This briefing aims to highlight and clarify the importance of the availability and misuse of small arms and light weapons (SALW), and associated armed violence, for development programming in the areas of governance, security sector reform (SSR), and safety, security and access to justice (SSAJ). By doing so the effectiveness of governance, SSR and SSAJ programmes can be enhanced. Moreover, governance, SSR and SSAJ programmes can be developed to contribute more to the reduction of armed violence perpetrated with SALW and facilitated by their availabilit