The East African Community (EAC) partner Statesare finalising plans to craft a common position that the region will present next month at the UN ArmsTrade Treaty (ATT) in New York.
Ahmed Wafuba, the coordinator of Uganda’s National Focal Point (NFP) on Small Arms, says that the move will enhance efforts aimed at ridding the region of illegal firearms that have led to loss of innocent lives.
“We have come up with a position and it remains to be sent to the council of ministers,” Wafuba said during the launch of the global week of action against gun violence in Kampala early this week.
The awareness week in Uganda has been coordinated by the EAC secretariat in collaboration with the German International Development Agency (GIZ) and the Eastern Africa Action Network on Small Arms (EAANSA).
Wafuba said that EAC partner States would support the UN arms trade treaty that is legally binding for it to achieve the highest common international standards for transfer of firearms.
“The issue of conventional arms and small arms plus the ammunitions should be regulated,” he said, adding that Uganda had so far destroyed 97,000 pieces of assault and firearms over a period of three years. Many governments have voiced concern about the absence of globally agreed rules to guide their decisions on arms transfers.
Citing Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer who was once dubbed the “Merchant of Death”, Uganda’s State minister for Internal Affairs James Baba, urged that the treaty should stop manufacturers of weapons from giving them to wrong hands.
“Our people aren’t killed by tanks or any sophisticated weapons, they are killed by light weapons supplied by these merchants of death,” said Mr Baba.
Uganda’s minister of Internal Affairs Hillary Onek said that his government is now in the process of reviewing its laws on firearms and ammunitions to ensure that issues of small arms are expressly addressed to include severe and deterrent measures for offenders.
Martin Ogango, an official from the GIZ-SALW programme on promotion of peace and security wondered why up to now there is no law that globally controls the movements of arms from the manufacturing stage to the final user.
Preparations to address the absence of globally agreed rules for all Countries to guide their decisions on arms transfers have been underway since 2006, and are culminating into the UN Conference in New York to run from July 2–27 this year.
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