Chapter 12 - Captured and Counted: Illicit Weapons in Mexico and the Philippines pages 302 to 317

Summary

ILLICIT SMALL ARMS AND LIGHT WEAPONS IN THE PHILIPPINES

Many insurgent groups are engaged in low-intensity armed conflict in the Philippines. Some of them have been fighting against the government for decades. This is the case with the New People's Army (NPA)—the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines—which was founded in 1969 and engages in complex raids and other guerrilla operations using a variety of weapons and explosives. There are also several Islamist-oriented insurgent groups, of which the most widely known are the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Both operate in the southern islands of the archipelago.

Illicit small arms and light weapons in the Philippines range from craft-produced shotguns to 81 mm mortar systems. As in other countries, the quantity of illicit small arms and light weapons available in the Philippines is difficult to assess. The Philippine government estimates that there were approximately 610,000 ‘loose’ firearms in the country as of 2012. This figure, which is considerably higher than previous estimates, includes handguns and rifles but not machine guns or firearms with calibres larger than 7.62 mm. There are no comparable publicly available estimates regarding the number of illicit light weapons.