Title: Weapons burned across the region
(Source: UN-IRIN Weekly West Africa Update, 13 July 2001) A number of West African countries conducted symbolic arms destruction ceremonies this week to coincide with the UN conference on small arms, which opened in New York on Monday. The 9-20 July UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects is addressing the increasing threat to human security from the spread of small arms and light weapons, and aims to find ways to curb and eliminate the illegal trade in such weapons. Members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) signed a small arms moratorium in 1999 with a view to controlling the flow of small and light weapons within countries and across the region's borders. The availability of such weapons has been recognised as a strong factor in the instability affecting West Africa. Mali, which began its weapon destruction on Monday at two sites, destroyed over 500 weapons. At Lere, southwest of Timbuktu on the border with Mauritania, some 230 small arms were burned, according to the UN Programme of Coordination and Assistance for Security and Development (PCASED) in Bamako. "In Lere a local committee was formed by mainly women in the area and Muslim groups. They organised an awareness campaign and reached members of the community through local radio," Napoleon Abdullai, disarmament expert at PCASED, told IRIN on Friday. The residual ore from the destroyed weapons will be used to build a monument in a 'Garden of Peace', and whatever is left over will be used for agricultural implements, he added. At the second site, Dire, some 90 km southwest of Timbuktu, 277 weapons were destroyed, Abdullai said. A 'weapons-for-development' programme, involving the exchange of arms for agricultural tools, started last year in the mainly agricultural area populated by sedentary farmers who grow rice and livestock-rearing nomads. The weapons destruction was organised by the Malian National Commission against the Proliferation of Small Arms and PCASED, and funded by the Belgian and Malian governments. A disarmament momentum has been sustained in Mali since a 'Flame of Peace' ceremony in Timbuktu in 1996, when some 3,000 weapons collected from rebels in northern Mali were destroyed, according to the UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament (UNREC)in the Togolese capital, Lome. Meanwhile, Nigeria began the destruction of its stockpile of illicit weapons on 6 July by setting fire to 2,421 guns of various types in the northern city of Kaduna. Weapons destroyed included submachine guns, automatic and pump-action rifles, double-barrelled shotguns and pistols. They were seizedfrom armed robbers, illegal dealers and participants in recent communal conflicts. In the Ghanaian capital, Accra, 874 weapons were destroyed on Monday in an ongoing drive against the proliferation of small arms, according to the 'Daily Graphic' newspaper. In Niger, some 1,200 weapons were destroyed in August 2000 in recognition of the restoration of peace between the state and Tuareg and Toubou rebel movements while, in 1999, Liberia destroyed some 19,000 weapons and two million rounds of ammunition left over from its seven-year civil war, according to UNREC. Other countries, including Sierra Leone, have ongoing weapons destruction programmes. It is estimated that there are eight million illicit small arms and light weapons in circulation in West Africa, according to UNREC.