Parliamentarians from ECOWAS Member States and small arms experts gathered in Lomé, Togo, on 14 December 2009, for a capacity-building workshop focusing on the theme “International and Regional Instruments on Small Arms Control – How to make use of them on the national level”.
This workshop aimed at raising awareness among parliamentarians on international, regional and sub-regional instruments and policies on small arms and light weapons. It also pursued the objective of providing them with a better understanding on their role in ratifying international instruments, developing national legislations, domesticating international, regional and sub-regional instruments on small arms as well as overseeing the existing control regime of these weapons.
Parliamentarians from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape-Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo attended this workshop; as well as experts from AWEPA International, the Group of Research and Information on Peace and Security (GRIP), the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations.
Participants concluded that the creation of a network of parliamentarians of ECOWAS Member States on small arms control, advocacy, awareness-raising among the population, an effective parliamentary oversight of the security sector and a stronger participation of parliamentarians in international meetings on small arms would promote the ratification and domestication of international and regional instruments on small arms control.
The holding of this workshop is as a result of a partnership between the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Regional Office for Security Policy headquarted in Abuja, Nigeria and the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa (UNREC).
The full outcome document (in French) is available here http://unrec.org/focus/unrec-fes.pdf
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