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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Monday 6 June 2005

KENYA-UGANDA: Synchronised disarmament of border communities planned

KAMPALA, 6 Jun 2005 (IRIN) - Uganda and Kenya are due to simultaneously disarm their border communities, which have perpetrated cross-border violence on each other for decades, Ugandan army spokesman Maj Shaban Bantariza told IRIN on Monday.

"The two defence ministers [from Kenya and Uganda] discussed over the weekend modalities of concurrent disarmament" he said. "It does not make sense for Uganda to disarm while Kenya has not disarmed."

He said cooperation was necessary, as cross-border cattle raids would not be solved if only one country disarmed its people.

The Karimojong, an ethnic group in Uganda's northeastern region, and Kenya's northwestern Turkana community, have for years traded bullets during cattle-raids on either side of the border, resulting in the murder of hundreds of people.

Bantariza said Uganda's defence minister Amama Mbabazi and Kenya's internal security minister, John Michuki, decided that Kenya and Uganda would share intelligence information on the movement of people from one place to another in order to control cattle-rustling.

He added that a committee of experts had been set up to design a plan to be followed by both countries while implementing the disarmament strategy.

The meeting also resolved to simultaneously control arms trafficking in the border area.

In 2001, Uganda embarked on the disarmament of the Karimojong, but the attempt stalled in 2002 when an intensification of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army hostilities in the north of the country forced the government to redirect resources being used in the disarmament to the war.

However, more than 10,000 guns had already been surrendered to the army, either voluntarily or forcefully.

Human rights groups in Uganda have in the past accused the army of high-handedness in its disarmament methods.

In the Karimojong and Turkana communities, the cow is of significant cultural importance, and Karimojong youth are taught to amass cattle through raids on their neighbouring communities.

The communities formerly employed rudimentary tools such as spears and bows in their raids, but with the advent of modern weaponry, the attacks have taken on a deadlier dimension, with more fatalities resulting from the cross-border assaults.

[ENDS]

This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2005