Limiting Firearms (2009)
While weapons of mass destruction (WMD) exercise the minds of political scientists, the reality is that small arms and light weapons (SALW) kill tens of thousands of people each year. SALW are the WMD.
Why are there so many. Is it because the permanent members of the Security Council are the biggest arms salesmen? Is it because making arms makes profits and promotes wealth and employment? Is it because governments feel weak unless they have lots of weapons …. Or because they are too weak to control their army? Or because the rule of law is weak and laws are not applied?
Is it a lack of knowledge and capacity?
What does Capacity-Building mean in the SALW context?
The ‘lack of capacity’ is highlighted in numerous reports, but what does it actually mean? The weak capacity of an institution may be due to weakness of rules and staff, to lack of resources (poor pay recruits poor staff) but it also seems due to lack of political will to make things better. Responsibility must be shared by African or Latin American or Asian leaders at the consumption end, but also by EU and other wealthy donors at the supply end.
One senior African Union official deplored the desire of donors to fund ‘capacity building’: “We have very competent staff,” he told the consultants, “all of whom have many years of experience and masses of training. What we do not have is flexible cash resources to do our job”. He went on to explain why thousands of Euros from the European Commission remain unspent: they are designated for ‘capacity building’ which his department does not need, while his most precious partner is the Danish government’s small fund from which he is able to pay for air tickets to fly out to crisis areas, with expenditures agreed by email within 24 hours.
Not everyone has the same point of view. At the OCSE-Atlantic Partnership Council meeting on Synergy and Regional Organisations (28-30 May 2008), the representative of the East African Community (EAC), Mr. Leonard Onyonyi, reported on enhanced implementation of the Nairobi Protocol. Among the challenges faced by the EAC, Mr. Onyonyi listed :
- donor fatigue
- multiple sub-regional organisations
- lack of government resources
- lack of experience
- lack of capacity (by implication, at the national level)
Regional organisations only have impact if their members are effective at the national level. Regional organisations are not well-placed to improve ‘national capacity’. It is rather the other way around: member states should be demanding better performance from their regional organisations. Capacity building cannot be achieved from ‘top-down’.
Anyone who analyses his or her personal career path will recognize that training courses play a far smaller role in the learning process than the combination of ‘basic training’ + ‘good management’ + ‘decent incentives’ (things like salary, benefits, praise and criticism, promotion prospects, job security, fear of sanctions for poor performance). We learn from the bottom up, through the strengths and weaknesses of our bosses. We learn from colleagues, within a coherent structure that achieves a known and understood objective. Among other things, you cannot build a strong and honest public service if salaries are inadequate or if they are not paid on time.
Building capacity therefore happens within a well-functioning management structure over a long period. That makes it difficult for outsiders to build capacity. In small Anglophone nations with few trained cadres, the Commonwealth Development Corporation helps to build capacity (and efficiency) by seconding trained professional. Thus in The Gambia during the 1980s, the Attorney General was from Sierra Leone, the Fire Chief was from the New Zealand, the Chief Justice was Nigerian and the deputy Chief of Customs was a British customs officer on secondment. These men were ‘building capacity’ by working within the existing structures to make them work better, at the same time providing on-the-job training to those below. That is different from a training course.
In the case of SALW, the key organ at the national level is the National Commission (or ‘Focal Point’). There are very few in Asia, but in Latin America and in Africa most countries now have established this platform, where government ministries meet to discuss SALW issues and to devise strategies for controlling illicit firearms. The greatest benefit is that the National Commission takes weapons out of the exclusive preserve of the military and police, and recognizes that SALW are a health problem, an education problem, a transport problem, a finance problem, a youth employment problem….
The Focal Point often lacks a budget and a legal basis for action, and it is usually run by a military officer. Colonels are not skilled in planning education or public awareness campaigns, and they seldom know about mediation or fund-raising. The Focal Point leadership should change every three years to ensure that the it remains relevant and dynamic, with evolving priorities. Armed violence is an issue is too important for the health of a nation, to be left to arms specialists!
Regional Organizations Suffer from Weak Political Commitment
SALW trafficking will end only if leaders want firearms to be controlled. Regional organizations have an important role in tackling crime syndicates and in supporting the implementation of the UNPoA: for example in helping their member states to establish national implementation structures, report on PoA implementation, and facilitate the exchange of information and lessons learned. Their success depends more on the political will of member states that on lack of resources.
The importance of regional organizations is not its doubt. Lack of political will, however, sets limits on the capacity of regional organizations to deliver. Cultural and sociological factors are also important, and it is normal that no two SALW laws will be identical.
The Guidelines on European Community SALW Action (p16 discussed under ‘SALW Awareness’) are very realistic about this issue of political will:
“Many governments will not acknowledge a SALW problem for fear of exposing themselves to criticism and other unwanted repercussions in regional and international forums, as well as domestically. In some cases the authorities, or certain elements within them, may actually be part of the SALW problem and hence have no interest in flagging or acting on the matter. … All government agencies, including law enforcement, border security, and customs officials, must work together to identify and eliminate trafficking routes and apprehend illicit arms brokers. The international nature of the problem requires coordinated action at the national, regional, and global levels.”
Unless political will is expressed and implemented, the best SALW strategies will fail.
Hugh Griffiths & Adrian Wilkinson (2007) observe that: “Controlling the supply of illicit weapons is vital in preventing their knock-on effects. New methods in the fight against the illicit arms trade need to be developed and deployed. Arms control agreements, weapons destruction, stockpile management and weapons storage site security have all helped this process to date. Yet large flows of weapons still occur“.
Why is this? The question has dominated our discussions with expert witnesses and regional organizations, and the bottom line seems to come down to “lack of political will” at the level of political leaders in both supply and demand countries. SALW are big business (there are lobbyists in the rich countries arguing against controls on exports and on brokering) and there are people making money out of illegal SALW trading and diversion in Africa, Asia and Latin America, who have no interest in having better controls.
There is agreement that common international standards on the practices of arms brokers need to be developed and implemented, to close loopholes in national regulations that are exploited by unscrupulous brokers. Common international export criteria need to be agreed on and implemented through improved border and export controls. Marking and tracing practices need to be improved. National and international end-use monitoring must be conducted on a more systematic and complete basis – at both pre-shipment and post-shipment points. A common end-user certificate that is not easily forgeable must also be developed. SALW should be seized at their points of entry and trans-shipment and false end-user certificates should quickly be identified.
Stockpiles must be better secured and managed and surplus weapons must get destroyed*. Regional and international arms embargoes must get support. All these Concepts appear in the Fiche de Concept proposals from IfS partner organisations, and all require political will to succeed.
(* Most of the recommendations follow publications of William Hartung, World Policy Institute; Bridget Moix, Friends Committee on National Legislation; Rachel Stohl, Center for Defense Information, Washington D.C. (“The Tangled Web of Illicit Arms Trafficking,” by Rachel Stohl, in Terror in the Shadows: Trafficking in Money, Weapons, and People, Gayle Smith and Peter Ogden, eds., Washington: Center for American Progress, October 2004); 2006, Nicholas Marsh, Research Fellow International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Member of IANSA.)
EU Member States also come up short on political commitment. One argument advanced by EC officials has been that the EU can exert a considerable degree of political-economic-diplomatic-moral influence through its EU Member States, in addition to its financial influence. This assumption should be tested. It is not at all certain that other regional organizations and their member states currently regard the EU as the paragon of SALW control.
From the point of view of the present writer, the EU has feeble policies and very little idea concerning ways in which to make them effective.