Arms Availability and Violence in the Ethiopia-Kenya-South Sudan Borderland

Abstract

Is there any correlation between arms availability and violence intensification or conflict frequency? It has been reported that the proliferation of automatic rifles has increased the seriousness and frequency of conflicts over the past 40 years in East African pastoral societies. Early literature insisted that pastoral societies have been inundated with uncontrolled youth violence due to new rifles. However, much of the research shared a technologically-deterministic bias. This study focuses on the conflict dynamics of pastoral groups after the proliferation of automatic rifles to examine the relationship between arms availability and violence. I show that the pastoral peoples in the border area of Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan have controlled the extensive use of violence and maintained local order. To examine the relationship between arms availability and violence, it is important to consider the historical processes in place after the proliferation of new arms, the social and cultural contexts in which the groups with new arms are embedded, and people’s agency to control the violence.