DOES THE RIGHT TO ARMS IMPEDE OR PROMOTE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

BY DAVID B. KOPEL, PAUL GALLANT & JOANNE D. EISEN*

Editor’s note: In July of 2001, the United Nations concluded a Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) in All Its Aspects, designed to address security and humanitarian threats posed by unlawful trade in these weapons. The resultant Program of Action called for a follow-up review conference to be held no later than 2006, and suggested eventually moving toward a treaty to regulate the international trade of SALW. The United States supported the goals of the Program of Action because, as negotiated, they did not undermine American sovereignty or rights enshrined in the Second Amendment. During the conference, however, delegates from several nations had sought to expand the scope of the Conference to include restricting the private ownership of weapons, which has raised concern that U.S. domestic rights could be threatened in the future. For more information, see The United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons: An Encroachment on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? by Daniel B. Pickard, avail able at http://www.fed-soc.org/Intllaw& %20AmerSov/ smallarms.pdf.

Increased regulation of SALW has received strong endorsement among many in the international community. In the following article, the authors assess this movement and address some of the substantive arguments presented by its supporters.

Introduction

In the 1960s, the United Nations resolved to “take on the development challenge.”1 The objectives were eradicating poverty, educating the ignorant, and giving each human being a broader range of life choices.2

Although some regions, such as parts of East Asia, have made spectacular progress, others, especially Africa, have not. Advocates of prohibiting the civilian possession of firearms have recently begun attempting to link failed development with the proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW).3 With the support of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the prohibition community has been conducting an intensive public relations campaign that constantly reinforces the alleged relationship.4

“Small arms” is a term of art used by the international disarmament community. As used by some gun prohibitionists, the term includes all firearms except heavy machine guns. More narrowly, “small arms” refers only to military firearms. “Light weapons” encompasses more powerful portable weapons, such as heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, some mortars, and portable anti-tank guns.5

Although prohibitionist claims are frequently stated in unequivocal terms, careful researchers acknowledge that the connection between arms and development is unclear. Even gun prohibitionists such as the authors of Small Arms Survey 2003: Development Denied hedged: “Research on this linkage is in its infancy...At the macro level, simple relationships between small arms and underdevelopment are extremely difficult to demonstrate.”6

At the simplest level, there is an obvious connection between SALW and underdevelopment: SALW are among the weapons used in war. Although wartime can be a period of economic development in countries which are producing goods for the war (as in the United States during World War II), it is rare for countries where combat is taking place to advance economically during the fighting.7 Likewise, the costs of prosecuting war are high, and war resources would better serve to promote human development. In addition, the costs of rebuilding damaged infrastructure are often high, as are the accompanying economic and human losses.

Of course warfare which removes a tyrannical government can help economic development in the long run. For example, Western Europe developed very rapidly in the two decades after liberation from the Nazis, who plundered the region for their own benefit.

However, the obvious fact that warfare impedes economic development during wartime does not mean that small arms per se impede economic development. Small arms are only some of the many tools used in warfare; other tools include aircraft carriers, missiles, heavy artillery, airplanes, poison gas, and atomic bombs. During the Cold War, the United States procured vast quantities of many types of weapons (including SALW) while enjoying tremendous economic growth. The Soviet Union also procured enormous weapons stockpiles, while development stagnated, especially after the 1950s. Accordingly, the most important variable might not necessarily be the mere presence or procurement of weapons.

Warfare often involves the procurement of large quantities of goods and infrastructure to feed and supply the fighters: food, utensils, pants, coats, hats, hospitals, medicine, and so on. These war goods also have many peacetime uses, and it would obviously be foolish to claim that the proliferation of such goods is, in itself, a cause of underdevelopment.

The same may be said for firearms. After all, in the nineteenth century, both England and the United States enjoyed phenomenal economic growth, during a period in which both countries had very few restrictions on firearms, and civilian gun ownership was widespread.8

Blaming SALW for development failure serves several political purposes. The rhetoric attempts to enlist the development community in the arms prohibition movement, and even to divert development funds into arms confiscation projects. For example, the authors of Small Arms Survey 2003 argue that “if development organizations such as the [World] Bank are to have maximum impact in the alleviation of poverty, they must give more weight to practical disarmament.”9

The countries which have been the greatest recipients of development aid, such as most of sub-Saharan Africa, are worse off today than they were half a century ago. One of the very few examples of a heavy aid recipient which is making economic progress is India, and India’s current growth seems more related to outsourcing and international communications than to development aid.

