The Nairobi seminar was based on the experience of the seminar one year before in Durban, but it also needed to accommodate a very different situation. For example, in Durban all the participants were experienced practitioners from mature anti-violence programs. In contrast to this, the regional participants from the Horn and East Africa included some experienced practitioners, but many others, although familiar with the gun-violence problems in their region, had not yet initiated programs of their own.

Consequently, the agenda for the Nairobi session was built around three kinds of interaction:

        > the sharing of current experience by those already engaged directly in community programs;

        > the presentation of cases (including a site visit) and background information on the situation in the Horn of Africa and East Africa;

        > a dialogue on the applicability of lessons identifies at the Durban seminar, and possible new lessons from the experience in Nairobi.

Reviewing Changes and New Directions

The first major substantive sessions in Nairobi were seven plenary presentations by organizations from outside East Africa who had participated the year before in Durban. All the Nairobi participants had received reports from the previous year’s event including general descriptions of work being done. This enabled the "outside" speakers to focus on new work undertaken in the past year and revisions to their earlier programs. This was also an opportunity to display the broad diversity of demand-side projects to the regional participants, none of whom had attended the Durban event.

The agenda alternated presentation sessions, like this first one, with small group discussions aimed at answering specific questions. After the input from experienced outside organizations, the first small group session was asked to assess the continued validity of the many lessons identified in the report on the Durban event. Groups were divided into those with mostly urban and those with mostly rural experience. While there was much intense discussion, the groups returned with very consistent results. They all felt that the lessons identified three year before remained valid and were confirmed by work in the intervening period. In addition those working in the Horn and East Africa agreed that the existing lessons were quite applicable to their own situation, and should form the basis for further discussion of their situation.

Looking at the Horn and East Africa

The seminar then turned to an extensive series of presentations and a one-day site visit presented by organizations from within the region. These intentionally focused on rural cases, such as those of traditional pastoral groups in Ethiopia and in Kenya, and on urban community violence as seen in Nairobi. The specific features of the region, particularly its reliance on pastoral agriculture, its geographic extent and weak infrastructure, the presence of several continuing wars, the lack of border control and the presence of many ethnic and religious groupings, all became very evident to participants. Evident also were the possible resources for a response to the resulting gun violence. These included the presence of an active civil society with active religious communities, the positive experience with use of traditional processes of conflict management , the interest of outside donors, and the recent expression of interest by regional governments in their Nairobi Declaration in March 2000.

The day long site visit to Garissa was a vivid expression of all of the above characteristics of the region and of its capacity to create indigenous solutions to its problems. The site was selected by the organizers to demonstrate an effective use of traditional conflict management structures to end an inter-clan conflict that had resulted in gun violence, using assault rifles, and related deaths , injuries, dislocation of families and economic destabilization. The situation could not be corrected by the Kenyan government whose authority in the region was insufficient and largely nominal. A practical end to the violence was only possible when younger clan members, interestingly both men and women called on their elders to begin negotiation and to end the conflict. Once this had been accomplished , the small arms which were owned by the clans (not individuals), were called back in by the elders. While in Garissa, the seminar participants heard from the Kenyan government’s Provincial Commissioner as well as from the mayor and clan elders. They also traveled to the outer edges of the town to talk with people displaced by the violence and who now were living in small camps and unable to pursue their normal livelihood.

Assessing the Experience

The final period of the seminar centered on small group discussions to assess the particular lessons for East Africa. The participants used two draft lists of general lessons and of lessons for east Africa and worked intently at consolidating the experience of the week. By the end of the seminar, after a full discussion in plenary, the organizers were left with a clear sense of the major new lessons for the region. (See below for the annotated list.) The seminar organizers are now collaborating on a follow-up event in Canada where these lessons will be incorporated into policy language on demand issues. This will form the basis for dialogue with governmental the delegations to the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, to be held in New York, July 8-20, 2001.