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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
KENYA: Feature - Making communities safe from small arms
NAIROBI, 29 October 2003 (IRIN) - When Hussein Abdi returned home one evening from a trip to Wajir, northeastern Kenya, he found a shocking scene: the bodies of his wife and three children were lying scattered around his deserted compound, and all his 3,000 head of cattle and 500 camels were gone.
The above picture is the opening scene of a play acted out in Nairobi by members of the Wajir District Peace Committee, to illustrate the impact of small arms on people living in northern Kenya.
Scenes like this were rare in the 1960s, when an AK-47 assault rifle cost 60 head of cattle, they say. But today the same rifle costs as little as the price of a chicken.
SAYING NO TO SMALL ARMS
The abundance of weapons has sparked a booming cross-border trade, which is closely linked to increased levels of insecurity in the Horn of Africa subregion.
The region's vast dry lands are home to a number of traditional pastoralist communities whose largely nomadic communities move freely across national borders, thereby maintaining ties with kin in neighbouring countries. But competition among these groups for scarce resources - chiefly water and pasture - has given rise to numerous deadly conflicts in recent years.
In northwestern Kenya the easy availability of AK-47, Uzi and other semi-automatic weapons has militarised conflicts among the Karamojong, Turkana, Pokot and Sabiny. The same scenario is played out in the northeast, where weapons - readily available from sources in Ethiopia and war-torn Somalia - have served to intensify deadly bandit attacks and clan rivalries.
Kenya's long and porous borders not only facilitate the uncontrolled flow of arms from neighbouring countries, but also the spill-over effects of the conflicts themselves. Armed banditry and guerrilla activity along the Ethiopian border have killed hundreds of people in recent years, while others have been abducted and thousands of cattle stolen.
But in their own small way, communities in the north are banding together to seek ways of improving their security and resolving conflicts without using arms. "We used to carry spears, but now we carry guns," explains Hussein Ahmad, who heads the district peace committee in Isiolo. But, he says, "we are now using traditional methods of reconciliation, in which disputes are settled with a payment of livestock rather than life".
According to Ahmad, the work of district peace committees is to help local authorities to identify armed groups, locate arms and facilitate their voluntary surrender. In Wajir, for example, a peace declaration signed by clan elders has allowed them to persuade armed groups to surrender their weapons as part of an ongoing weapons collection initiative.
CHALLENGES AHEAD
However, Ahmad notes, collection initiatives cannot work if the government does not boost security for local communities. "Unless we make these people feel safe, they won't give up their weapons," he asserts.
Ahmad says national distribution policies and historical discrimination against people in the north have served to make the region the country's poorest. "Pastoralist groups occupy 80 percent of the country. But unfair distribution of resources, which was nurtured by colonialists, has been perfected by successive governments in independent Kenya," he says. "Marginalisation of pastoral communities is a recipe for conflict."
Recent studies have found that young men lacking economic opportunities in Wajir have been migrating to Somalia in search of small arms, and returning to engage in banditry and criminality.
According to Gilbert Khadiagala, a researcher on weapons collection initiatives, the proximity of war-ravaged countries and lax enforcement of laws and regulations mean that the availability of small arms remains unlimited.
"State protection remains the key to successful disarmament in northern Kenya, and its absence the main impediment," he says.
"Boosting security in marginalised communities is important, precisely because the culture of self-protection that is endemic in pastoral communities derives from a legacy of state neglect," he adds.
Kenyan authorities admit that the war against small arms is far from won, but say they are doing all they can. "The government has its machinery, but without the cooperation of the people concerned, it will not help," said Stephen Tarus, assistant minister in charge of national security.
CONTROLLING THE TRADE
The "Control Arms Campaign", led by a coalition of three international organisations, namely Oxfam, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), puts the global value of the gun business at US $21 billion annually.
There are currently 639 million small arms around the world, produced by 1,000 companies in at least 98 countries. Of the 639 million, 30 million are believed to be circulating in sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 60 percent of them in civilian hands.
Apart from undermining regional stability, the human and economic cost of the easy availability of arms is also staggering: One person dies every minute as a result of firearm-related violence, while 15 new weapons are being manufactured.
Urgent action needs to be taken to stop the irresponsible trade in weapons and to drain the pool of existing arms, say campaigners, not least by those who manufacture the weapons.
"Governments are acting too slowly to control arms. We appeal to the world's most powerful governments, which are the world's biggest arms suppliers, to take control," says IANSA's Ochieng Adala.
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance
[ENDS]
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