Indeed, development aid has been persuasively critiqued for retarding economic development: the aid tends to flow to the kleptocracies which govern most of the Third World, and the kleptocracies use the aid to buy political support, particularly among the urban elite. Relatively little aid reaches the intended beneficiaries; the aid that does reach the needy is controlled by the kleptocracy, and thus promotes dependence on the corrupt government. Not every international aid program has been a disaster, and some have been helpful. But, on the whole, development aid has failed.10

Another political constituency with a great interest in blaming SALW for underdevelopment is Third World governments. Because most Third World countries are governed by force rather than by consent, Third World governments have an interest in disarming their subjects.

In this article, we shall demonstrate that underdevelopment is largely the result of poor governance—including governance which promotes the spread of infectious disease. SALW may exist in underdeveloped countries, but they are generally not a causal factor in underdevelopment.

Part I of this article provides background on the history of development in the Third World. Part II examines two major impediments to economic development: the infectious diseases of malaria and AIDS. The former is a disaster manufactured by First World political correctness; DDT prohibition is scientifically indefensible, and is responsible for millions of deaths every year.11 The latter is a product of poor leadership that continues to ignore scientific research, and has created a medical problem of horrific proportions. Malaria and AIDS kill an estimated 4 million people, worldwide annually, between approximately 7 to 11 times the number killed by SALW.12

Part III turns to the heart of the development problem: bad governance.13 We examine two case studies: Zambia and Kenya. Blaming small arms exacerbates the problem of poor governance, because the focus on small arms helps bad governments distract attention from government policies (such as gross corruption and ethnic persecution) which do cause underdevelopment. By providing the means to remove harmful governments, SALW may be part of the solution to underdevelopment.

I. Background

If small arms impede development, then the data should show that development proceeds faster before the proliferation of small arms than afterwards. However, the data do not support the hypothesis that more small arms leads to less development.

Scholars have noted that the prevalence of small arms began to increase in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, Alejandro Bendaña, director of the Center for International Studies in Nicaragua, described the timing of the arms flow into Latin America: “During the Cold War, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons poured into Central America...After the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, Central America became a hot battleground of the Cold War, and the region became armed to the teeth.”14

The prohibition community agrees that SALW availability dramatically increased at the conclusion of the Cold War in 1989. The first edition of Small Arms Survey, published in 2001, noted: “There have been ominous reports documenting the proliferation of millions of small arms and light weapons as the world’s major military powers reduced their armed forces or, as in the case of the former Soviet Union, collapsed outright.”15 According to Michael Klare, Director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies, “the end of the Cold War has left the world with huge quantities of surplus weapons—many of which have begun to seep into world markets via licit and illicit channels.”16 Disarmament activist Lora Lumpe explained: “Several trends in the 1990s gave prominence to the issue of gun-running. Newly opened borders, massive post-Cold War arms surpluses and the rapid expansion of free trade contributed to arms availability and the ease of smuggling.”17

Clearly the proliferation of SALW in the 1980s escalated during the 1990s. If the presence of SALW were the key impediment to development, then economic development18 should have faltered only after the increased availability of such weapons in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s. However, the failure of development in much of the Third World was well-established by the early 1970s.19

A. Latin America

Referring to Latin America, Albert Hirschman, a developmental economist at the School of Social Science of the Institute for Advanced Study, asked in 1961, “where lies the responsibility for our lag? In ourselves or in the outside world which exploits us?”20

The same year, President John F. Kennedy, addressing the failure of older programs, created the Alliance for Progress, an assistance program for Latin America “designed to make the benefits of increasing abundance available to all.” Congress allocated $500 million for the new effort and President Kennedy hoped that “the close of this decade will mark the beginning of a new era….”21 A few years later, Lauchlin Currie, a world-renowned economist, observed: “The accelerated rate of deterioration [of development] during the past four years...is particularly alarming, as it coincides exactly with the period of the Alliance for Progress.”22 As Currie noted, “In Colombia...there is considerable evidence that not only has inequality grown but that the condition of the peasant has worsened….”23

