[Ugnet] Kampala Summit to Combat Illicit Small Arms And Light Arms

Citizens... this people have refused to acknowledged a very simply : which is that Yoweri Museveni's NRM military dictatorship is the biggest gun dealer around the block. The guns which are falling on wrong hands, were legally..repeat legally imported by Yoweri Museveni's dictatorship. Get this through your thick dodo heads. Now if you are really very serious about dealing or rather controaling the gun folws to so called "non state actor" then you need to deal with Kaguta. Leave Kaguta in charge , then I can prety much predict that your so called "efforts" to control illicit guns in the great lakes region will , I am affraid, amount to nothing zero zap!!!

Ugandans I give up on this dodo heads! No wonder africa is backward..with leaders who cannot even realize that 2+2=4,..and instead insist that it is 5 wohat would you expect???

Officials from the African Union, International Police (Interpol) and regional economic communities in West, South and East Africa are set to meet in Kampala this week to devise strategies to strengthen the fight against the illicit proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW).

Francis Sang, Director of the Regional Centre on Small Arms (Recsa) based in Nairobi, Kenya, said the meeting would provide an opportunity for exchange of information and sharing the experiences and hopefully come up with common strategies for fighting the problem of trade and use of illicit small arms.

Recsa and the pan-African non-governmental agency Safer Africa, are jointly hosting the regional workshop.

Recsa, which was born out of the Nairobi Declaration of March 15, 2000, is mandated to co-ordinate action against proliferation of small arms so as to make the Great Lakes Region, the Horn of Africa and surrounding member states safer. Known until two months ago, as the Nairobi Secretariat on Small Arms and Light Weapons, Recsa groups Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, the Seychelles, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

The meeting will be addressed by the heads of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), Economic Community for West Africa (Ecowas), Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad).

On June 21, foreign ministers from these states signed an agreement creating Recsa as an inter-governmental institution with the international juridical personality to effectively implement the Nairobi Declaration and the Nairobi Protocol on Small Arms and Light Weapons. The proposal to establish the Regional Centre was adopted during a ministerial conference in April 2004 following a proposal by the Kenyan government.

Quirinus Oyugi Onono, planning officer at Recsa, said the ministers mandated the regional centre to develop region-to-region interaction for information exchange and the development of common responses to sub-regional, regional and international initiatives on the management of the proliferation of small arms.

"One of the key areas of focus for Recsa in the implementation of the co-ordinated agenda of action is to facilitate regional co-operation and co-ordination in the complex struggle against illicit SALW," said Mr Onono. "Therefore, the meeting will provide opportunities for various stakeholders to enhance their primary responsibilities and primary roles."

He said there was need for co-operation and harmonisation of various initiatives and agreements on combating illegal arms. These include the Nairobi protocol, the SADC protocol and Ecowas Moratorium on Export and Import of SALW. There were also the UN Programme of Action and UN Firearms Control initiatives.

Chirau Ali Mwakwere, the Kenyan Minister for Foreign Affairs said at the June meeting that the flow of small arms and light weapons to non-state actors such as armed rebel groups, warlords, vigilantes, organised criminals and terrorists contributed substantially to violence, insecurity and human suffering across much of the world.

"Although such non-state actors often acquire many of their arms within the countries where they operate, for example through the open market or from leakages or theft from official stocks, they also depend substantially on suppliers of arms," said Mr Mwakwere. "There is therefore a strong case for developing international norms and measures relating to transfers of small arms and light weapons not only to states but more so to the non-state actors."

The Kampala meeting will be opened by the Ugandan Minister for Internal Affairs Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, and will also be attended by the Minister of State for Defense, Ruth Nankabirwa.

Other participants were expected from the Economic Community for Central African States, the Southern African Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation, the Eastern African Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation and the League of Arab States.

Others will come from the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region, the United Nations Development Programme as well as Saferworld, SaferAfrica and Small Arms Survey (Geneva) among international and regional civil society organisations.

[Ugnet] Kampala Summit to Combat Illicit Small Arms And Light Arms

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