Small Arms & Africa

Written by Margaret E O’Grady, © September 1999

Executive Summary

Small weapons are responsible for most of the killing in the world today and have resulted in tens of millions of deaths since the end of World War II. These small, portable and easily assembled weapons have been the primary tool in 43 out of the last 47 conflicts1  and have fuelled, prolonged and added to the lethality of conflict.

The North produces most of the world supply of small arms, and much of the Northern surplus has made its way to the South, fanned the flames of conflict and caused major instability. Although the scarcity of economic resources and the repression of pluralistic democracies are the most salient factors of state fragility, the unrestrained flow of arms into such unstable states has undermined development.

Africa: an Epicentre of Modern Warfare

Ninety percent of low-intensity wars in the 1990s are taking place in Africa, and Africa has become the epicentre of intrastate conflict.2  The low cost, availability and ease with which small weapons can be assembled, operated and carried, has vastly increased the number of child soldiers: more than 120,000 children under 18 are currently participating in conflicts in Africa.3  The prevalence of small arms in the least stable region of the world has created cultures of violence across the continent.

Africa cannot afford its wars. Some of its largest buyers of small arms are highly indebted countries. Public revenue is squandered on military budgets and insurgency movements fund their wars by exploiting the natural resources of their countries to procure arms and fight their wars. The conflicts in The Great Lakes, Sierra Leone and Angola are just three examples of how Africa is throwing away its limited wealth to fund conflicts. Some African governments give arms procurement greater priority than provision of basic health and education. However, African initiatives, such as the Economic Community of West African States’ moratorium, have sought to halt arms flows into Africa.

The UK: a Major Exporter of Small Arms

The UK controls 10% of world production of armaments and is a major player in the weapons industry. Increased privatisation and globalisation have made competition and the pursuit of profits much fiercer. Many large arms producing companies have annual arms sales that are higher than the entire military budgets of most countries in the world. The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) seeks to promote UK trade and should not be the department handling UK arms controls. This conflict of interest has allowed for loopholes in UK legislation and arms companies have been able to circumvent UK arms controls. There has been a dearth of political action enforced by the UK government to ensure that small arms are not sold to countries where human rights or humanitarian law are being violated.

The UK has the potential to change the way in which small arms continue to flow, unabated, into sensitive areas. In particular, the UK government should vastly increase the transparency of export licence decisions and close the gaping loopholes:

• An independent licensing authority should be established. The DTI has trade promotion as one of its major responsibilities and keeping the export licensing function within its remit would leave the DTI subject to conflicting pressures.
• All applications for military equipment export licences should be made available for public inspection ten working days in advance of the licence application being considered. This would allow adequate time for comment and, if necessary, debate.
• Controls on brokering should be introduced which should not be more limited, either in terms of goods or of destination, than those on actual physical exports. There should also be a register of brokers, with failure to register such activities made an offence under UK law.
• Overseas production of military equipment which is licensed by a UK company should require an export licence even if no equipment actually originates in the UK. Where a UK company enters into a licensed production agreement, the manufactured goods should require a UK export licence before they could be exported from the overseas country to a third country.
• Applications for export permits should not be approved in the absence of an End-User Certificate (EUC) issued by the relevant government authority in the importing country, and obtained by the export licensing authority in the UK. It should contain a commitment not to resell or transfer the armaments without the permission of the UK export licensing authority. There should be effective UK monitoring of the end-use of exported equipment.

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