One of the crucial challenges for current efforts to assist states in timely and reliable tracing of illicit SALW is to identify and establish those measures that will allow for tracing illicit SALW recovered in conflict and post-conflict situations.(2) Thus, particularly SALW recovered in such situations may previously have passed through many hands without being adequately recorded. The point at which the weapon was diverted into the illicit trade can therefore usually not be adequately identified. Moreover, in absence of greater physical controls of SALW transfers and holdings, points of diversion are, if at all, often identified only long after the diversion took place. This means that a significant opportunity for the combat against the illicit SALW trade is missed ...