In 1971, ten years after Kennedy began the Alliance for Progress, Raúl Prebisch, an international development economist, remarked:

“Thirty years ago you could have said ‘Well, let’s wait for a few decades; this process of development will gradually improve the lot of the whole population.’ But that has not come to pass.”24

In 1976, Celso Furtado, Brazil’s most influential economist of the 20th Century, noted about the 1950s and 1960s: “the figures show that the pace of growth of the regional economy has not even been sufficient to maintain the region’s relative position in the world economy.”25

Significantly, the disappointing results of failed development in Latin America all occurred prior to the proliferation of weapons in that region. During the 1950s and 1960s, there were many armed changes of government in Latin America, but they were mostly military coups, and therefore unrelated to the modern campaign against arms possession by civilians. There were some cases of long-running revolutionary warfare—most notably Ché Guevera’s failed effort to lead a Communist revolution in Colombia. However, a few cases of unsuccessful revolution in Latin America cannot explain the region-wide economic failure in the 1950s and 1960s.

B. Sub-Saharan Africa

A similar pattern of failed development prior to the influx of SALW can be seen in sub-Saharan Africa.26 The Lagos Plan of Action, adopted in 1980, explained, “The effect of unfulfilled promises of global development strategies has been more sharply felt in Africa....Thus, Africa is unable to point to any significant growth rate, or satisfactory index of general well-being, in the past 20 years.”27

The 1981 World Bank report was gloomy about “Africa’s disappointing economic performance during the past two decades.”28 The report stated: “for most African countries, and for a majority of the African population, the record is grim and it is no exaggeration to talk of crisis. Slow overall economic growth, sluggish agricultural performance coupled with rapid rates of population increase, and balance-of-payments and fiscal crises—these are dramatic indicators of economic trouble.”29

William Easterly (professor of economics at New York University and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development) and Ross Levine (professor with the Finance Department at the University of Minnesota) also confirmed the early failures of African development: “Africa’s economic history since 1960 fits the classical definition of tragedy: potential unfulfilled, with disastrous consequences.”30

C. Summary

Development failure long pre-dated the influx of SALW into undeveloped countries. Therefore, the lack of development cannot logically be attributed to SALW in the hands of citizens. In fact, the World Bank stated: “the key root cause of conflict is the failure of economic development.”31 In other words, the arms prohibition community has causality backwards: the “key root cause of conflict,” and hence the reason for the use of SALW in such conflicts, is the absence of economic development.

The World Bank elaborated: “Economic development is central to reducing the global incidence of conflict....”32 The Bank described the vicious cycle of “the conflict trap,” wherein countries which have already sunk into violent conflict tend to see such conflicts recur.33 However, when the arms prohibition community describes such conflicts, it invariably casts the blame on ownership of SALW by so-called “non-state actors” (the prohibitionists’ term for “citizens”). As the Bank more accurately observed: “War retards development, but conversely, development retards war.”34

Accordingly, one effective strategy in reducing armed conflict would be to address the root causes of the conflict, by ending the terrible economic conditions which cause the desperate resort to civil war.

II. The Burden of Infectious Disease on Development

The hindrance to development from infectious and parasitic diseases35 dwarfs any drag on development accruing to the civilian possession of SALW. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the year 2002, infectious and parasitic diseases killed 11,122,131 people, worldwide.36 Shockingly, the United Nations has taken a lead role in hindering the prevention of malaria.

A. Malaria

Malaria infects up to a tenth of the world’s population,37 who suffer 300 million to 500 million episodes each year.38 In the process, it destroys much of the human capital necessary for economic growth. According to the WHO’s statistics, malaria alone was responsible for 1,222,180 deaths,39 but the annual figure may sometimes rise to up to 3 million deaths.40 The World Health Organization reported that, of the deaths in 2002, 1,098,999 were children under the age of five.41

The high number of deaths are only the beginning of malaria’s devastating impact on development. Because the disease does not discriminate between rich or poor, it deters investment in areas where malaria is endemic. The labor market uncertainty caused by the risks of malaria deaths often causes farmers to plant crops which are quick and easy to harvest, rather than crops which would yield greater income to the farmer.

