed to stop the flow of weapons in West African conflicts, say the researchers, but the embargo against Saddam Hussein's Iraq was effective and did reduce the capabilities of the Iraqi armed forces.

The report's authors say the UN Security Council needs to get countries to pass laws making it a crime to violate UN arms embargoes.