Pledge to stem small arms flow

2002-08-08 22:08

Nairobi - Ten countries from east and central Africa made fresh promises on Wednesday to crack down on illegal small arms, but experts said tougher action was needed to stem the flow of weapons blighting the region.

Governments pledged to devise action plans and boost co-operation between their security forces to combat trafficking in weapons used by gunmen from the streets of Nairobi to the lawless jungles of the Congo.

"There's still a lot more to be done, obviously this problem cannot be eliminated overnight," Kenyan Foreign Minister Marsden Madoka said at the end of a two-day small-arms meeting in the Kenyan capital.

"The important thing is that we set up institutions that ensure we will try and curb the spread of illicit arms and light weapons."

Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Sudan and Djibouti adopted a declaration to renew efforts to control small arms, building on a first agreement signed in Nairobi in March 2000.

The governments set a new deadline of the end of this year for fulfilling a previous pledge to set up national offices to coordinate the fight against small arms in each country.

They also agreed to strengthen co-operation between law enforcement agencies, and make plans for cross-border operations to combat arms trafficking.

Experts say they face a huge challenge in staunching the flow of guns in a region where many countries are fighting civil wars or rebel movements, providing a source of weapons that often end up in the hands of criminals.

Depends on peace initiatives

Wars are still raging in countries like Sudan, Burundi, and Congo, while vast areas of the region remain beyond the reach of security forces, hindering efforts to prevent weapons being smuggled across remote borderlands.

But activists at the conference said most of the countries had taken few concrete steps even to fulfil past promises to set up offices to coordinate the fight against illicit weapons.

"The progress is generally not very good," said Richard Mugisha, Director of People With Disabilities Uganda, a non-governmental organisation which represents, among others, the many people maimed by armed conflict and gunfire.

"The message now is that they should show their political will through actions, not by words."

Arms experts singled out Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania as among the front-runners in efforts to combat illicit weapons, saying conflicts in many other countries had hindered progress.

In the long run, arms experts said, controlling the flow of guns will depend partly on whether countries like Congo and Sudan can build on current peace initiatives and succeed in bringing fighting to an end.

"As relations are improving between some countries, that creates new opportunities to begin to tackle the small-arms problem," said Paul Eavis, Director of Safer World, an organisation that works to promote disarmament.

- Reuters