The Arms Trade Treaty was approved by the U.N. General Assembly on April 2, 2013. It is seven ratifications away from entering into force. Credit: UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz

By Joel Jaeger
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 2014 (IPS)

The Arms Trade Treaty is about to provide the biggest shake-up to conventional arms trade transparency since the end of the Cold War.

U.N. officials and civil society experts expect the quality and quantity of reports on the international arms trade to increase as the current platform, the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms, is augmented by the forthcoming Arms Trade Treaty.“There is a culture of secrecy in a number of states. In general, they don’t want to produce any information for the public domain.” -- Paul Holtom

Established by the U.N. General Assembly in 1991, the U.N. Register requests that countries produce official reports of their arms imports and exports each year. The information is then published for all to see on a U.N. website.

However, reporting to the U.N. Register is purely voluntary.

Daniël Prins, chief of the Conventional Arms Branch at the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs, told IPS that “most countries in the world have at one time or another reported to the U.N. Register, but on a year on year basis we don’t receive the complete picture.”

Glancing through the U.N. Register’s yearly summaries, it is easy to see that something is missing. According to the data in the Register, 760 battle tanks were exported in 2012, but only 446 were imported.

Exporters of weapons are generally more willing to provide information than importers, according to Paul Holtom, head of the Peace, Reconciliation and Security Team at Coventry University’s Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations.

“There is a culture of secrecy in a number of states,” Holtom told IPS, specifically mentioning arms importers in the Middle East and Africa. “In general, they don’t want to produce any information for the public domain.”

Countries have also blamed their incomplete reports on unavailability of information, lack of resources, poor inter-agency cooperation, and lack of time.

Participation in the U.N. Register peaked in 2001, when 126 countries submitted national reports. By 2012 it had dropped to 72 countries.

Enter the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which was approved by the U.N. General Assembly on Apr. 2, 2013 and is expected to enter into force in late 2014 or early 2015. The ATT is much more than just a transparency convention, since it regulates arms transfers at a broader level, but it does specifically address reporting.

Unlike the voluntary U.N. Register, the ATT’s reporting requirements are legally mandated.

Countries that ratify the ATT “have an obligation as a state party to produce an annual report on imports and exports,” Holtom said.

The ATT’s reporting requirements include all seven categories of weapons from the U.N. Register: battle tanks, combat vehicles, large calibre-artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and missiles and missile launchers.

But the ATT goes one step further by requiring reports on small arms and light weapons as well. With the U.N. Register, small arms were only a secondary consideration.

Civil society members see the inclusion of small arms in the ATT as a much-needed development, since the majority of conflict deaths are caused by small arms.

“The Arms Trade Treaty has the potential to increase the level of reporting on small arms and light weapons, and to improve comprehensiveness and level of detail,” Sarah Parker, a senior researcher at the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, told IPS.

However, Parker also cautioned that the scope of the ATT’s categories will need to expand to accommodate new weapons and technologies.

Daniël Prins says the ATT has the capacity to keep up with the times.

“Of course it doesn’t include every item that militaries use – trucks for instance – but all major weapons systems are covered,” he said.

“The treaty has provisions for changing it, for adaption, at least six years after entry into force. Of course, you need a willingness of its members to go there, but it’s perfectly possible to keep the treaty’s scope up to date with technology.”

The U.N. Register and the ATT’s reporting instruments will run in parallel.

According to Holtom, who served as the consultant for a 2013 group of governmental experts on the U.N. Register, getting rid of the Register would mean losing valuable information from countries that are not ready to start reporting for the ATT.

“Russia and China… report regularly to the U.N. Register,” he told IPS, but “they’ve made no signal of having any intention in the near future to sign the ATT, let alone ratify.”

One hundred and eighteen countries have signed the ATT, and 43 states have ratified. The treaty officially enters into force three months after the fiftieth ratification.

“I’m surprised that it’s actually been so quick,” Holtom said.

A 2015 entry into force was originally seen as a best case scenario, but it is soon likely to become a reality.

