UN mission probes small arms proliferation

A UN fact-finding mission has begun work in Kenya to determine the scale of the proliferation of small arms in the country, the organisation reported on Monday. The mission was an initial effort to respond to a request from the Kenyan government to the UN for assistance in dealing with the scourge of small arms, a UN spokesman said. The team, which arrived in Nairobi on Sunday and is scheduled to stay until Friday, 3 August, is led by Joao Honwana, Chief of the UN Conventional Arms Branch. The group, which includes staff from the UN Department of Political Affairs and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), will meet with governmental and NGO officials, as well as representatives of other countries in the region and the diplomatic community in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, according to the UN.
President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya on Saturday, 28 July, declared a ban on cross-border trade between Kenya and Somalia, in what he said was an effort to curb the influx of arms into Kenya. In August 1999, he also banned trade with Somalia, citing similar reasons.

The ban was lifted six months later. The Kenyan MP for Fafi in northeastern Kenya, Elyas Barre Shill, said the move would not solve Kenya’s security problem. He suggested that Moi should instead extend more support to the Transitional National Government (TNG) in Somalia, which would then deal with the arms problem from its side of the border, the Kenyan ‘Daily Nation’ newspaper reported on Monday. It was widely accepted that many of the small arms proliferating in Kenya originated in Somalia but arms also came across the Ugandan, Ethiopian and Sudanese borders, so some way other than a closure of the border with Somalia needed to be found to curb trade in illegal guns, the ‘Nation’ stated in an editorial on Tuesday.