It’s urgent!
The international arms trade is on the increase. Recent numbers from Small Arms Survey show that global trade of arms on the legal market is worth more than 1.58 billion dollars a year. The trade in small arms and appertaining ammunition increased by 28% from 2000 to 2006. Norway is part of this reality. The state of Norway owns 50% of the arms company Nammo, one of the biggest ammunition producers in the world.
The control of international arms trade is insufficient. The consequences are serious. Each day more than 2000 people die from armed violence. In total, this represents 740,000 people annually . Most of the victims are outside armed conflict areas. Thus war is only one of many forms of armed violence. Crime and politically motivated violence are just as common.
This autumn, the UN General Assembly will decide whether the states in the world will begin negotiations on an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The United Nations First Committee will draft a resolution in October, which is to be adopted in a plenary session in December. It will be of decisive importance for the future of the agreement that the UN gives a mandate to start negotiations in 2010.
Undermining development
Most of the victims of armed violence live in developing countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America. The large occurrence of small arms threatens development and peace in several of the Norwegian Church Aid’s countries of cooperation. Armed rebellion in Mali in the 1990s turned into a bloody civil war between the military forces and different ethnic groups. The conflict regularly continues to erupt. – Everyone in the area still has weapons and people live under great tension. It is a potentially explosive situation, says Ousmane Diallo at the Norwegian Church Aid office in Gao .
In Rio De Janeiro, Viva Rio, an NCA partner organisation, works to control delinquency in the slum by reducing the availability of small arms. The impending threat of use of weapons makes it risky to run schools, business activity and health care. This undermines the opportunity of the population to focus on their own future.
Excess expenditure on weapons steals scarce resources from public school and health services. Furthermore, many developing countries lack the capacity for law enforcements, impeding arms trade and offering assistance to the victims.
Insufficient international control
The present national and regional arms trade regimes have many loopholes. Insufficiently regulated flow of small arms and ammunition, especially to conflict areas or to areas with a high crime level, cause a direct worsening of the problems in developing countries.
Every year weapons to the value of at least 100 million USD are bought and sold on the illegal market . This is a conservative estimate with large number of unrecorded cases. Most of the arms that are sold on the illegal market originally stem from legal production and export.
In addition, weapon-exporting states have different criteria for who is allowed to buy weapons . For instance, Norway does not export arms to Sri Lanka and Kenya, but the Czech Republic does. Much work remains to be done at the international level to ensure that national control systems complement each other instead of undermining each other.
The effect of an Arms Trade Treaty
An international agreement directed at regulating trade with conventional weapons will contribute to plugging the loopholes of the present patchwork of national and regional regulations. As Argentina’s representative to the UN recently pronounced, the “establishment of this agreement will be the best way to stop irresponsible trade with conventional weapons, which is the weapons mostly used in conflicts, and which in turn undermines the development of countries” .
A comprehensive and effective agreement will have a positive effect on development. An effective agreement will consider whether there is a risk that weapons sales impede poverty reduction or socio-economic development . It can reduce the excess consumption of public funds spent on weapons rather than welfare, by making the recipient state responsible for its use of resources. It will be possible to set out conditions relating to the corruption level in the defence and security sector. The agreement may reduce armed violence through limiting the access to both illegal and, in the areas where it is necessary, legal weapons. Better regulated arms flows will also facilitate post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction processes.
Potential obstacles
The most difficult question is the choice between ensuring an effective agreement and the wish to have as many signatory states as possible. One area of contention is whether to include development, human rights and international humanitarian law as evaluation criteria in weapons transactions (parameters). The other discussion is about what kinds of arms and transactions are to be included in the agreement (scope). The existing UN categorisation of conventional weapons is not sufficient for the types of weapons used in present conflicts. Civil society and numerous states advocate for including as many categories as possible of weapons and military equipment.
An ATT with many state parties, but without substance, will be worthless for the world’s poor. However, it may be used by states such as China and Russia to justify weapons sales to developing countries and conflict areas – they then do it according to an internationally ratified convention. The British Parliament has already stated which way the scales should tilt. Their recommendation is that the British government, if they in the future have to choose between a robust agreement and the broadest possible ratification, should give priority to guaranteeing an agreement that is as robust as possible.
Negotiating mandate now!
The process in the UN has reached a critical point. At the meeting in the UN open-ended working group (OEWG) in July, it became clear that the great majority of states want a legally binding arms trade treaty. Even the US participated actively in the debate.
The progress depends on the UN General Assembly adopting a negotiating mandate for an Arms Trade Treaty. The discussions on scope and parameters have been going on since 2006. Up to now the process has been marked by the states sizing each other up. They have nothing new to contribute. A negotiating mandate will create a momentum and make it possible to discuss the agreement on more than a hypothetic level.
The following points are necessary:
- The UN General Assembly must, by the end of 2009 adopt a resolution to start negotiations in 2010 in order to agree on an effective agreement.
- The UN General Assembly must plan for sufficient negotiating time in its program for 2010, to enable the agreement to be concluded at an international conference in 2012.
- Throughout this process, governments must negotiate to ensure that the treaty will work –to stop irresponsible arms transfers, and to save lives.
- Article by: Political adviser in the Norwegian Church Aid, Camilla Sandbakken,
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