DISARMAMENT: UN Chief Seeks Moratorium on Small Arms Traffic

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 1998 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, alarmed at the increase in military conflicts in Africa, Asia and Europe, is seeking a moratorium on the worldwide traffic in small arms.

Annan wants the proposed moratorium to be enforced mainly at regional and subregional levels. “A precedent exists,” says the Secretary-General, citing a self-imposed arms embargo by Latin American countries last November.

Every member of the Organisation of American States (OAS) has signed the Inter-American Convention against Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials. The Convention is aimed at reducing the flow of small arms into the region.

In early April, a group of West African states is scheduled to meet in Oslo to discuss the proposal for an arms moratorium in the African region.

Annan has urged “all concerned governments” to explore the possibility of a subregional moratorium, particularly in Africa, because of the rash of ethnic conflicts and civil strife currently raging in that politically-troubled continent.

Annan has cited the example of Mali which was plagued with violence in the early 1990s: violence which was fueled in part by the proliferation of small arms. “Once a peace agreement was reached and the rebels agreed to demobilise, the United Nations assisted in the collection of some 3,000 weapons relinquished by the former combatants.”

Nearly two years ago, he noted, those weapons were set aflame in a great bonfire in Timbuktu – “a vivid display that the conflict had come to an end…the symbolism of that event burns still.”

The United Nations maintains that small arms – mostly assault rifles, grenade launchers, landmines, machine guns and pistols – primarily have been responsible for much of the death and destruction in conflicts throughout the world.

At the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva last week, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Colombia Camilo Reyes Rodriguez, said the illicit traffic in small arms and their widespread use, made it costly and difficult to control the weapons of choice in today’s conflicts.

There had been suggestions to hold an international conference on the illicit trade, which would help create public awareness on the need to deal with this problem. “Small arms destabilised societies and sheltered terrorism, drug trafficking and mercenary activities, thereby violating human rights,” he pointed out.

Reyes said that small arms was a subject which must continue to be dealt with in multilateral forums, and the proposed conference should initiate an open mechanism to stop the illicit trafficking.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali admitted that the United Nations was not doing enough to curb the proliferation of small arms. “The world is awash with them and traffic in them is very difficult to monitor, let alone intercept,” he said.

Boutros-Ghali proposed that the existing U.N. Arms Register be expanded to include imports and exports of small arms. The Register currently records the import and export of only seven major categories of arms: battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and missiles and missile launchers.

In one of the most comprehensive studies on small arms, Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute said last year that the rising tide of small arms posed a serious threat. “Fed by essentially unrestrained production of millions, if not tens of millions, of small arms annually, public and private arsenals continue to swell,” he said.

Renner pointed out that the low-tech, inexpensive, sturdy and easy-to-use weapons are the tools for most of the killing in contemporary conflicts – causing as much as 90 percent of the deaths. Although the information available is still sparse, mounting evidence indicates that the quantities involved are enormous; for example, there may be about 500 million military- style firearms, in addition to many hundreds of millions of guns designed for police forces or for civilian use.

“In some countries, including such disimilar ones as Mozambique and the United States, there are probably as many firearms as there are people, or more,” Renner said.

Only in a few countries, including Japan and some European countries, do strict regulations and societal norms tightly limit the numbers of small arms.

Renner also pointed out that a flourishing trade in secondhand arms keeps them moving from place to place. Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1975, Vietnam alone inherited some 1.8 million U.S.-made small arms and close to 150,000 tons of ammunition. But much of this was acquired by Cuba, and then by the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and rebel forces in El Salvador.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is believed to have obtained several tons of Soviet-made munitions confiscated from Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) forces by the Israelis in 1982, and transferred them to the Nicaraguan Contras.