Despite disarmament schemes, both forcible and voluntary, there is still wide-spread civilian ownership of guns across Southern Sudan.

A lack of government capacity to ensure security means that many communities continue to own and use weapons to protect themselves, their families and livelihoods. In this context, legitimate and representative civil society organisations have an important role to play in engaging with the government to develop solutions to small arms issues that are based on the needs of local people.

Saferworld has been working in Southern Sudan since 2006 to support the formation of a network of these organisations to address small arms and community security problems in the post-war context – the Southern Sudanese Action Network on Small Arms (SSANSA). Now four years old, this network of community-based organisations covers all 10 states of Southern Sudan and represents a broad range of groups, including women, youth and churches.

SSANSA has a key role to play in providing independent oversight of the government and calling for more effective security and small arms controls. Members articulate the perceptions and concerns of the diverse communities they represent to ensure that policy and practice is responding to local needs.

SSANSA also has an important role to play in building awareness of these issues through public campaigning. For example, in the lead up to the recent general elections in April 2010 – the first multi-party elections in Sudan for 24 years – there were widespread fears that violence would escalate. To address these concerns SSANSA members organised a public awareness campaign “Elections without guns”.