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While the legal question of government, mineral company and private military contractor funding of armed groups needs to be sorted out, other questions also deserve to be researched and resolved. Chief among these revolves around arms trading, especially the trading and shipping of small arms to regions of conflict.

80% of arms trading in the world today is considered “legal” and the US and UK sell more arms than the rest of the world combined. Is it legal to ship arms to regions of conflict when it is well documented that these arms are used against civilian populations? Just because the arms are shipped to governments or police forces, it is well documented that weapons, especially small arms, are used against civilian populations. This practice should be challenged in national and international courts, and the practice prohibited by national and international law. It is well known that small arms are the weapons of choice in Africa today and child soldiering and small arms go hand in hand. We as an activist human rights and peace building community must conduct appropriate research, tracking small arms shipments to regions of conflict and bring the appropriate legal challenges.

Not only do small arms fuel conflict, but conflict fuels small arms shipments in a symbiotic relationship that takes on a life of its own. In Northern Uganda, for instance, children who escape from armies, or are demobilized, bring their weapons with them. Soldiers and civilians alike have ready access to weapons, especially small arms. These weapons become like currency, guaranteeing high sale values. In a region where people cannot grow food due to the violence, weapons sales are a source of food security. Even when disarmament programs are underway, children and soldiers hide their weapons in trees, or beehives or bury them underground, and later trade them for cash or food. Sometimes, soldiers are killed for their weapons. Child soldiers steal weapons for relatives and friends who sell them for cash or trade them for more weapons. The prevalence of weapons as a trade commodity also ensures that Northern Uganda remains steeped in guns, making disarmament almost impossible so long as new weapons are available. Not surprisingly, many of the weapons that continue to fuel the carnage in DRC pass through Uganda.

Due to the 18-year war in Northern Uganda, many government services, including public education, have collapsed. Therefore, many children grow up illiterate and uneducated. Poverty festers. The widespread availability and use of small arms results in children learning how to use these weapons, preparing them for lives as child soldiers whether abducted or recruited.

In the same way that crack does not grow in the ghetto, guns are not manufactured in Uganda. They are shipped in by nations and companies which profiteer from arms sales and benefit from the chaos small arms create.

A multi-faceted approach to addressing the root causes of conflict through the strengthening and enforcement of international law combined with grassroots peace building may offer the best hope to prevent and end the dreadful wars that continue to plague African society.
In fact, among the best plans to end war – and hence, child soldiering - is to prevent war while managing current conflicts down. Not an easy task, but it can be best approached by regional peace building movements that combine the regional strengths of grassroots organizations, communities and institutions. Southern Africa, East Africa, and Great Lakes regions, as regions and sub regions with common histories, rich cultures and the potential for increased economic and political cooperation, need grassroots peace building movements which take a long term but consistent approach to peace building – at the community levels first. Peace building has many facets, and includes practices that embrace indigenous value systems, traditional mediation, conflict prevention and conflict management. There is a need to resolve past grievances born of colonial and post-colonial divide and rule tactics, build national as well as ethnic, political and religious identities and build trust. Former child soldiers and their organizations should also play key roles in developing and implementing peace building strategies. The increased role of women and women’s organizations in grassroots peace building is also essential.

Peace building also includes how culture is embraced, the role of indigenous leadership, how land is used, resources allocated and how all life is respected.
There is always much more to say, and the purpose of this article was not to provide all of the solutions, nor even to ask all the right questions; rather, the purpose of this discussion was to insist that all of us are responsible for the world in which we live, a world which, for too many children in Africa, is a living hell. It will go on, endlessly and horrendously until we decide that the solutions on the table are not working, and that we must do more, do it well and do it now.

A version of this article was submitted by United Movement to End Child Soldiering (UMECS) and presented at the 28 May 2004 Peace Keeping Conference at Africa University’s Institute for Peace, Leadership and Governance in Mutare, Zimbabwe, co-hosted by the United Nations. The original of this article is published on the University of Essex Children and Armed Conflict website.

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