English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

The Remake of a Statecollective framework for dealing with trading of arms and control of theirillegal trading.Parliament of Nepal in collaboration with parliamentarians of other SouthAsian countries have to work for developing SAARC (regional level) ATT tocontrol proliferation of small arms, as arms trading is becoming a regionalissue with a need of a regional approach.Most of the illegal arms enter Nepal via India with more than 1800 km ofopen border between India and Nepal is providing suitable routes for thearms smugglers and illegal traders. Therefore, the government and theparliament of Nepal should develop a bilateral treaty with India to controlillegal trading of small arms.3.2 Role of the governmentControlling illegal arms trading is mainly the responsibility of thegovernment. Therefore, government must develop a special policy toimplement DDR programme. One of the main reasons of the proliferationof armed groups in Nepal is the fragile role of government itself. In thepast, the governments failed to separate criminal armed groups from thepolitically motivated armed groups. Therefore, they invited to talk thatlegitimised the armed groups and also encouraged others to form similargroups and enjoy the privileges (recognition by the government andsecurity agencies, media coverage and visibility).The government must formulate policy on small arms control linking withbroader national security policies such as development, humanitariansupport, criminal justice and urban planning (GISS 2007) to addresspoverty and reduce economic, social and human costs associated withthe misuse of small arms. Trend shows that the illegal trading of arms willeven increase in future. Therefore, the government has to be prepared todeal with this challenge.Poor security governance is one of the catalysts for abundance of smallarms. Therefore government should implement security governanceand strengthen security providers with resource, knowledge, skills andequipments. Government must oversee the arms taken by former securityforces as they retire. It has to be regulated. Politically powerful peopleare also having illegal arms and, of course, they must be ceased. Strictenforcement of law and order alone can greatly contribute to controlillegal manufacturing, distribution and abuse of arms.251