Global Coalition for WHO Action on Gun Violence to Present Findings at CUGH Global Virtual Health Week 2025

The Global Coalition is a newly established, rapidly expanding alliance of more than 50 organisations across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Supported by a Steering Committee of globally recognised leaders in public health, trauma care, gender equality, peacebuilding, and child protection, the Coalition brings together extensive multidisciplinary expertise to address one of the world’s most preventable public-health crises.

The Global Coalition for WHO Action presentation will draw on findings from the Coalition’s new report, co-published by the Gender Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, the Violence, Inequality & Power (VIP) Lab at the University of San Diego, the University of Cape Town’s Division of Social and Behavioural Sciences, the Comprehensive Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Sou da Paz (Brazil), Gun Free South Africa, and WINAD (Trinidad & Tobago). The report includes an unprecedented analysis of WHA resolutions, WHO publications, and expert interviews tracking the organisation’s engagement on firearm violence from 2000–2025.

The report finds that, despite the scale of the crisis, the WHO has steadily reduced its attention to firearm violence over the past two decades. Based on an analysis of 3,230 WHA resolutions, three decades of WHO publications, and interviews with global experts, two critical findings stand out:

1. No WHA Resolution Has Ever Addressed Firearm Violence: Firearms, guns, and small arms do not appear in any WHA resolution—not even in resolutions focused on violence prevention, trauma care, or child and adolescent safety.
2. WHO Attention to Firearm Violence Has Steadily Decreased Over the Last 15 Years: Although the WHO treated firearm violence as a major public-health concern in the early 2000s, its focus has progressively diminished across key frameworks—even as global firearm-related deaths, injuries, femicides, and youth homicides have increased.

The report recognises and affirms the WHO’s proven ability to mobilise Member States around complex health challenges. such as road safety, tobacco control, violence against women, and violence against children, and argues that firearm violence warrants similarly decisive global action.

The Coalition welcomes the WHO’s longstanding leadership in violence prevention and public health and views this moment as a critical opportunity for strengthened collaboration on a rapidly escalating global challenge. It calls on the WHO to implement the following recommendations emerging from our research:

1. Champion a World Health Assembly (WHA) Resolution on firearm violence, establishing shared standards and coordinated international action.
2. Integrate a focus on addressing and preventing gun violence into WHO frameworks on violence against children, violence against women, suicide prevention, adolescent health, LGBTQI guidance, and commercial determinants.
3. Develop and share guidance for Ministries of Health to strengthen trauma care, psychosocial support, safe storage initiatives, and rehabilitation.
4. Improve global data and surveillance systems, including injury, femicide, youth suicide, disability, and exposure.
5. Regulate gender-exploitative and youth-targeted weapons marketing, especially in online spaces.
6. Support evidence-based national policies that reduce firearm access and enhance community-level protection.

Global Coalition for WHO Action on Gun Violence at the CUGH

Panel 1. Gun Violence in the Americas: Where Are the Bullets and Guns Coming From? will be moderated by Dr Steve Hargarten of the Medical College of Wisconsin and features Laura Vargas (University of Colorado), Eugenio Weigend (Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, University of Michigan), and Matt Schroeder (Small Arms Survey). The session opens with Hargarten, followed by Vargas on the impacts of gun violence on communities, displacement, and health-system burden; Weigend on how U.S. state assault-weapon policies shape the southbound flow of rifles; and Schroeder presenting new findings on how U.S.-sourced guns move into the Caribbean, including highlights from a report released on 2 December. The panel concludes with a moderated Q&A.

Panel 2. Gun Violence in the Americas: Selected Strategies to Reduce Firearm Harm will be moderated by Dr Keith Martin of CUGH and includes speakers Elizabeth Burke (Global Action on Gun Violence), Elizabeth Ward, and Dean Peacock. After opening remarks by Martin, Lowy and Burke will outline public-health litigation strategies to hold the gun industry accountable; Ward will present recent findings on firearm-injury prevention efforts in the Caribbean; and Peacock will describe the emerging international coalition working to elevate firearm violence on the WHO agenda, including efforts toward a future WHA resolution. The session ends with a moderated Q&A.

Looking Ahead: With growing interest from Member States, UN partners, academic institutions, and civil society, the Coalition will continue to support coordinated, multisectoral strategies that recognise firearm violence as a leading global driver of preventable mortality and trauma. For more information: dean.peacock@uct.ac.za.