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Date: 03 December 2003

A Christian Council worker cuts up some of the weapons from the amnesty. Photo: Christian Aid/Paul Hackett
'We highlight the negative impact that weapons have on a community and offer something positive in return for the weapons.'

Richard Reeve of Christian Aid partner the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM) reports on the exciting expansion of the Swords into Ploughshares project.

Building on the success of an arms amnesty project in Mozambique's southern provinces, the Christian Council of Mozambique has decided to take the scheme nationwide. The arms amnesty project TAE - meaning Transformação de Armas em Enxadas, which is Portuguese for 'turning weapons into tools' - has been operating in southern Mozambique since 1995.

The scheme enables communities and individuals to relinquish weapons caches - a legacy from Mozambique's 19 years of war - so that the weapons can be destroyed. And, in return, those who hand in weaponry are rewarded with 'incentives' and support from TAE's experts.

'It's more than about getting people to hand over weapons,' explained TAE director Forquilha Albino. 'We highlight the negative impact that weapons have on a community and offer something positive in return for the weapons.'

Those relinquishing weapons receive tools and materials for home or business use. It might be pots and pans, a bicycle, roofing or - in the case of one farming community which gave up thousands of firearms - a tractor.

'It doesn't stop there,' said Albino. 'There are many people in these communities who were child soldiers and lost their chance of having an education in anything other than war. We aim to help these ex-soldiers by training them in something they can use to earn a living.'

The success of the TAE programme is well attested, gaining plaudits from supporters in Canada, Germany, Holland, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the US. However, it has only been in recent months that TAE - in collaboration with the Mozambican government - has started to think in terms of a countrywide programme.

'The danger would have been to spread ourselves too thinly,' said Albino. 'But now we have got up the momentum, and have found what works best, we are ready to help communities throughout the country. It will be truly national.'

TAE's national plan will see them visiting increasingly remote communities, some of them several days drive north from Mozambique's capital, Maputo.

'The Tete, Manica and Sofala provinces, for example, were key areas of conflict during the war,' said Fortunato Taela, TAE's head of operations. 'These areas provide real potential to expand our programme, and we have been researching this carefully.'

Having recently returned from a field trip to northern Mozambique, Taela reported: 'We collected weapons, but the difficult terrain meant we didn't collect the size of haul we would have liked. In Tete, we visited a community who were able to pinpoint weapons for us, but we couldn't get vehicles there. We are going to places where no car has been for a very long time, if ever. We had to cross rivers and climb inclines too steep for vehicles. On foot we scraped past trees that set our skin off with a terrible itching.

'However, we plan to put our people in these provinces and we aim to supply them with the means of getting to and from the weapons' locations.'

If sufficient funds are available, TAE is hoping to be operational countrywide, with an office in each of Mozambique's ten provinces, by December 2004.