Adèle Kirsten has been a non-violent, social justice activist for over thirty years in South Africa. She joined the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s. She is a founding member of Gun Free South Africa (GFSA) and became its Director in March 1995 (until 2002, returning in 2013). Adèle was responsible for helping build the organisation into a national NGO, which together with the Gun Control Alliance, played an important role in advocating for stricter gun laws in South Africa. In November 2000, the Firearms Control Act was passed. In 2008, her book on the history of GFSA, ‘A Nation without Guns? The Story of Gun Free South Africa’ was published by UKZN Press. In the field of small arms control as a researcher and analyst: she was appointed to several advisory boards, notably the UK Department for International Development Armed Violence and Poverty Initiative as well as the OECD Advisory panel on armed violence reduction. She was also a research associate with the Institute of Security Studies and has published several papers on strategies to reduce gun violence including an evaluation of firearms amnesties in South Africa. From 2008 to 2010 she was Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. In 2016 she was appointed to the Marikana Panel of Experts to provide input into and guide the review of the use of less-lethal weapons by the Public Order Police (POP) units in South Africa.