Consultation on arms control in the US and Latin America

The Igarapé Institute participated in some of the most important OAS meetings of the year – the session of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

Held this year in Bogotá, Katherine Aguirre was one of four non-government representatives selected to contribute to a round table discussion on the regulation of arms sales and illicit trafficking from the US to Latin America.

During the session, Katherine Aguirre presented research collected by the Institute on arms trafficking across the region. A particular focus was on so-called “straw man” purchases in the US which are then smuggled across the border to Mexico.

More than 212,000 arms are legally purchased this way each year in the US and transferred to cartels, gangs and criminals south of the border.

There was significant interest in Igarapé Institute´s Mapping Arms Data (MAD) visualization developed in partnership with PRIO and Jigsaw.

The platform highlights the sheer scale of international transfers, including from the US to neighboring countries. The challenges are not just limited to Mexico, but also to Central America and across Colombia and Brazil.