The link between malaria and poverty is well-established. In 1958, Nobel Laureate in Medicine T. H. Weller stated: “It has long been recognized that a malarious community is an impoverished community.”42 Or as the World Health Organization stated, malaria is “a major constraint to economic development.”43

John Luke Gallup44 and Jeffrey D. Sachs45 reported that “countries with intensive malaria grew 1.3% less per person per year, and a 10% reduction in malaria was associ-ated with 0.3% higher growth.”46 Further, “Not only are malarial countries poor, but economic growth in malarial countries over the past quarter century has been dismal. Growth of income per capita from 1965 to 1990 for countries with severe malaria has been 0.4% per year, while average growth for other countries has been 2.3%, over five times higher...More than a third of the countries with severe malaria (11 out of 29) had negative growth from 1965 to 1990.”47

Every year, mortality from malaria kills approximately twice as many people as do all small arms and light weapons.48 If we make assumptions which maximize the total numbers of SALW non-fatal woundings, malaria morbidity49 is between 46 and 77 times greater than SALW morbidity.50

There exists a range of disability for malaria survivors. The largest segment of malaria victims is young sub-Saharan African children, who comprise 70 percent of malaria deaths. Many of the children who survive malaria become learning-and neurologically-disabled.51 According to Joel Breman of the National Institutes of Health, there are about 600,000 persons each year who contract the cerebral form of malaria;52 about 5-20 percent (approximately 30,000-120,000) of the survivors “may have gross neurologic sequelae” such as “generalized seizures, paralysis, speech and behavior disorders, hearing impairment, blindness, epilepsy and cerebral palsy…. Decreased ‘executive functions’ (i.e. the ability to initiate, plan, and carry out tasks) were some of the other deficits found.”53

Other researchers have found that malaria in pregnant women predisposes them to bear low-weight babies, many of whom also have lingering medical complications.54 It has also been recently discovered that women with malaria who are also HIV-positive are more likely to transmit HIV to their unborn children.55 According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, “Malaria is one of the greatest barriers to Africa’s economic growth....”56 The problem is likely to worsen, because the malaria bacteria are increasingly resistant to existing drugs, and there is insufficient research being conducted for new drugs. UCLA’s Diane Birnbaumer and Anne Rutkowski noted: “Both the sharp increase in plasmodium resistance to existing antimalarials and the dearth of research dedicated to the development of new antimalarials signal the potential for an uncontrolled malarial epidemic.”57

As the world teeters on the verge of “an uncontrolled malarial epidemic,” diverting development resources into gun confiscation does not appear to be a wise use of resources.

In some areas, malaria could be greatly reduced by introducing fish which eat mosquitoes.58 This strategy is not practical on a large scale at the present time. By the time it becomes viable in the future, if ever, millions of lives will have been lost.

The sine qua non of preventing the imminent “uncontrolled malarial epidemic” is DDT.

It is arguable that broad-spectrum use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane) for agricultural purposes during the mid-20th century was harmful to the environment. But rather than limiting DDT use, the United Nations is actively encouraging a worldwide ban on DDT.59 Donald Roberts, professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine/Biometrics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, warns:

We are now facing the unprecedented event of eliminating, without meaningful debate, the most cost-effective chemical we have for the prevention of malaria. The health of hundreds of millions of persons in malaria-endemic countries should be given greater consideration before proceeding further with the present course of action.60

Roberts and his co-researchers demonstrated that there is a “powerful relationship between DDT-sprayed houses and malaria rates…when large numbers of houses are sprayed with DDT, malaria rates decline….”61 They explain the difference in safety between the spot use of DDT in homes and the previous indiscriminate use of the chemical in agriculture. They point out that, “On a landscape scale, a sprayed house represents an infinitesimally small spot treatment of a closed and protected environment (the house).”62

Currently, the United Nations and the gun-prohibition NGOs are trying to eliminate guns from civilian homes, because of the danger that they supposedly cause to children. But in terms of the number of children killed, brain-damaged, or otherwise crippled, malaria-bearing mosquitoes are a vastly greater threat to the children of the world. Yet the United Nations, by promoting DDT prohibition, is attempting to deprive Third World families of a major tool which they could use to protect the children in the home from malaria.

The callousness of the UN’s DDT-prohibition campaign is almost unfathomable. The environmental risks of in-home spraying of DDT are slight; the devastation of malaria is enormous.

