To date the Geneva Declaration has been adopted formally by 108 states, Luxemburg being the latest country to sign up. Commitment to the Geneva Declaration requires states to subscribe to measurable reductions in armed violence by 2015. It also means that states are expected to be transparent and open about the character and severity of armed violence within their borders.

More than 60 states endorse the Oslo Commitments on Armed Violence

Armed violence is a global threat to stable and peaceful development. At a conference in Geneva 12 May 2010 co-hosted by Norway and the UNDP more than 60 countries agreed to concrete measures to address armed violence. The Oslo Commitments on Armed Violence commit states to implement a number of concrete measures to prevent and reduce armed violence. Systematic monitoring and measurement of armed violence, integration of efforts to combat armed violence into development plans at all levels of government and recognition of victims’ rights are key elements. The Oslo Commitments build on those already undertaken by countries signatory to the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development and on the recommendations made by the United Nations Secretary-General in his reports on armed violence and development (A/64/228) and on developing and action agenda to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in his report “Keeping the Promise” (A/64/665).

Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre summarized the importance of the agreement: “The Oslo Commitments prove that targeted efforts to address armed violence are beginning to bear fruit. This is an important stepping stone, and in partnership with the UN, civil society and other countries, we will continue to work towards achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals.” The declaration text, list of endorsers, national statements and four very practical background papers are available at the official conference site. The Oslo Commitments build on those already undertaken by countries signatory to the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development. Preparations for the upcoming Review Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in September provide a range of opportunities to bring home the message that armed violence reduction can enable greater progress towards the achievement of the MDGs.

The coming of the Oslo Commitments conference brought many signs of increased recognition by civil society organizations of armed violence and development linkages. A range of civil society groups were able to participate in the conference in Geneva. Steps are underway to build on efforts already made towards an international civil society network on armed violence and development. A key priority of the “interim committee” established in Geneva to facilitate this is to work towards the inclusion of reference to the important cross-cutting nature of armed violence in the outcome document of the MDG Review Process in September.

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Geneva Declaration at the UN Small Arms Biennial in New York

In June both government and civil society actors presented many sidebar events in New York during the Fourth UN Biennial Meeting of States on small arms (BMS4). The Geneva Declaration Core Group organized a panel presentation on June 16 that outlined the ways that small arms control and the prevention of armed violence are intertwined, with a special focus on the recently announced Oslo Commitments http://www.osloconferencearmedviolence.no/ linking the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and violence prevention. At this meeting Norway outlined and gave the rationale for the Oslo Commitments, the Netherlands offered an inside view of the way that an active donor state approaches the funding of activities related to armed violence and development and Keith Krause from Small Arms Survey described a new Measurement Project http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/Indicators/Metrics_Paper.pdf on armed violence, including a detailed set of related goals, targets and statistical indicators. The final speaker, a representative from the NGO MAG, gave an illustrated review of practical arms collection and storage in post-conflict Burundi. Taking a different approach, on June 18 the Armed Violence Prevention Programme (WHO, UNDP and others) updated the international community on its recent research findings on priority approaches to effective violence prevention programming around the world.

Civil Society presented three related sessions. The first, organized by American Friends Service Committee http://afsc.org/program/nymro-conflict-resolution-program and the Quaker UN office, featured a practical sharing of experience between New York-based activists and civil society groups from around the world that were attending the BMS. Later some of these same groups visited a community violence prevention programme in the Harlem neighbourhood of Manhattan . In a third event, United Network of Young Peacebuilders http://www.unoy.org/ presented a panel that explored the impact of violence on youth and the ways that youth can be involved in the control of guns and the development of peaceful communities. For more on the UN BMS4 and its related activities see the website http://www.poa-iss.org/bms4/

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Dili Declaration on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding

What are the obstacles for achieving the Millennium Development Goals in fragile and conflict affected countries? What are the priorities for building sustainable peace and developing capable and accountable states? And how can international support be more targeted and effective? In a historic joint effort to seek answers to these questions, government and civil society representatives from both developing and developed countries gathered in Dili on 9-10 April 2010, hosted by the Government of Timor-Leste.

To build consensus and put international actors on the right track towards development responses that are both effective and tailored to the context of conflict-affected and fragile states, the Dili Declaration (in English and French) identifies seven goals for peacebuilding and statebuilding, and outlines concrete commitments for governments and international assistance to improve support in these processes. A synthesis report based on consultations in seven fragile states is also available. For comment on and analysis of the Dili Declaration see the News page on the GD website.

