SaferAfrica, partner in support for Operation Rachel IX (1)

Background: Operations Rachel, an arms destruction operations, conducted by the police of the Republic of Mozambique and the South African Police Service started in 1995. The overall aim of Operation Rachel is to locate abandoned and hidden arms caches left over from the civil war in Mozambique, and destroy their contents.

The collaboration between the two police agencies is stipulated in a presidential agreement of co-operation and mutual assistance in the field of crime combating. This agreement was formulated after both countries experienced an increase in violent crimes associated with firearms and identified that a combined crime combating strategy is necessary to curb this increase in violent crime and firearm smuggling across a shared border.

Operation Rachel IX (1) (That's the ninth(IX) year, Ops number one) commenced on the 10th August 2003 and will last for approximately three weeks. A large number of identified small arms and light weapons together with other war related material have already been identified before the operation, ready for destruction.

SaferAfrica has been following the activities of Operations Rachel for sometime now and has recently produced an updated statistical publication (PDF) (Portuguese PDF)on these destruction operations. Further more SaferAfrica and Saferworld are the official appointed agencies for developing the National Action Plan on the control of firearms in Mozambique at the request of the Mozambican Government and with the support of the United Kingdom. Therefore, it is naturally in SaferAfrica’s scope of activities on the National Plan in Mozambique to be directly involved in Operation Rachel. For this reason, when the opportunity presented itself for unconditional financial support to Operation Rachel IX (1) SaferAfrica did not hesitate to provide full support. SaferAfrica wishes to acknowledge its core Arms Unit donors, the governments of the Netherlands and of Ireland for funding its operations by which this activity is made possible.

Ettienne Hennop, Programme Officer for the Arms Unit, will attend the Operation and will supply the SaferAfrica web page with material and photo’s from the operation on his return.