Lesotho’s conventional arms control regime is relatively opaque and outmoded. It is governed primarily by the Internal Security (Arms and Ammunition) Act 1966, as amended (1999, 2024). The Act regulates the acquisition, possession, manufacture, and trade of firearms, and to a more limited extent, military-grade/conventional weapons. Civilian access to such weapons is restricted, with fully automatic firearms and chemical-based arms explicitly prohibited for non-state use. Regulatory authority rests largely with the Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS), which oversees licensing, inspections, and the manual Central Firearms Registry. Notably, state-owned weapons fall outside the scope of this Act, while there is no clear and/or additional statutory element that regulates them.
The Act allows for ministerial orders to restrict the import, export, or internal movement of arms, but it lacks a dedicated licensing for conventional arms transfers. There is also a lack of statutory provisions for end-user certification, arms trading, or transit controls, key elements of modern arms control frameworks.
Internationally, Lesotho is a State Party to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), having ratified it in 2016. It has also ratified the SADC Protocol on Firearms and is a signatory to the UN Firearms Protocol, among others. These agreements require states to implement clear risk assessments criteria to regulate arms transfers, standardised firearms marking, and long-term record-keeping, obligations which Lesotho’s only partially meets. While end-user documentation, meaningful transparency, and a clear statutory requirement to enforce arm embargoes remain absent, Lesotho has made efforts to comply with ATT reporting, though submission remains sporadic.
Lesotho’s conventional arms control regime is best understood as weakly institutionalised and based on an outdated legal framework. It lacks adequate transparency, oversight structures, and the level of digitisation required to have an effective arms control system. However, it should be noted that Lesotho currently lacks the technical capacity and resources needed to transform its domestic arms control regime in such a way to be fully compliant with its international obligations. Nonetheless, its treaty commitments and core prohibitions provide a legal foundation on which more robust arms control policy could be built.