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Global: 10th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, London

Safety 2010 will bring together stakeholders in violence and injury prevention from around the world to debate, discuss and exchange information and experiences. The conference theme of "Safe and equitable communities" has been chosen to reflect the disproportionate burden from almost all types of violence and injuries that falls on poorer communities. The conference will be preceded by a global meeting of ministry of health focal points for violence and injury prevention, as well as by a violence and injury prevention meeting of ministers of health from the European region. For more information, please visit the conference website.

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A central pillar of solid advocacy and programming is evidence. Good evidence is based on solid research. The Geneva Declaration process is committed to supporting national and local-level research to inform interventions, but also to promote awareness and understanding of the risks and dangers posed by armed violence and underdevelopment. The following are examples of innovative and path-breaking research that shed light on the interconnections of armed violence and development.

Measuring and Monitoring Armed Violence: Goals, Targets and Indicators

The human, social and economic costs of armed violence are extensive and far reaching and a growing body of evidence indicates that armed violence may hinder progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and development in general. The forthcoming MDG review process (starting with the Summit on 20-22 September 2010) is an opportunity to revisit the relationship between armed violence prevention and reduction and achieving MDGs. In order to support this process, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General has recommended that clear goals, targets and indicators be created to measure and monitor armed violence. A new Geneva Declaration publications sets out a framework of goals, targets and indicators to track of armed violence and to monitor progress in prevention and reduction activities in tandem with and complementary to the MDGs and to support prevention and reduction activities. The framework is based on extensive consultations with UN agencies and specialists in various disciplines, and offers a means of comparing and measuring patterns and trends in armed violence to 2015 and beyond. The publication draws extensively on a variety of data sources and data harvesting mechanisms. It also considers the limitations and challenges associated with collecting and analyzing data on armed violence. Download from the GD website.

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Caribbean Study on Child Sexual Abuse

A study carried out by UNICEF in six Eastern Caribbean countries (Anguilla, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat and Saint Kitts and Nevis) explores the perceptions of child sexual abuse, attitudes towards the perpetrators and actions to prevent the abuse. The study details cases in which guns were used to physically threaten children or make them keep silent about the abuse.

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The Geneva Declaration process encourages all UN member states and NGOs to adopt a proactive and comprehensive approach to armed violence prevention and reduction on the ground. Fortunately, there are literally thousands of efforts underway around the world that aim to reduce violence. Many of these explicitly draw on “developmental” approaches to day-to-day violence. The selection included below only scrape the surface of what is going on every day in affected communities. To encourage learning and to improve practice, the Geneva Declaration Core Group is supporting a number of “focus countries” plan, design, implement and evaluate violence reduction activities. Information on these activities is available at the Geneva Declaration website.

Bangladesh: Changemaker works to improve opportunities for youth in Dhaka slum

In the Kamrangirchar slum in Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka, a new project set up by Changemaker aims to improve educational and employment opportunities for local youth, reducing the incentives for them to become involved in criminal or political violence. This grows out of a community security project — funded by the UK-based NGO Saferworld — which engaged local residents to identify and design responses to local security problems. The high level of crime and violence, and the lack of other opportunities for young people in the area were identified. In response to this need Changemaker has set up a youth centre, with basic computing facilities, and is helping to provide links to local employers, as well as engaging local youth to share their skills, educating each other in areas such as garment making, which will improve their chances of employment. See the Saferworld site for more information.

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Nepal: ADRA seeks to provide emotional healing to children of recent civil war

In Nepal, where thousands of children are struggling with the psychological wounds they sustained during that country’s violent 10-year civil war, a new project to assist former child soldiers and other affected children living in the Mid-Western region was launched by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA). To help many of these children recover, ADRA launched the Action for Social Inclusion of Children Affected by Armed Conflict in Nepal project (ASIC), which is designed to protect and promote the rights of war affected children, specifically former child soldiers. The project aims to improve their access to education and vocational training, employment, and psychosocial counseling. ASIC will provide literacy and livelihood training for beneficiaries, including classes in reading and writing for 4,000 children who have either never attended school, or who have dropped out. To assist these children, an estimated 100 counselors will receive training on how to work with child conflict survivors. Radio programs and other campaigns will be conducted to raise awareness regarding children’s rights, with the distribution of pamphlets, posters and booklets to reach an estimated 50,000 people. Full article (Adventist Development and Relief Agency).

