Erskine invited to Eminent Persons Group

Former commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, General Emmanuel Alexander Erskine, has been invited to join the Advisory Group to Eminent Persons Advisory Group (EPG) on small arms and light weapons.

A statement issued in Accra on Thursday said General Erskine had received a letter signed by Mr Albrecht Gero Muth, Executive Secretary of the EPG, to join the Group "in order to help advance cooperation on implementation of the programme of action adopted by the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its aspects."

EPG is an international commission of 24 world notables under the co-chairmanship of former OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim and Malian President Alpha Oumar Konare, which operates along the UN Secretary-General's efforts to advance a global small arms non-proliferation regime.

The Advisory Group consists of representatives of NGOs under the co-chairmanship of Mr Owen Greene of Bradford University, UK and Mr Richard Mugisha of People with Disabilities, Uganda.

The statement said the objective of the advisory group was to avail members of the EPG of the benefit of their expertise. Their work is limited to advising members of EPG on how to advance implementation of the programme of action, especially on marketing, tracing and norms for transfer.

"Eradication of illicit proliferation depends upon cooperation among states and civil society including industry and NGOs in joint efforts to implement the programmes of action." The statement said the illicit proliferation of small arms had increasingly become a critical security issue in Ghana in recent times.

To complement the efforts of government, a number of NGOs hosted by the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa came together to establish the Ghana Action Network on Small Arms whose steering committee General Erskine chairs.

Since the end of the Cold War, Africa has experienced several unrests, which have been attributed to the plethora of small arms. Out of the estimated 49 wars fought in Africa between 1970 and 1996, small arms were the weapons of choice of 26 of them. There are more than eight million illicit small arms in circulation.