Kenya leading UN campaign against ‘merchants of doom’

Kenya is pressing within the United Nations for the start of talks on a binding global treaty to restrict the illegal transfer of small arms that take scores of lives in eastern and central Africa every day.

The UN’s disarmament committee will decide this month whether to endorse formal negotiations on such a treaty.

Continuing in the leadership role it has played on this issue for several years, Kenya has joined Britain, Japan and four other nations in sponsoring a resolution in favour of drafting an Arms Trade Treaty.

The volume of weapons diverted to “a thriving black market continues to grow at an alarming rate,” Kenya Ambassador Zachary Muburi Muita told the UN General Assembly last week.

“Sadly, the merchants of doom continue to benefit from this illicit trade without the slightest regard to suffering and violence to the most vulnerable populations in Africa.”

The proliferation of small arms throughout East Africa and other parts of the continent is symptomatic of poverty, Mr Muita added.

But the toll taken by these weapons simultaneously frustrates progress toward economic development, with governments being forced to divert funds from public services in order to bolster security.

“All states should invest more in human beings than spending trillions in armaments,” he declared. “Investment in human capital is the only assurance to security, peace and stability.”

A member of Kenya’s civil society also highlighted the disastrous impact of small arms during a conference last week on the sidelines of the UN disarmament committee’s meetings.

Frances Mutuku Nguli of PeaceNet Kenya said that the easy availability of rifles and automatic weapons has escalated violence among cattle herders and farmers in parts of the country where the struggle for land is most acute.

Hundreds of Kenyans have been killed and wounded in land disputes as arms trafficking spirals in these areas, Ms Nguli said.

Kenya’s call for action against the illegal global arms trade was echoed in speeches to the General Assembly by the ambassadors of Tanzania and Uganda.

Small arms fuel conflicts that displace civilians and promote cross-border crime, said Tanzania’s envoy, Augustine Mahiga, whose country hosts thousands of refugees from strife in the Great Lakes.

Mr Mahiga urged greater international support for the Regional Centre on Small Arms that was established in Nairobi in 2000 to enhance co-operation among 10 eastern African countries affected by trafficking in these weapons.

Citing the use of small arms by pirates operating off the coast of Somalia, Ugandan UN Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda told the UN that the illegal trade works to destabilise entire regions and to undermine international security.

Mr Rugunda added that without “political will” on the part of UN member-states, treaty provisions will prove meaningless.

The United States, the world’s number-one weapons dealer, has sought in the past to block movement toward an Arms Trade Treaty.

China and Russia, which also export large quantities of arms, have been unenthusiastic, while some major arms importers, such as Pakistan and Egypt, abstained in a UN vote three years ago endorsing the need to control illegal small-arms trafficking.

More recently, the United States joined Zimbabwe in casting the only votes against creation of a UN working group on small arms trafficking.

That move was supported by 147 nations.

It remains to be seen whether US President Barack Obama will soften the stand taken by the Bush administration in alliance with gun rights groups in the United States.

But Mr Obama has already expressed his agreement with a controversial interpretation of a US Constitutional provision on the right to bear arms.

Pro-gun organisations argue that this stipulation bars lawmakers from adopting almost any sort of gun-control measure.