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Paraguay: Preventing violence in communities and schools

The “Safer Schools, Safer Communities” model programme is to be implemented in the city of Limpio, Paraguay, starting in 2010. The Center for Judicial Studies is the local organizer, assisted by the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in Costa Rica, the original designer of the model. “Safer Schools-Safer Communities,” which was piloted in 10 municipalities in Costa Rica, is now being replicated in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and most recently in Paraguay. The programme covers three areas of action: first, the installation at the municipal level of an observatory of violence (covering traffic accidents, interpersonal aggression and domestic violence within the family): second, the "Safe Community" focus, in which civil society organizations work with municipal institutions to develop community workshops that identify needs and promote areas of action; and third, the implementation of the “Safe Schools” focus through workshops and training on violence prevention. The original articles (in Spanish) are here and here.

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Pakistan: a reform school attempts to offer child fighters chance at a new life

Military officials say most suicide bombings are now carried out by males younger than 20. Though child soldiers have toted guns in conflicts worldwide, international experts say their indoctrination and reform has been poorly researched. At a new school tucked near the fragile peace of the Swat Valley, teachers work in fear of militant attacks and of hardened students, but also in hopes of de-radicalizing the gangly boys who make up a growing part of Pakistan's insurgency. According to organizers of this boarding school, this school is providing a valuable, if small, window into the backgrounds of Pakistan's young fighters and the triggers that vault them into the hands of militants. All of the students came to the school after being captured by the army, or were brought here by their families. Some had been trained by insurgent groups as slaves or thieves, some as bombers. Full article (Washington Post).

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South Africa: Cape Town’s Gangs and the Lure of Football

In an article on the BBC website reporter Dan McDougall wrote: “I first met Martin in his role as striker of a street football league that plays each week in the shadow of Cape Town's gleaming new stadium - soon to host World Cup matches. Two years earlier, Martin had been nearby, sucking on a pipe filled with crystal meth - known here as tik - when he was asked to join in a game. The Mylife Foundation, which uses football to lure young men away from Cape Town's spiralling culture of gangs and drugs, was offering him another path and Martin soon found that the highs of goal scoring replaced the highs he craved from street drugs. ‘Everyday when I play football, my mind doesn't go back to gangsters, doesn't go back to drugs,’ he told me. Mylife's Barney Stevens, himself a former cocaine addict who now coaches the team, said: ‘While they play football, they're not out robbing, stealing, causing chaos around the city.’ Martin’s story is here and for information on the Mylife Foundation see their website.

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UK: Glasgow's Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV): promising preliminary results

CIRV is a flagship project of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, and is a multi-agency, community centred project designed to reduce violent behaviour among gang members. The approach establishes a partnership among police, social services, education, housing and community safety services. Interventions include enforcement to disrupt the dynamics within gangs involved in violence; services and programmes to provide support and life skills training for gang members who demonstrate their commitment to change, and community-wide social marketing campaigns to deliver the message that violence won't be tolerated. Preliminary evaluation shows a 49% reduction in the level of violent offending by gang members who engaged with CIRV, relative to a pre-CIRV baseline assessment. In addition, CIRV also appears to have produced an 18% reduction in violent offending by fellow gang members who did not directly engage with CIRV. Further research is under way to rigorously test these promising early findings. For more information, please visit the Initiative to Reduce Violence website.

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USA: A Powerful Idea on Youth Violence

As a former beat cop, Ron Huberman, the new chief of public schools in Chicago, learned long ago that violence among young urban people could not be solved simply by hauling ever larger numbers of children off to jail. With the prompting and support of his boss, Mayor Richard M. Daley, Mr. Huberman is trying a new approach to the violence that has killed and maimed hundreds of young people and turned Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods into precincts of terror and despair. The ambitious plan will offer mentoring, counseling and jobs to high-risk students. To determine who they are, Mr. Huberman analyzed the cases of more than 500 young people who were killed or wounded in gun violence over the last two years. The analysis suggests that nearly 10,000 of the city’s 113,000 high school students are at risk of becoming victims of gun violence and need help. New York Times website, November 4, 2009.

