West Africa: Regional Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons Proliferation

Abstract

The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) is one of the regional economic communities (RECs) that make up the African continent and except for Cape Verde which is an island off the coast of Senegal on the Pacific Ocean, ECOWAS member states are geographically contiguous and include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. The region was marked by instability because many of the states experienced one intra-state conflict or another and one causative factor is the illicit proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALWs). The illicit proliferation of SALWs is exacerbated by porousness of West Africa’s borders fueled by corruption, increasingly sophisticated local manufacture, sometimes weak physical security and stockpile management which make the fight to control proliferation even more complex. Political leadership at the highest level in ECOWAS member states have often displayed political will in the numerous decisions against the proliferation of SALWs. The watershed year was 1998 because Heads of State and Government adopted the Declaration of a Moratorium on the Import, Export and Manufacture of Small Arms and Light Weapons. That Moratorium was transformed in to the ECOWAS Convention in June 2006 to give the fight against the illicit proliferation more teeth. In the process of implementing this instrument and other related declarations and decisions, ECOWAS has interfaced with other stakeholders including multilateral organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and its various agencies, the African Union (AU), the European Union (EU). These initiatives are having varied impacts in the ECOWAS member states. This chapter examines the dynamics of Small Arms in West Africa, explains the approach developed by ECOWAS member states and identifies some of the challenges towards controlling SALWs proliferation. This chapter uses ECOWAS interchangeably with West Africa.