International Arms Trade Treaty
I had mentioned at the end of my last blog that I would use this next post to discuss tips and tricks on how you can incorporate the GROW campaign into your own daily life. However, with so much happening surrounding the push for an International Arms Trade Treaty, I decided to post an update on the issue. The United Nations has been active in a month-long effort to create a treaty crafting international regulations for importing and exporting conventional weapons. Currently,the sale of bananas and smart phones is more regulated than the sale of semi-automatic weapons and tanks. The security and rights of milllions of people around the world are threatened daily by these poor regulations. Last week Oxfam together with Control Arms and Amnesty International, we handed over 600,000 signatures to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon last week calling for a strong Arms Trade Treaty. Click here to watch the video of the event.
Campaign successes so far
Support a Bullet Proof Arms Trade Treaty
Oxfam is calling on the international community
to put an end to decades of irresponsible arms deals which devastate people’s
lives. Oxfam wants to see that the new treaty place strict, unambiguous and legal
obligations on states to control the global trade in arms.
To be effective, the new Arms Trade Treaty must
include a legally-binding agreement that will prevent arms transfers that could
be used to commit human right abuses, war crimes, or hinder economic
development.
Here in the United States, critics of the treaty
fear it will impose on our constitutional right to bear arms. However a press
release issued by the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs says that "The
outcome will not seek to prohibit citizens of any country from possessing
firearms or to interfere with the legal trade in small arms and light
weapons".
U.S. Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton, said the United States would support talks towards ratifying
the treaty, ensuring that it will only deal with international trade and
trafficking. Supporting a treaty that "blocks arms transfers
to nations that violate human rights, includes rules for all conventional
weapons like parts, tanks, and bullets, and is enforceable, transparent and
effective."
The treaty is still in its drafting stage, but
here is a more specific break down of what Oxfam's key recommendations are for
the treaty-
- · To have real impact, a prospective Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) must include legally binding criteria that prevent arms transfers to abusers of human rights or into situations where there is a substantial risk that they will undermine development or exacerbate armed violence;
- · The ATT can build on existing regional and sub-regional initiatives:as of 2012, 100 countries are already party to various regional agreements that include legally binding criteria to control the trade of arms and ammunition. (See full report link below)
At
the UN General Assembly in December 2006, a huge majority of 153 governments
voted in favor of developing an Arms Trade Treaty. The following year, after
pressure from Control Arms, over 100 governments responded to a UN Consultation
on the ATT.
Three
years later in 2009, after pressure from the Control Arms campaign, 153
countries again voted to start negotiations on the Arms Trade Treaty, and to
conclude negotiations in 2012. This historic step is a major achievement for
the millions of campaigners across the world who were asking for negotiations
to start immediately.
Despite
this success, some governments want to weaken the treaty, in order to exploit
the system and continue distributing arms irresponsibly. We need to keep the pressure
on to make sure that they don’t succeed.
Act now
Other ways to help
Read the report: The Devil is in the Detail: The importance of comprehensive and legally binding criteria for arms transfers
Watch: see how the easy accessibility of weapons in Burundi is crippling its health services and making difficult for the country to develop and emerge from entrenched conflict: Bang For Your Buck
- Elizabeth Harper
- Elizabeth Harper
