Arms Know No Gender: They Kill Us All
WIPNET, West Africa, 24 May 2005

There are an estimated 650 million small arms in the world today. Nearly 60 percent of them are in the hands of private individuals – most of them men. The vast majority of those who make, sell, buy, own, use or misuse small arms are men. What does this mean for the world’s women and girls?

In Africa, small arms, which include rifles, pistols and light machine guns, are filling African graves in ever-increasing numbers - from the killing fields of Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the streets of Lagos and Johannesburg. While the international community searches, so far unsuccessfully, for agreement on the regulation of the global trade in small arms, a growing number of African countries, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations are grappling with the human and development consequences of gun violence.

The widespread availability of small arms to abusive actors, in West Africa as elsewhere, greatly contributes to further atrocities and makes peace and human security harder to achieve. The circulation of arms within the borders presents major human right problems in the sub region. In countries where tensions are high, weapons availability risks re-igniting or spreading conflict and associated human rights abuses. These weapons are finding their way into the wrong hands, not only leading to the upsurge of armed violence but also to the formation of new armed groups, untrained civilian militias, ill-disciplined fighters and unaccountable mercenaries. These militias, private thugs and fighters, as has been witnessed in full-blown conflict areas like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, and high volatile areas like Nigeria, routinely commit abuses against and terrorize civilians and hire out their services in conflict and after conflict from one country to the other, drawing their power from the ‘barrel of the gun’ (arms).

Although available data supports the widespread assumption that most direct casualties of gun violence are men, particularly young men, women suffer disproportionately from firearms violence, given that they are almost never the buyers, owners or users of such weapons. Large numbers of women and girls suffer directly and indirectly from armed violence. Women and children, particularly female children, are most susceptible to assault by armed elements. Women become the main breadwinners and primary carers when male relatives are killed, injured or disabled by gun violence. Women are displaced and forced to flee their homes for an uncertain future. Displaced women often face starvation and disease as they struggle to fend for their families. Women, like men, are caught in the crossfire, both in times of war and of peace. Women are particularly at risk because of their sex. They are consistently victims of molestation and sexual violence under gun or weapon point; and this has both psychological and physical impacts on their lives.

For the Women in Peacebuilding (WIPNET) program, gun violence is just another form of violence against women; and violence against women, whether committed with boots or fists or weapons, is rooted in pervasive discrimination which denies women equality with men. It occurs in a variety of contexts and cuts across borders, religions and class. This is not because violence against women is natural or inevitable, but because it has been condoned and tolerated as part of historical or cultural practices for so long.

Violence against women in the family and community, and violence against women as a result of state repression or armed conflict, are part of the same continuum: much of the violence that is targeted against women in militarized societies and during armed conflict is an extreme manifestation of the discrimination and abuse that women face in peacetime. Whatever the context or immediate cause of the violence, the presence of guns invariably has the same effect: more guns mean more danger for women.

Violence against women persists in every country and in all sectors of society. When such violence involves the use of weapons specifically designed to cause injury and death and which can fire bullets at high speed from a distance, sometimes at a rate of several bullets per second, then the risk to women’s lives increases dramatically.

Not only are women victims. Some women and young girls have been compelled to take up arms during and/or support armed conflict and generally, have in a way, unknowingly exposed their male children, at very tender ages, to armed violence through the use of ‘war-toys’ such as guns and fire-crackers; thus perpetuating the cycle of violence.

Despite the commitment of ECOWAS member countries in 1998 not to import, export, or manufacture small arms and light weapons, measures taken by both the UN and ECOWAS to reduce arms proliferation continue to be violated and flouted, with disastrous consequences for human rights and regional security. Contributing factors include lax arms export control in supplier countries, regional allies who provide cover and sometimes financing, and transnational arms traffickers motivated by profit. Against this background, many civil society groups are rising to this challenge and are in the forefront of the arms control movement. For instance, during the 5th anniversary of the ECOWAS Moratorium on the Importation, Exportation and Manufacture of Light Weapons in 2003, the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA), the Fellowship of Christian Churches in West Africa, Oxfam, Actionaid and Amnesty International (Ghana), began a campaign for the conversion of the Moratorium, from a three-year renewable and voluntary mechanism, into a lasting regional binding document - a Convention- that takes account of all international agreements on the control of small arms. This campaign is a very essential element of wider strategies to build peace and respect for human rights in West Africa, especially as the wars fought in the region has engaged children as young as 9 years old as soldiers, and dashed the hopes of thousands of women, children and men alike. Without strict control of arms and measures to protect people from their misuse, many more will continue to suffer. More people would be terrorized and compelled to leave their homes, human rights abuses would continue and people would be trapped in poverty.

Noting the horrific effect of the impact of arms on women’s peace and development, the Women in Peacebuilding (WIPNET) program, took advantage of her spread across West Africa to support her strategic partner, Oxfam, in the Control Arms Campaign by introducing the participation of women peacebuilders to the campaign. The goals of the campaign are at various levels:

• At the international level, the campaign wants governments to agree on the Arms Trade Treaty by 2006 to prevent arms from being exported to destinations where they are likely to be used to commit grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws.

• At a regional level, the campaign aims to develop and strengthen regional mechanisms to control the flow of arms based on the human rights principles and international humanitarian law.

• At a national level, the campaign hopes to improve the national mechanisms for the control, transfer and circulation of arms for better protection of people and goods in conformity with international laws, norms/conventions and standards.

• At the community level, the goal of the campaign is to reinforce security locally for the reduction of the supply, the demand and the circulation of arms.

WIPNET’s rationale for joining the campaign is found in UNIFEM’s talking points on gender & small arms. In these points UNIFEM states that small arms and light weapons impact women by increasing the level of violence women face in the public and private spheres. Small arms violate women’s human rights by excluding women from peacebuilding initiatives, violates their right to be involved in peacebuilding institutions and mechanisms that will directly affect their lives and communities. These points argue that women’s peace will always be threatened if dedicated measures are not employed to curb the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. WIPNET formally launched her participation in November 2004 with the slogan ‘Arms Know No Gender’. WIPNET hopes to contribute in achieving the community level goal of the campaign by taking it to the micro level of West African societies through grassroots women’s networks. For WIPNET, the role of these networks in their respective countries cannot be overemphasized. This is because the proliferation of arms, though a global problem, cannot be solved without internal/national action. WIPNET believes that if each country evolves its own action and internal monitoring, it would go a long way to at least, reduce the problem.

To further support this cause, WIPNET is commemorating the International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament on Tuesday May 24, 2005, by embarking on a series of activities all across the sub region. In Nigeria, WIPNET gave a press interview on the AM Express. In Liberia, Gambia and Senegal, interviews were given and awareness raised on the ‘Voices of Women’ community radio program.

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WIPNET is a program of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP). WIPNET has networks in 10 West African countries: Nigeria, Liberia,
Sierra Leone, Benin, Gambia, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea Bissau and Togo.