B. HIV/AIDS

In 2002, HIV/AIDS was responsible for 2,821,472 deaths.63 Thus, AIDS kills between 5 and 6 times as many people worldwide as do SALW.64 Over 370,000 of the annual AIDS deaths are children under the age of 5.65 The death toll from AIDS will keep rising in the foreseeable future because the number of new HIV infections is increasing faster than the number of persons dying. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, there were 2.3 million deaths from HIV/AIDS in 2003, and about 3.2 million new cases diagnosed.66 According to Peter Piot, head of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/ AIDS (UNAIDS), “We are only at the beginning of the impact of AIDS, certainly in Africa.”67

In Malawi, where the average life expectancy was projected to rise to 57 in 2010, life expectancy has now been revised downward to 43 years.68 The BBC reported that “the country’s worst famine in living memory” was, in large part, the result of AIDS.69 Thengo Maloya, minister for lands, physical planning and surveys, admitted that, because of AIDS, his office suffered a deficit of 800 employees. Workers who remained were physically weakened and unable to work regular hours.70

The staggering toll of AIDS deaths has caused a decline in the Human Development Index, because one of the factors comprising the HDI is life expectancy.71 According to Human Development Report 2003, “In recent decades the greatest shock to development has been HIV/AIDS....By killing and incapacitating adults in the prime of their lives, it can throw development off course....Much of the decline [of the HDI] in the 1990s can be traced to the spread of HIV/AIDS....”72

In addition, much of the decline in the rate of economic growth can be traced to HIV/AIDS. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), “Recent estimates indicate that the pandemic has already reduced national economic growth rates across Africa by 2 to 4 percent a year.”73

The number of deaths and the debilitation from illness directly impact developing economies by reducing the quality and the quantity of the work force.74 Food production is a prime example. For example, in Zambia, it was recently noted that there was a 53 percent reduction in crops planted by farming families who had a member chronically ill with AIDS.75 The FAO reported that up to 70 percent of farms have lost workers due to HIV/AIDS.76 Also according to the FAO, “Hunger is on the rise again after falling steadily during the first half of the 1990s....”77

While AIDS has been increasing, armed conflict has been decreasing. Monty Marshall78 and Ted Gurr79 have documented a dramatic decline in the number and magnitude of armed conflicts in the late 1990s. Therefore episodes of SALW violence decreased in the late 1990s, compared to the first half of that decade. It is illogical to claim that the recent decline in the agricultural sector of Africa’s economy in Africa is due to SALW; to the contrary, armed conflict using SALW has dramatically declined during the same period when the devastation from AIDS has dramatically risen.

Malaria has been retarding development for decades, and now AIDS is further impeding development. The severity of the African AIDS problem is widely recognized: “The scale of devastation caused by HIV/AIDS is unmatched….”80 “By continuing to devastate Africa’s economies, communities, and development, HIV/AIDS has undoubtedly become Africa’s biggest challenge.”81 “[T]he HIV-AIDS pandemic [is]....the paramount threat to development in the region.”82 “AIDS has vastly compounded Africa’s struggle for development....The effects of AIDS in Africa are eroding decades of development efforts....AIDS is now recognized as one of the developing world’s largest impediments....”83 “The churches in Africa consider HIV/AIDS to constitute the biggest challenge to their mission....”84

This unchecked epidemic is largely due to the failure of global leadership. In 2004, the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, included a leadership symposium which admitted that failure: “We acknowledge that we have failed to provide enough information, education, prevention tools and technologies, treatment, care and support. Our inability to ensure human rights, equity, opportunities, and a supportive and enabling environment for all has helped to fuel the epidemic.”85

Much of this failure is due to government corruption which has starved local communities of needed funds by siphoning off huge percentages of donated monies; for example, up to 30 percent of World Bank funds donated for AIDS drug are stolen by corrupt governments.86 The theft has created an atmosphere of mistrust among donors that has led to a reduction in funding.87

These serious problems are hardly acknowledged by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. A recent report by Annan88 provoked the following response from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network:

The focus on leadership obfuscates underlying issues of governance and accountability of leadership and government in countries with a weak response to HIV/AIDS. The Report does not address the reasons why donors may be reluctant to provide the necessary resources to governments, including poor governance, corruption and incompetence in managing funds.89