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USA: Gang-reforming bakery

“…The men making bread rolls or pouring muffin mixture into baking trays are former members of Los Angeles' notorious gangs….Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention programme in the US, has given them a new start in life. … It was started by Father Greg Boyle in East Los Angeles in 1988. He was tired of the violence that was wrecking whole neighbourhoods and taking too many young lives. Homeboy Industries has since grown to include a silkscreen printing business, another which sells Homeboy merchandise and a solar panel fitting operation, as well as the bakery. The industries provide just a fraction of the jobs needed for the 12,000 people who walk through Father Greg's door every year. Eight thousand of them are gang members looking for the basic education, parenting classes and numerous counselling services that Homeboys provides.” BBC News website.

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Oxfam in West Africa: an integrated regional approach to armed violence and development

Since 2003, Oxfam and its partners in West Africa have been working on an integrated conflict transformation strategy with 17 projects in 10 countries, linking development, governance and conflict. West Africa has porous borders, and the peace and security challenges faced by countries in the region are very much interlinked, making a regional approach particularly appropriate. A core element of this approach is ‘Arms for Development’ programmes, in which voluntary arms collection is run alongside assistance to communities in finding sustainable alternative livelihoods to replace those based on arms trading and possession. This can include setting up communal farms, or providing support for other income generation activities such as juice pressing. More broadly, the regional approach supports conflict reduction and management activities such as peace committees, and awareness-raising through local radio. As well as an integrated programmatic approach, Oxfam’s conflict transformation work in West Africa also includes advocacy based around the Control Arms campaign, and research on small arms and related issues. For more information see: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/countries/wafrica_conflict.html.

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For more publications, also consult the Geneva Declaration website.

Armed Violence Map Now Online

The Geneva Declaration Secretariat and the Conflict Analysis Resource Centre (CERAC) in Bogota have developed an interactive map that illustrates the scope and distribution of armed violence worldwide. Link: http://map.genevadeclaration.org/.

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Poor Parenting and Criminality

The idea that poor parenting creates candidates for criminality may be a view that ignores the cases where law-abiding citizens emerge from abusive homes. However for graduates of the UNDP/Women’s Resource & Outreach Centre (WROC) Parenting Life Skills Programme recently held in three inner-city communities in Jamaica, the connection between bad parenting and crime is worth considering. The initiative which is part of the Jamaica Violence Prevention Peace and Sustainable Development Programme caters to parents and teachers of basic school children in the Lyndhurst/Greenwich, Trench Town and Jones Town communities. See the article. http://www.wrocjamaica.org/p/bad-parenting-and-criminality

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UNIFEM: Launch of the global virtual knowledge centre to end violence against women and girls

A Global Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence against Women and Girls is launched on the 4th of March 2010 by UNIFEM. The one-stop centre will support practitioners around the world in effective design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes. The web-based site brings together lessons learned and recommended practices gleaned from initiatives in all regions, whether originating from the women’s movement, civil society organizations, governments, the UN system or other actors. The centralized database is fully searchable and available in English, French and Spanish.

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Changing Roles, Shifting Risks: Livelihood Impacts of Disarmament in Karamoja, Uganda

The Feinstein International Center is pleased to release a new report on the Karamoja region of Uganda. The report is the result of the first phase of a partnership with Save the Children in Uganda. Based on field work conducted in April 2009 in Moroto and Kotido Districts, the report examines the experiences and perceptions of communities of the present disarmament campaign carried out by the Uganda People’s Defence Force and the Government of Uganda. The authors found that, although individual experiences with disarmament were largely negative, there was overwhelming support among local communities for an end goal of complete and uniform disarmament as a means of bringing peace and economic development. Download the report.

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Video on Policing During Elections

A training video on how to police during elections according to humanitarian and legal standards has been launched by UNREC, the UN regional centre for disarmament in Africa. The French language version of this video is available on YouTube.

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Need for More information: Do you want to share information about activities that are ongoing in your country? Do you have any relevant publications that show the connections between armed violence prevention and reduction with development? If you have some information about successful projects—previous or ongoing—that you think would be relevant, please share them with our readers. To contact the editor, send an email to newsletter@genevadeclaration.org.

This newsletter is edited and distributed by the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva in order to build awareness on issues relating to development and armed violence and to increase engagement with the Geneva Declaration process. QUNO is mandated by the Geneva Declaration Core Group of states to inform civil society about the Geneva Declaration process.