The United Nations is considering tougher sanctions on the arms trade in Africa that has left sophisticated weaponry in the hands of terror and rebel groups.

At the same time, the world body is seeking to transform some of its peacekeeping deployments in Africa into war-fighting brigades.

Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary-General, said last week that the illicit arms trade has reached alarming rates in Africa, especially in the cases of Nigeria, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic, largely explaining the unending conflicts in those countries.

Mr Eliasson’s comments came as the UN sounded an alarm over worsening violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and the CAR, with the UN Security Council demanding the strengthening of the Darfur peacekeeping mission.

READ: ‘Almost all Darfuris’ suffering effects of 11 years of war, UNSC says

In a resolution adopted unanimously on April 3, the 15-member council urged the UN-African Union joint mission in Darfur, known as Unamid, to “move to a more preventive and pre-emptive posture in pursuit of its priorities and in active defence of its mandate.”

That wording is seen as a go-ahead for Unamid to adopt more aggressive tactics. The council’s action on Darfur sharpens the focus on a broader and potentially historic shift in UN operations in conflict zones in Africa.

The UN’s traditional role of attempting to separate warring parties and prevent violence is giving way, in some cases, to combat initiatives intended to weaken or defeat groups perceived as “spoilers.”

First intervention brigade

This new military posture was first adopted a year ago in the DRC, with the Security Council authorising establishment of a 3,000-member “intervention brigade.”

Consisting of troops supplied by Tanzania, South Africa and Malawi, this combat component of the UN operation known as Monusco scored a strategic victory over a rebel force that had been terrorising parts of the eastern DRC.

That breakthrough has encouraged some diplomats and UN officials to press for a similar transformation of UN missions in other strife-plagued African countries.

It emerged last week, for example, that a resolution on UN use of force in the Central African Republic is “in the making.” Council members appear convinced that the current African Union force in CAR, along with French troops also deployed there, cannot stem the violence that has destroyed the country.

Efforts to stabilise the CAR were dealt a potential setback last week when Chad—one of the key players in the AU operation there—said it would withdraw its troops. The Chadian forces are facing claims of supporting Muslim rebels.

As a corollary to its moves to quell violence in Africa, “the UN is tightening the grip on the transfer of small arms and light weapons particularly to non-state actors,” said Maged Abdelaziz, the UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa.

“But this is also the responsibility of each country,” he added. “The governments which will be seen to be in violation of these provisions will be subject to a review by the UN.”

An Arms Trade Treaty adopted by UN member-states one year ago is “full of provisions to control this flow to non-state actors,” Mr Abdelaziz said.

And on April 2, the first anniversary of the treaty’s adoption, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all nations to join the agreement, which for the first time sets global standards for the transfer of weapons and efforts to prevent their diversion.

Mr Ban said 118 states have signed the treaty, and 31 UN member-states have ratified it, short of the 50 ratifications needed for the treaty’s entry into force.

Kenya, which helped lead the long effort in the UN to curb the global arms trade, is not among the signers of the treaty. The country’s conspicuous failure to endorse the pact was criticised last week by Amnesty International.

READ: Kenya hopeful its role in arms treaty will bear fruit

Availability of sophisticated weapons “is becoming a big problem that we are seeing in other parts of the world and in many different African countries,” Deputy UN Secretary General Eliasson said last week in Abuja, Nigeria.

“Terrorism and organised crime work together. It is astounding how much money is available to these terrorist groups. I would hope governments are not involved in this,” he added.

“But I can’t exclude that organised groups are playing a role. Everything has to be done to control these flows of arms that can reach such groups,” he said adding the situation is getting worse in Nigeria, the Sahel region and Somalia.

Mr Eliasson and Mr Abdelaziz who were speaking on the sidelines of the African Finance Ministers meeting in Abuja, Nigeria last week also addressed the UN’s new combat role.

He explained that in the case of Mali, which has been destabilised by an Islamist rebellion in its northern regions, “we intentionally created two components, the same way we created two components in the DRC. One is some more classical peacekeeping and the other a robust mission through French forces which is working under the mandate of the UN peacekeeping and Security Council resolutions” he said.

The UN is suffering a new headache in Mali amid claims the terror groups have moved to neighbouring countries, complicating the insecurity issue in the region.

The violence in northern Mali has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of whom moved to neighbouring countries.

“The UN is now present in more and more very complex environments,” Mr Eliasson observed. “Initially, it was possible to maintain neutrality in such situations.

But now as we are involved in domestic situations, internal conflicts and civil wars, terrorist and extremist groups, it is very hard to maintain that neutrality.”

The UN intervention brigade in the DRC is expected to next launch offensives against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Hutu-led grouping that fled Rwanda following the 1994 genocide against Tutsis.

The Security Council last week renewed the mandate for both Monusco and the intervention brigade. This means aggressive UN operations in the DRC are likely to continue for at least another year.

“The world should have acted earlier on CAR to stop the atrocities we are seeing there,” Mr Eliasson said  in his speech in Abuja.

Strengthened force

“We need a lot of armed police. This strengthening of the forces is necessary. Our staff are becoming very vulnerable and we have lost so many people in such operations,” Mr Eliasson noted in regard to UN deployments in several conflict zones.

“So we are paying the price of such involvements in this new plaguing problem that terrorism constitutes. This brutalisation we are seeing in today’s world, which is unfortunately being heated up by people who are using religion or sectarian belief as the reason for dividing humanity, is extremely worrying. This is happening in CAR where Muslims and Christians are killing each other to a degree that is extremely dangerous. We see it in South Sudan where Nuers and Dinkas are antagonising each other.”

READ: UN ready to help evacuate 19,000 Muslims in Central Africa

In South Sudan, the UN force has not taken on a combat role and is in fact on the defensive in the face of alleged harassment by government forces.

Unmiss (the UN Mission in South Sudan) has been complaining for weeks about impediments put in place by government troops that are preventing delivery of humanitarian supplies.

A sharp increase in Unmiss troop strength that was promised three months ago still has not been fully achieved. The Security Council in December authorised a near-doubling of Unmiss troops, to about 14,000, but the force is still well short of that total.

This lag in providing troops highlights the reluctance of many UN member states to commit forces or materiel to UN operations. That unwillingness to expend resources will act as an obstacle to the emerging UN combat capability.

The UN point man in Somalia, for example, has been pleading for months for helicopters to be sent to Amisom for use in fighting Al Shabaab. No country has come forward to supply the helicopters, however.

READ: Somalia on UN watchlist over sale of weapons to terrorists

Unamid, the UN force in Darfur, also lacks the military means to play a more aggressive role. In calling last week for more vigorous efforts to protect civilians in Darfur, the Security Council urged world powers to supply Unamid with badly needed aviation assets.

Reported by Mwaura Kimani and Kevin Kelley