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa exemplifies government obstruction to efforts that might ameliorate the HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to the New York Times, his most glaring failure is “his obstinate refusal to urgently address his nation’s AIDS epidemic while H.I.V. spread to more than five million South Africans.”90 Instead, Mbeki denies that HIV causes AIDS, and has restricted the use of anti-HIV drugs.91

It is not just the people of South Africa who suffer poor leadership. According to Dr. Khin Saw Win,

It is now well accepted in public health circles that the Burmese HIV epidemic is one of the world’s fastest growing and most pervasive….The junta’s refusal to recognize the epidemics [sic] clearly indicated that this political and humanitarian crisis is caused by their massive mismanagement, corruption and policy failure.92

IV. Good Governance

The most fundamental cause of underdevelopment is bad governance. Warfare and SALW are merely symptoms of the disease of bad governance. In the right hands, SALW are the cure for the disease, and hence the cure for the most important cause of underdevelopment.93

Theoretically, countries like Zambia or Kenya could have reasonable gun laws which say: “Everyone may receive a gun permit, unless he or she has one of the following disqualifying convictions….” Indeed, the gun laws in Britain’s former African colonies often approximated this statutory model, based on Britain’s gun laws of the 1920s. The problem is that in a country with pervasive corruption and police abuse, it is difficult to make a gun licensing system work fairly. The licensing system is more likely to inhibit good people (peaceful political dissidents, or ordinary citizens who can not afford the necessary bribes) than to prevent evildoers from acquiring arms (at least the evil-doers who are part of organized crime groups, and already adept at bribing the police).

In any case, the security concerns of tyrannical government will still be paramount. As a study by the National Academies of Science recently observed, in an American context, “Because of the pervasiveness of the variety of legal and illegal means of acquiring them, it is difficult to keep firearms from people barred by law from possessing them.” 94

However, the existence of black markets does not mean that every person who legitimately needs a gun may be able to acquire one. Twentieth century history is replete with histories of genocide victims who were not able to arm themselves, or who, like the Jews in Eastern Europe, were extremely underarmed.

In this article, we do not mean to settle the question of whether the U.S. government, or other humanitarian-minded entities, should actively supply arms to freedom-fighters against tyrannical regimes, or to ordinary citizens in tyrannical regimes, who might at least be able to use arms to resist further depredations by government-allied thugs.

But it should be recognized that as long as government corruption and self-dealing persist, economic progress will be very difficult, or even impossible. As long as the international community tolerates these conditions, underdevelopment will persist.

As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has observed: “good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development.”95 As the UN now acknowledges, human rights and economic liberty are essential to economic development: “Good governance is essential for sustainable development. Sound economic policies, solid democratic institutions responsive to the needs of the people and improved infrastructure are the basis for sustained economic growth, poverty eradication and employment creation.”96

A. Hindered Development in the Absence of Armed Conflict and SALW: The Case of Zambia

Zambia is an example of a country in which development should have been robust, but was just the opposite, despite the absence of SALW and armed conflict, and despite relatively low violence rates.97 When Zambia achieved independence in 1964, there was reason for hope. Rich with copper deposits,98 and with a healthy agricultural sector, Zambia received $3.2 billion in development aid from the World Bank.99

Zambia’s people are now among the poorest in the world. With the country’s debt at $5.4 billion as of December 2002,100 with HIV/AIDS and malaria decimating the productive population,101 life expectancy has dropped to 33 years for men, and 32 years for women.102 Eighty percent of the population live on less than a dollar per day.103 According to the World Bank, in the early 1990s more than 40 percent of Zambia’s population was undernourished; by 1999-2001, undernourishment increased to almost 50 percent.104

In Zambia, it would be inaccurate to claim that the presence of SALW contributed to the decline of the economy. While Zambia does have some violent crime, its effect pales compared to other development obstacles, such as excessive government control over the economy105—a problem which has afflicted most of sub-Saharan Africa since independence.106

Poor governance—specifically theft of the country’s resources for personal and political gain by the country’s leaders—has greatly hindered development. Zambia’s history of corruption dates back to its first dictator-president, Kenneth Kaunda.107 Kaunda’s long record of thievery has been eclipsed, however, by his successor, dictator-president Frederick Chiluba. According to the BBC, Chiluba has “bled the national treasury” and “is diverting state funds into privately held accounts.”108

