IANSA welcomes the entry into force of the regional Nairobi Protocol on Small Arms and Light Weapons on 5 May 2006. The 11 countries bound by the Protocol suffer some of the highest rates of gun violence in the world. The availability and spread of weapons is one of the main factors fuelling conflict, crime, human rights abuses and under-development in the region.
This marks an important step in the move towards universal standards for protecting civilian populations across the world from gun violence. African sub-regions are taking a strong stand to prevent the gun violence inflicted on their populations. In 2004, the Firearms Protocol of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) became legally-binding, and the West African Moratorium on Small Arms is in the process of becoming an ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms.
Which countries have ratified? |
The Nairobi Protocol – key facts
It requires these countries to incorporate provisions into their national laws including the following:
- ban on civilian ownership of automatic and semi-automatic rifles
- registration of all guns
- regulation of gun storage and competency testing for prospective
- owners
- restrictions on the number of guns a person can own
- ban on pawning of guns
- uniform minimum standards regulating the manufacture, control, possession, import, export, transit, transport and transfer of small arms
- standardised marking and identification of small arms
- regulation of security companies regulation of small arms brokering
- uniform tough sentencing for unlicensed gun possession
States must also create and maintain complete inventories of state-owned small arms, sufficient to effectively trace the movement of these weapons. Requirements for secure disposal or destruction of surplus and confiscated weapons are also included.
Other resources:
The Best Practice Guidelines on Implementation of the Nairobi Protocol, adopted by the region in 2005, contain a number of important provisions that will help prevent armed violence, including an elaboration of the existing legal responsibilities of governments when authorising small arms transfers.
Foreign Ministers from the region adopted a Resolution on Small Arms on 25 April 2006, appealing to the international community to develop international norms on arms transfers, incorporating the guidelines adopted above. This is a significant step to the global harmonisation of small arm legislation urgently required to stop the flood of guns across borders. |
