Washington, D.C. — According to The East African newspaper published in Nairobi, Kenya, small arms trafficking along the Uganda, Sudan and Kenya borders has grown so much since 1986 that the cost of an AK-47 assault rifle has dropped from 10 cows to two. Weapons are cheapest in Sudan, the paper says, "with an AK-47 costing the same as a chicken."
Such traffic - growing in Africa but a worldwide problem - is the target of a United Nations conference that started Monday and will continue until Friday. Briefing the press last week, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Jayantha Dhanapala called the trade in small arms a "global crisis."
The conference hopes to reach agreement on controlling the flow of illicit small arms but already there are signs of how difficult it will be to reach such an accord by Friday. John Bolton, the U.S. Under-Secretary of State for arms control, told the conference he finds "diffusion of focus" in the draft program. It mixes "legitimate areas for international cooperation and action and areas that are properly left to decisions made through the exercise of popular sovereignty."
One proposal that the U.S. is expected to oppose calls for small arms to be supplied to governments only.
Other controversial issues to be discussed include controls on manufacturing, standardizing export criteria, and marking small arms for traceability.
While it seems that a solution with muscle will be hard to come by at this conference - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has already said that he considers this meeting just "a first step" - virtually every one of the more than 100 countries represented from around the world agrees that the problem is enormous.
A background report for the conference offers "a best-guess estimate" that puts the number of small arms and light weapons in the world at "more than 500 million" - one for every 12 people on earth - with between 40 and 60 percent of these weapons described as "illicit."
Africa, which has more ongoing armed conflicts than any other continent, has been especially hard hit. "The influx of light weapons financed by cash, diamonds, or other commodities did not cause Africa's wars but it has prolonged them and made them more lethal," says a State Department document on small arms and conflict in Africa.
The document describes the complexity of the problem in Africa using a Russian national based in the United Arab Emirates. Victor Butt owns at least five airlines that fly 60 aircraft and employ some 300 people. Butts delivers weapons to clients across Africa and all efforts to arrest him or curtail his operations have failed.
In West Africa, where the use of children as combatants in civil conflicts has become a disturbing phenomenon, small arms have facilitated child participation. Of the 300,000 child soldiers worldwide, 120,00 are in Africa, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. "Children can easily use small arms," reports UNICEF. "They are simple to transport and hide, ready to use without much prior training and, in most cases, require little maintenance and support."
"At the end of the day," the State Departments says, "neither African or non-African nations nor the international community has been willing to levy painful political, economic, or legal penalties against individuals or countries to dissuade them from selling arms to or within Africa."
The Department's document ends gloomily, "Such limitations make it unlikely that the arms trafficking problem in Africa will be significantly ameliorated anytime soon."
In a just-released critical report, Amnesty International is charging that powerful states are seeking to water down any strong measures that might be considered by the conference. "The main spoilers at the UN conference are the world's biggest small arms producers and some of their dependents and allies," said Brian Wood, coordinator of Amnesty International's action on small arms.
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These include the U.S., China and Russia, says Wood. "These states allow transfers of small arms and munitions that expose many populations around the world to persistent human rights abuse, while their police and security aid programs ignore or just pay lip service to human rights standards. This in turn drives up the demand for illicit weapons creating a vicious circle resulting in the suffering of millions of people."
Amnesty would like a prohibition on arms exports "unless it can be reasonably demonstrated that such arms will not contribute to serious human rights violations, crimes against humanity and war crimes."
The organization is calling for "strict" controls to be placed on arms manufacturers, arms brokers, arms transporters and arms financiers.
