Especially since the 1990s, international transfers of SALW and ammunition have been conducted in increasingly differentiated markets. A multitude of products, buyers and suppliers around the world, including State-owned entities and large defence manufacturers, use the services of specialist intermediaries, as well as private agents and dealers. States often use brokering services for the purpose of acquiring the means of legitimate self-defence and law enforcement.

However, most States have had little or no regulation of arms brokering or closely related intermediation activities of arms brokers. Gaps and weaknesses have been an important factor enabling the circumvention of national arms trade controls and policies, contributing to violations of United Nations arms embargoes and the diversion of arms transfers to illicit markets and to unauthorized end users and end uses, including transnational organized crime and terrorist acts.

Amidst increasing international concern, UN Member States agreed in the 2000s that the brokering of international arms transfers should be subject to national regulation and that measures should be taken to prevent illicit arms brokering. Two international instruments adopted in 2001 to address the illicit trade in SALW – the UN Firearms Protocol, and the UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (‘PoA’)– included commitments to establish the regulation of brokering activities and measures to curb illicit brokering.