Corruption is not limited to the upper echelons of society. The national government is plagued by “ghosts”—people on the payroll who do not exist, and yet whose salaries are diverted. As the BBC noted, “In the past month, the main Zambian civil servants’ union has called for a crackdown on what it says are more than 20,000 ghost workers, contributing to a budget over-run of 600bn kwacha (£80m; $132m).”109

Current President Levy Mwanawasa, who was sworn into office in January 2002, has attempted to repair the damaged economy, and has made revitalization of the country’s agricultural sector his priority.110

If Zambia today has a problem with arms, the problem appears to involve a violent, unreformed, and abusive police force. The Times of Zambia wrote in December 2004:

The high-handedness exhibited by members of the Zambia Police Service during the failed demonstration last Monday says a lot about how much the people’s police have veered off from the reforms embarked on several years back….the amount of force applied on demonstrators appears to heighten fears that after all not much has changed at all. There was no iota of a show for respect for human rights during the operation on the failed demonstration. With impunity, defenceless people were clubbed and kicked, some of them struck with hard objects and they bled.111

B. Hindered Development: The Case of Kenya

Kenya, rich in natural resources, is another example of a country in which development should have proceeded robustly but did not. Like Zambia, Kenya imposed centralized state planning, under the pretext of efficiency and fairness; as the Kenyan government wrote in 1965, “African socialism must rely on planning to determine the appropriate uses of productive resources….”112

In practice, centralized control of the economy became a mechanism for the government and its allies to engage in self-dealing. From the beginning of independence from Great Britain in 1963, the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, ruled in a brutally repressive manner, eliminated political rivals, and abused the power of government in order to favor political and ethnic cronies.113 The single-party rule imposed by Kenyatta made corruption endemic.114

Kenyatta’s successor, President Daniel arap Moi continuted the practice during his 24-year reign. The BBC blamed Moi for “exacerbating the culture of corruption that has crippled Kenya’s economic development.”115 Moi and other corrupt officials siphoned over four billion dollars out of the country.116

It has been estimated by the BBC that the cost of corruption in Kenya is $1 billion each year—nearly one-fourth of the country’s annual budget.117 A survey by Transparency International found that every month an ordinary Kenyan must pay an average of 16 bribes, just to carry on normal life.118

Corruption became so grotesque that, by 2001, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund cut off the flow of money to the Kenyan kleptocracy. In December 2002, Mwai Kibaki won the presidency in a landslide, giving him a mandate to curb the corruption that has plagued the country. Kibaki admitted that “Corruption has been one of the key problems with governance in the country....”119 Even Kenya’s top judges are corrupt; for the right price, a murderer or a rapist can buy his or her way out of trouble.120 Kenya also suffers from the problem of “ghost” workers.121 Corruption remains a persistent problem, and the civil “service” continues to loot the nation.122

Like Zambia, Kenya can hardly blame its four-decade development disaster on the ownership of SALW by “non-state actors.” Kenya has seen occasional tribal conflicts. But as Gurr observed, “There is much evidence that the fighting was deliberately instigated by the government....”123 President/dictator Daniel arap Moi promoted violent ethnic unrest, because tribal conflicts distracted the majority population directing their justifiable anger at abusive, centralized state power.124

In post-colonial Kenya, the most significant perpetrators of armed killings have been the Kenyan police. For example, in 1991, up to ninety percent of people shot dead in Kenya were shot by police.125 As the BBC reported, President Moi “kept the Kenyan police busy rounding up all suspected enemies of his regime.”126 The police force remains extremely corrupt and violent, and prone to torture, rape and murder.127

Today, Kenya does suffer a great deal of criminal violence involving SALW. But the root cause, suggested the BBC, is “mass unemployment.”128

Kenya’s weapons laws, however, mean that “Most security guards in Kenya are armed with wooden clubs (rungus) and whistles while others have bows and arrows. On the other hand, criminals are armed with guns that have found their way into the country from the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia.”129

