by Saeed Shabazz
Staff Writer

NEW YORK(Finalcall.com) �Thirty one African non-governmental organizations (NGOs) July 12 asked delegates at the UN�s "Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all Its Aspects" conference to focus on the devastation caused by small arms on the African continent.

The delegates raised their voices against the small arms trade during an African Day "Our Right to Life is Beyond Any Economic Consideration" forum during the July 9-22 conference at UN headquarters here.

"At this conference governments must do more than talk," Bishop Ocholla Kitgum of Uganda told participants. The bishop said he lost his daughter and wife in May 1997, explaining that his daughter was kidnapped by a gunman and shot and his wife was killed in a landmine accident.

"I live with the fact that I was powerless to protect my family�feelings felt by too many families in the Great Lakes Region," Bishop Kitgum said.

According to East African newspaper, published in Nairobi, Kenya, small arms trafficking along the Uganda, Sudan and Kenya borders has grown since 1986. Also, cost of an AK-47 assault rifle has dropped from 10 cows to two. Weapons are cheapest in Sudan, the paper reported, with an AK-47 costing the same as a chicken.

The African NGOs, in a printed statement, asked governments to take responsibility for controlling small arms. They also ask states that manufacture weapons to "commit themselves to destroying their excess weapons instead of dumping them in Africa."

In West Africa alone, it is estimated that there are seven million such arms, Nigerian Minister of Defense T.Y. Danjuma told the General Assembly July 9. Referring to the conflict in Sierra Leone, he said, "Blood diamonds have provided lucrative opportunities for arms dealers and merchants of war � and small arms have made it easier for rebel movements and dissidents to sustain conflicts."

"In many instances people have turned to arming themselves because of the lack of inclusion and participation of the majority of the people in governance," Ime Udom from Nigeria told The Final Call. "The possession of the firearms is often an attempt to address marginalization and the inequitable distribution of resources in many African nations," she said.

African activists are demanding that funding be provided for public education and social development.

"We need the same type of mobilization against small arms as there is with HIV/AIDS," Dr. Amos Sawyer noted in his keynote address at the July 12 forum. Dr. Sawyer is a professor of political science at Indiana University and served as interim-president of Liberia from 1990 to 1994.

"The solutions to ending the untold suffering on the African continent can be found in the hands of the participants of this forum," Dr. Sawyer said, adding that they must demand "social reconstruction." It is through the NGOs that Africans can improve their capacity to manage conflict resolution on the continent, he said.

Many NGO participants said that while pressure is applied on governments to restructure, there is the issue of immense poverty, which proliferates most of African civil society.

"We can solve the many problems fueling the proliferation of small arms in Africa," retired Lt. Colonel Jan Kamenju from Kenya and a member of the Security Research and Information Center told The Final Call. "Many of our problems are placed on us externally. Unless we find our own solutions these problems will persist."

But activists say that many NGOs also are controlled by outside forces, and they are concerned about the external influences in their movement. Even the International Action Network on Small Arms, which coordinated the African NGO activities at the conference, in the words of media organizer Tricia O�Rourke, is a "heavily white dominated organization."

"I am concerned that the white influences in our NGO movement will prevent our African voices from being heard, but I am encouraged by what I have heard at this forum," said Dr. Robert Mtonga of Zambia, who represents International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. "We have made a start here at the UN to listen to each other. In the past we would not be able to do that," Dr. Mtonga told The Final Call.