Dunblane father visits Africa's gun victims

Lokwi Akudunyag was shot in the leg and wrist

Five years ago a gunman walked into a Scottish primary school and shot dead 16 children and their teacher.

The massacre shocked the nation and led to tighter legislation on handguns in the UK.

But the fifth anniversary of the shooting is marked on Tuesday, the father of one of the Dunblane children continues his efforts to highlight the ongoing impact of guns on families' lives around the world.

Children have had to watch as people they know have been injured or killed by gunfire.
This is a group of schoolchildren, some as young as Sophie's class in Dunblane

Mick North

Mick North, 53, lost his five-year-old daughter Sophie when gunman Thomas Hamilton walked into the Dunblane Primary School gym on 13 March 1996 and opened fire.

He has now returned from a harrowing trip to Uganda with Oxfam, where he met mothers, fathers and children who come face to face with armed killers every day.

"On the one hand it was a fascinating trip but it was also very disturbing," Mr North told BBC News Online.

"There were lots of opportunities to see the devastation caused in northern Uganda by the prevalence of guns."

He met young children who had been abducted or wounded by the rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA), arms traders supplied by British brokers and villagers whose communities are raided by armed cattle thieves in the Kitgum district.

Mick North: It is a global problem

In one primary school, about 95% of the children in one class had witnessed someone being shot, including members of their family.

Other children had been forced to join the LRA and carry and use guns themselves in the fighting between rival factions.

"Only in the last 20 years it has become as deadly as now because they all have guns," he said.

"Groups won't give up guns because their enemies have them. There is a high level of gun violence and the hospitals are overburdened by people with gunshot wounds on top of everything else."

Parents' solidarity

Recent Uganda newspaper reports estimate that there are over 160,000 small arms in the town of Karamoja, in the north of the country.

Most guns come immediately from Sudan and sell at border arms markets for about £15 for an automatic rifle, £5 for a pistol and 20p a bullet.

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Mr North, who has campaigned for tighter gun control since the Dunblane shooting, said he found a close connection with a Ugandan group called Concerned Parents - families of child soldiers campaigning to get their children back.

"There was solidarity with these groups of parents doing something about what happened to their children. The message is always the same: Get the guns out and we will have stable lives again."

Mr North, a retired lecturer from Perthshire, said the unity and support of parents of children killed in Dunblane had given him and his friends strength to carry on.

He said the anniversary of his daughter's death was just another day that he desperately missed his daughter.

But he said that if it was a day that other people remembered the shootings, it was an opportunity to highlight the situation in this country and around the world today.

"We in Britain can do something about it," he said.

"It is not just a Ugandan problem, it is a global problem."

Oxfam's Cut Conflict campaign aims to introduce tighter arms export laws in the UK and across the world to prevent small arms from falling into the wrong hands.

Oxfam say 500,000 innocent civilians are killed by small arms each year.

Mr North met people who knew there were British brokers and firms involved in the supply of arms to rebel groups. He said these companies could be curbed by legislation.

He said Britain had showed how rapidly it could act when it brought in the handgun law.

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"What I'd like to see is that will also applied to the arms trade," he said.

"If there is anything we can do that will help relieve the suffering of people elsewhere, we should do it. We do it for famines and floods so why not for guns, particularly if British companies and individuals are fuelling the situation."

Oxfam, Christian Aid and other member of the International Action Network on Small Arms (Iansa) have lobbied Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to support greater international gun control and the forthcoming United Nations conference on the traffic of small arms.