Ordinary Kenyans are not even allowed to possess bows and arrows. Kenya’s Coordinator of the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (Nacada), Joseph Kaguthi, has “called for the repeal of laws barring Kenyans from keeping bows and arrows in their homes, saying this would enable them to defend themselves against robbers, who were drug abusers…Kenyans had become defenceless in the face of increasing crime….Kaguthi said laws that bar the carrying of traditional weapons were applied discriminately…”130

Once known as “the jewel of Africa,” Kenya’s current economic and crime disaster is the result of four decades of tyranny. In retrospect, it was a mistake for the world diplomatic community, including the United Nations, to treat Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, Kenneth Kaunda, and Frederick Chiluba as if they were legitimate heads of state, when they were in truth nothing more than extraordinarily successful organized crime bosses.

Conclusion

The Small Arms Survey 2003: Development Denied argues that firearms ownership by so-called “non-state actors” stunts human development.131 We suggest instead that corrupt and dictatorial government is a better explanation of underdevelopment. We have documented a reduction in annual growth rates by between 3.3 and 5.3 percent as a result of African government malfeasance on dealing with malaria and AIDS.

The 2004 annual report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) highlights the man-made tragedy of underdevelopment: “Chronic hunger plagues 852 million people worldwide…Hunger and malnutrition cause tremendous human suffering, kill more than five million children every year, and cost developing countries billions of dollars in lost productivity and national income.”132

As Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights133 states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing….” The governments which keep their victim populations hungry and diseased are the true obstacles to development. Empowering victim populations is an essential precondition to development, and dis-arming victim populations, leaving them helpless against tyrants, simply makes things worse.

On the outdoor pavilion of the UN grounds in New York City is a huge sculpture of a revolver with a knotted barrel.134 The sculpture symbolizes the UN’s current efforts to disarm the people of the world (or as the UN calls them, “non-state actors”). We suggest that it is time to discard that twisted sculpture which celebrates the destruction of a human right.

The UN and the rest of the international community should stop trying to disarm the victims of tyranny. It is time for the international community to return its attention to the noble goals on which the UN was founded—the protection and advancement of human rights for all—in order to create conditions that optimize the potential for development of all the peoples and all their countries.

* David B. Kopel is the Research Director, Independence Institute, Golden, Colorado. www.davekopel.org. He is the author of The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? (1992). Co-author of Gun Control and Gun Rights (NYU Pr. 2002). Editor-in-Chief of the Journal on Firearms & Public Policy. In 1981-82, Kopel served as head of the Brown University chapter of Oxfam-America, an international aid and relief organization. His writings on international firearms issues have appeared in the S.A.I.S. Review and the Small Arms and Human Security Bulletin. Paul Gallant is a Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute. www.independence institute.org. Joanne D. Eisen is a Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute. www.independenceinstitute.org. She is co-author (with Kopel and Gallant) of numerous articles on international gun policy in publications such as the Texas Review of Law & Politics, the UMKC Law Review, National Review Online, and Brown Journal of World Affairs.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous advice and comments of Dr. Jeffrey Miron, Professor of Economics, Boston University. We especially emphasize that the opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ alone, as are any errors.The authors would like to dedicate this Article to the memory of Alan G. Eisen, a devoted husband who admired and supported Joanne’s scholarship, and whose love of freedom and truth continues to inspire us.

Footnotes

1 UNICEF, THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN 1996 ch. 3, http:// www.unicef.org/sowc96/1960s.htm.

2 See AMARTYA SEN, DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM xii (2000)(“Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency.”) See also LAUCHLIN CURRIE, OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT 2 (1967); UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 1995 11 (1995) (“Human development thus has two sides. One is the formation of human capabilities—such as improved health, knowledge and skills. The other is the use people make of their acquired capabilities—for productive purposes, for leisure or for being active in cultural, social and political affairs.”).

3 SMALL ARMS SURVEY 2003: DEVELOPMENT DENIED 3 (2003)( “This edition of the Survey documents how small arms availability and misuse can undermine the prospects for human development.”) Small Arms Survey (SAS) describes itself as “an independent research project located at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.” Since 2001, it has annually published a SMALL ARMS SURVEY. Each yearly volume is widely quoted in the disarmament community, and is devoted to negative aspects of civilian possession of firearms.

4 See, e.g., United Nations: Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Small Arms, Wrong Hands, PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER