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Kids, Guns, and Gangs
The failure of public security can give rise to the potentially explosive combination of kids, guns, and gangs in urban areas. In the absence of effective law enforcement, well-armed, organized gangs, many of which are financed by lucrative drug trafficking, control city streets and neighbourhoods. For example, in Cape Flats, South Africa, an estimated 130 armed gangs with 100,000 members cause 70% of all crime. Some gangs have expanded into organized criminal empires with thousands of members, complex organization, and aggressive recruitment strategies, competing in open armed combat for territorial expansion.
These trends underline the need for robust and effective security sector reform. Efforts to develop more responsive law enforcement have led to innovations such as community policing, in which local residents and police work together over time to establish relationships of mutual cooperation and trust. In Bogotá, Colombia, community policing has helped to cut homicide rates in half in the past decade, and has inverted community perceptions of the police, from predominantly negative to overwhelmingly positive.
The affordability and availability of small arms in cities means that some gangs are better armed than police. Many of these guns end up in the hands of children living in slums, who are at heightened risk of gang recruitment. Between 1978 and 2000, more people, particularly children, died in armed violence in the slums of Rio de Janeiro than in Colombia, a country that is actually experiencing civil conflict. Yet urban armed violence is largely neglected by international actors.
An exploration of the human security risks faced by children growing up in slums is overdue. In the past two decades, a substantial international framework has emerged to protect war-affected children and child soldiers. A focus on these “urban child soldiers” calls into question the distinction between urban and rural settings of armed conflict, and calls for special protection for these vulnerable civilians.
For more about “kids, guns, and gangs” download the 2006 DFAIT discussion paper, “Freedom from Fear in Urban Spaces”!
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