Dear IANSA members and friends

We have learned that three members of the global movement against gun violence were on the Air France flight that went missing on 1 June while flying from Brazil to France .

Husband and wife Dr Pablo Dreyfus and Ana Carolina Rodrigues were among the 228 passengers presumed to have died. Pablo was the Manager of Research at Viva Rio in Rio de Janeiro . Ana Carolina also worked at Viva Rio, coordinating the Children in Organised Armed Violence project. Dr Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat, was also on the plane. He was the coordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence.

We send our deepest condolences to their families, friends and colleagues.

Hundreds of our network members have met Pablo Dreyfus at international meetings related to small arms. He was a world expert on gun violence and on arms and drug trafficking, as well as countermeasures including broker regulation, tracing, firearms identification and registration systems. His research was fundamentally important in the campaign for Brazil 's new gun law, the Disarmament Statute of 2003, and in the establishment of the Permanent Commission on Arms Trafficking in the Brazilian Congress. The Statute has already saved tens of thousands of lives. Though Pablo's focus was on Latin America, he also advised the governments of Angola and Mozambique , among others.

A very active and committed IANSA member, Pablo was a generous, knowledgeable and good-humoured source of information to others in the global network. He represented IANSA on many occasion at technical meetings, and in 2008 was one of IANSA's speakers at the Biennial Meeting of States. Pablo was an affiliated expert with the Small Arms Survey in Geneva , and with the Latin American University FLACSO.



IANSA has created a commemorative page at www.iansa.org/pablo.htm Please share your memories to celebrate our colleagues by emailing pablo@iansa.org. Thank you.



In solidarity,



The IANSA Secretariat