In July, the UN holds its Conference on Small Arms in New York, which looks at how arms export controls can be tightened to prevent small arms being used to violate human rights. Tony Robinson visited Mindanao in the Philippines to look at the impact small arms are having on the island.

It might sound daft, but what impressed me most were the toilets. I was walking through an Oxfam-run evacuation camp in the Philippines with Alex Mathieson, the local manager. His sense of pride made me smile, but his toilets certainly were spick and span, and even though they serve 100 or so families they were completely devoid of pong.
We were on the beautiful island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, a potential paradise that’s been torn apart by civil war. The fighting between the separatist rebels and the Philippine army suddenly escalated last year and up to half a million people were displaced. There was mass overcrowding in schools and mosques that were hastily organised into evacuation centres. Pretty soon conditions deteriorated. As many as 60 people would be crammed into a room with little access to clean water, proper sanitation or basic healthcare. Diarrhoea, skin diseases and measles became rife. Oxfam realised that a rapid response was needed, and a major priority had to be public health. The first step was to drill wells, install hand-pumps and provide shelter. The team then began training health promoters to educate people in basic hygiene, because without it the newly-installed water facilities would be useless.

Which brings me back to those loos. They’re built from locally purchased plastic sheeting, wood and concrete. Each one is designed to service 20 people a day so they have to be able to cope with a lot of waste. They are a ‘pour to flush’ design with a U-bend and are sealed to prevent flies, creepy crawlies and unwanted odours. It’s a brand new design thought up by Zulfi, a Bangladeshi Oxfam engineer. I learnt all this standing inside one for ten minutes breathing normally so I can guarantee they’re a pretty good piece of sanitation.

While I was in the camp, I spoke to an old man called Abdi who told me he had been forced to sell all his livestock, his buffalo, chickens and goats, to buy food for his family. He owned land ready to be harvested but was too afraid to go back to it as the threat from rebels, soldiers and the civilian militia was so great. His fear was justified, backed up by a terrible story we heard later from a local Catholic priest. A couple had left their two- and three-year-old children with a relative in an evacuation centre in order to sneak back to their farmland and harvest desperately needed food. They never returned. Their cold dead bodies were discovered three days later. The father bore a gunshot wound in the head and the mother had been shot in the stomach – we were told she was seven months pregnant.” In his neat, clean hut surrounded by the small-holding he is cultivating, Abdi is at least safe until the politicians negotiate a settlement which will allow him to go home without fear of attack.

But it’s not just people’s physical needs that must be addressed. In the words of the local priest, “Video and camera lenses have captured the ugly images of this war. But they failed to capture what is going on in the hearts of the people”. The Oxfam-funded Children’s Peace Groups use art therapy and basic counseling techniques to work with children who have been traumatised by scenes of terrible violence. The specialist trainers help them deal with what they have seen and encourage them to talk about how they feel. They performed a special ceremony for us with dancing and songs and gave a resounding rendition of ‘I am peaceful’ to the tune of Frère Jacques. The only downside of the event was the ridiculous hat they made me wear.

The DFID-funded Oxfam Mindanao project has been running for eight months and supports a total of 42,000 displaced people, but there is another aspect to Oxfam’s strategy which is acted out 10,000 miles away from Mindanao back in the UK. It’s a campaign to tighten up Britain’s arms export laws.

Mindanao is an island awash with guns. Everyone buys and sells them; not just the army, the rebels, militias and security firms. 70% of the population have a locked cupboard somewhere in their house containing pistols, rifles, shotguns, and even sub-machine guns. The President of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, brought to power on a wave of people power earlier this year, says she is committed to finding a peaceful solution to the Mindanao conflict. And that’s a welcome commitment after the previous administration’s policy of all-out war. But any such fragile peace could easily be undermined by the continued influx of foreign weaponry. The British Government has already shown signs that it wants to take a lead in stemming this murderous flow, both to the Philippines and indeed to anywhere in the world where conflicts occur. The Drop the Debt campaign has shown that the UK is capable of taking the lead on issues that make a real difference in the developing world, and an international commitment to tighter gun control would be a major step towards global stability. It may make an even bigger impact on the troubled lives of the people of Mindanao than Alex’s magnificent toilets.

Tony Robinson is an actor and TV presenter.

“In an era when the world will no longer stand by in silence when gross and systematic violations of human rights are being committed, the UN is dedicated to addressing both the supply and demand aspects of the trade in small arms.”
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

• In north-eastern Kenya, the barter rate for an AK-47 has dropped from 10 cows in 1986 to its present level of 2 cows.
• In Sudan, an AK-47 can be purchased for the same price as a chicken.
• In the Philippines, local manufacturers sell machine guns on the black market for around $375 and revolvers for as little as $15.
• According to the UN Secretary-General, the death toll from small arms in most years greatly exceeds the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• In Columbia, there are around 30,000 violent deaths each year, 74% involving firearms.
• The UN Conference on Small Arms takes place from 9-20 July 2001 in New York.

Images © Michael Dunlea/Daily Express