Twenty-six police members of Southern African Development Community member countries have completed special training in the cross-border control of illegal firearms and ammunition. The group received their certificates of competence on Friday after completing a month-long course, the SA Police Service said in a statement. The training was aimed at equipping police members to take part in exercises to combat and eradicate the illicit manufacturing of firearms and... (GunPolicy.org)

KAMPALA-KIGALI — Uganda and Rwanda have denied statements contained in a report issued on Wednesday by the UN Security Council that the two countries had delayed to give information to officials monitoring arms sanctions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). "We have not delayed anything," Uganda's foreign minister, Sam Kuteesa told IRIN on Thursday. "What we have done is to give them information whenever they ask for it." The main concern of the report by... (GunPolicy.org)

KINSHASA — Weapons and ammunition shipped by a web of international arms traffickers are fuelling killings and torture by militia groups in eastern Congo, Amnesty International said on Tuesday. Amnesty said brokers and transporters from countries including the United States, Britain, Israel and Russia were involved in supplying arms to governments around Africa's Great Lakes region, who were then passing them on to the militias. The shipments had continued despite a... (GunPolicy.org)

The population of Bunia, the main town in Ituri district in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been through hell. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in recent years, but at least some of the guns are now being put down. United Nations peacekeepers from countries as diverse as Bangladesh and Morocco patrol this busy trading centre close to the Ugandan border and there is also a small presence of the Congolese national army. With... (GunPolicy.org)

BUNIA, Congo — "I will die in Congo," the Nigerian businessman declared. "I make so much money, I can never leave!" he explained. His Ukrainian colleague grinned in agreement. It was 2003, and the young African trader was explaining to visitors why he had braved east Congo's violence to develop a local trading firm with European and Congolese partners. Two years on, and Congolese here say there has been no let up in the race for gold and diamonds in northeast... (GunPolicy.org)

KINSHASA — More than 500 firearms were officially handed over on Thursday as part of a modern swords-into-plowshares programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In an attempt to stem endemic violence in the remote Katanga region, the guns were traded for bicycles during a week last month by a non-government organisation called Parec. The reverend Ngoy Mulunda, president of the organisation, says he intends to stage similar campaigns in other parts of the mining... (GunPolicy.org)

The proliferation of small arms and armed violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo have had a devastating effect on public health, argue Robert Muggah, a fellow of the New York-based Social Science Research Council and a senior researcher at the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, and Nicholas Florquin, a researcher at the Small Arms Survey. Without a sustained and strategic multinational effort to effectively disarm competing factions, they say, the agonising cycle of... (GunPolicy.org)

NAIROBI, Kenya — The UN on Friday denounced the trafficking of arms in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), following the seizure of a cache of munitions in Beni on Thursday by the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Kisangani/Mouvement de liberation (RCD-K/ML), who turned them over to the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC. MONUC said it would transport the munitions to Lubero, some 50 km south of Beni, where they would be destroyed. An... (GunPolicy.org)

KINSHASA — Departing Ugandan troops left behind weapons which were seized by militias fighting in Bunia, the principal town of Ituri district in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN said on Wednesday. Uganda has strongly denied the claim. Amos Namanga Ngongi, special representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the DRC, said that Ugandan officers had left behind military materiel. "On the ground, various armed groups have confirmed... (GunPolicy.org)

NAIROBI, Kenya — Africa's Great Lakes region is awash with small arms and no place more so than northeastern DRC, where traffickers are doing brisk business to the detriment of millions of peoples, three Kinshasa-based researchers commissioned by the NGO Pax Christi/Netherlands say in a preliminary report. The report titled "Proliferation and Illicit Traffic of Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Northeast of the DRC" was issued in January. It was presented to some... (GunPolicy.org)

BENI, Congo — Grace Ikombi's gun is much like 35 million other Kalashnikov rifles in circulation around the world. For all its deadliness, it is an oddly toy-like weapon. Brute simple, with only nine moving parts, it weighs just 10½ pounds. Yet it can empty a 30-round magazine in three seconds, and is powerful enough to punch holes through a man's chest from 1,000 yards away. Ikombi's gun was built for use against NATO troops in Europe. But like the dregs of other... (GunPolicy.org)

DAR ES SALAAM — Weapon trafficking by armed refugees runs rampant on many islands on Lake Victoria in East Africa, local newspapers reported Monday. Fishermen and fishmongers along the lake revealed that for the last three years refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi and Rwanda have been selling guns and pistols at low prices. A fisherman in Mwanza in northern Tanzania was quoted as saying that a gun like AK-47 was sold at about 100,000... (GunPolicy.org)