Human Rights and the Civilian Acquisition, Possession and Use of Firearms

Calls upon States to do their utmost to take appropriate legislative, administrative and other measures, consistent with international law, in particular human rights law, and their constitutional frameworks, including comprehensive, inclusive and evidence-based public policies, tailored to address the root causes and risk factors driving firearms-related violence, including lack of proper training and psychosocial disabilities, as well as different forms of inequality and discrimination rooted in negative stereotypes, with the aim of strengthening the protection and enjoyment of the human rights of all;

Also calls upon States to consider adopting requirements for manufacturers and dealers of firearms and their ammunition based on the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which include the responsibility to avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts, preventing, remediating when appropriate or mitigating adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, and the responsibility to conduct human rights due diligence;

Calls once more upon States to ensure that regulations on civilian and companies’ acquisition, possession and use of firearms and their ammunition include appropriate measures to avoid illicit practices, including their diversion, conversion, reactivation, acquisition, possession, illicit manufacture, trafficking and use by national and transnational organized criminal groups and other criminal actors;

Calls upon States to adopt effective national regulations and, where necessary, strengthen controls on the acquisition, possession and use of firearms and their ammunition, and to invest in and support community-based interventions aimed at violence prevention and rehabilitation, particularly of children and youth trapped in environments of violence, including those largely attributable to the illicit activities of national and transnational organized criminal groups and other criminal actors;

Encourages States to collect and publish disaggregated data on the acquisition, possession and use of firearms and their ammunition, where feasible and consistent with their constitutional and legislative frameworks, and to analyse the underlying drivers of firearm use affecting the enjoyment of human rights;

Calls upon all States to take effective measures with the aim of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular Sustainable Development Goal 16, to promote peaceful and inclusive societies;

Calls upon States to enhance international, regional and subregional cooperation, including, as appropriate, through information-sharing, border management, mutual legal assistance and judicial cooperation, to prevent and address the acquisition, possession, use, diversion and illicit trafficking of firearms and ammunition by and to national and transnational organized criminal groups and other criminal actors, while ensuring full respect for international human rights law;

Requests the High Commissioner to prepare, in consultation with Member States, a study on the human rights impact of the diversion, possession, acquisition, illicit trafficking and use of firearms and ammunition by national and transnational organized criminal groups and other criminal actors, and to present the study to the Human Rights Council at its sixty-seventh session;

Invites all relevant special procedures, commissions of inquiry and other accountability mechanisms, and human rights treaty bodies, as well as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to continue to bear in mind the present resolution within the framework of their respective mandates;

Invites all business enterprises, including those involved in the manufacture and sale of firearms and their ammunition, to consider the reports of the High Commissioner on human rights and the civilian acquisition, possession and use of firearms when addressing the adverse human rights impacts of their operations, in line with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, including the recommendation to take active steps to publicly report on the potential adverse human rights impacts associated with their operations and preventive or mitigating measures taken in that respect, in sufficient detail to evaluate the adequacy of the response by the respective business entity;