Prins expressed the expectation that the number of ratifications will grow well over the minimum of 50. The immediate goal should be to have more than half of the U.N.’s members be a State Party — a fuller embrace of the treaty will take years of concerted action, but is very much possible, he said.

Of course, the ATT will have less of an impact if the leading importers and exporters are not on board. The European Union is committed to the treaty, but the United States and Russia seem disinclined to join.

President Obama signed the treaty last year, but a bipartisan majority of Congress has come out in opposition to ratification. Still, even outside the ATT, the U.S. does not have total freedom to export arms as it chooses.

“The U.S. argues that it already has one of the most rigorous export control systems in the world,” Parker told IPS. “I think this is legitimate, frankly.”

India and China, the two largest importers of conventional arms, both abstained from the General Assembly’s vote on the ATT in 2013. India pledged to assess the treaty’s impact on its defence, security, and foreign policy interests. China’s abstention was procedural, as it did not object to any specifics of the treaty.

Preparation for the ATT’s entry into force has already begun.

The U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs has established a trust fund to assist countries with implementation of the treaty, Prins told IPS.

States parties will establish specific procedures for reporting as the ATT system develops over the years.

“Mexico has offered to host the first conference of states parties, which will likely take place next year, sometime between April and September,” Parker said.

Stepping back from the technical details, on the broader scale, does arms trade transparency actually deter war?

According to Paul Holtom, “transparency on its own is insufficient for addressing conflict. What you really want to have is transparency connected with responsibility and accountability.”

The public dissemination of export and import numbers should spur active national debates on the merits of particular weapons transfers, Holtom believes.

Public debates could be also be initiated by an independent observer body.

“There are plans for something called an ATT monitor,” Parker told IPS.

NGOs, civil society and academic institutions in the ATT monitor would scrutinise where states were transferring weapons and evaluate the advisability of the export based on the circumstances of the importing country, she said.

Whatever happens, it is clear that the ATT will be an improvement over the U.N. Register.

Take the recent decisions by the United States and France to arm the Kurdish militia in Iraq, for example. Neither country has indicated the number of weapons being transferred.

Because the Kurds are a sub-national group, these transfers do not fall under the scope of the U.N. Register, which only applies to state-to-state exchanges. However, according to Holtom, the ATT requires transparency on transfers to non-state actors as well. Under the ATT, the United States and France would need to report those transfers.

The U.N. Register was developed in the context of the immediate post-Cold War. As the nature of warfare shifts from international disputes to conflicts involving sub-state armed groups, the ATT will bring arms trade transparency into the present.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at joelmjaeger@gmail.com

Anna Macdonald, Oxfam's Head of the Control Arms campaign, speaks at a special event marking the opening for signature of the ATT in June 2013. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2014 (IPS)

When the United Nations hosted its biennial review meeting on the illicit trade in small arms last month, the conference room was overflowing both with pro-gun and anti-gun lobbyists.

Mercifully, no one was packing a gun, nor was anyone forced to surrender weapons at the door – wild West-style – in a world body advocating peace and disarmament."The simple truth is the ATT does not affect the domestic trade in weapons in the United States." -- Dr. Natalie J. Goldring

The lobbyists on both sides of the battle front included representatives of Canada’s National Firearms Association, World Forum on Shooting Activities, Defence Small Arms Advisory Council, Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute, the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).

Of the 59 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) accredited to the meeting, about 15 percent were pro-gun groups whose longstanding refrain echoed in the chamber: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

The meeting was meant to review the 13-year old Programme of Action (PoA) to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons.

The gun lobbyists had one overarching message: about 60 percent of the world’s small arms were legally-owned and should therefore be excluded both from the PoA and the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).

Rebecca Peters of the Women’s Network of IANSA, an international network of hundreds of civil society groups campaigning against gun violence, told IPS a positive outcome of the meeting was a gender-empowered message: women should play a larger role in national policies controlling guns.

She pointed out that most policies on guns do not take into account the experiences and views of women and most countries do not prevent domestic violence offenders from owning guns.

“This decision helps us to push for policies more in line with the interests of communities,” she added.

When the ATT was adopted by the General Assembly back in 2013, the vote was 154 in favour, three against and 23 abstentions.

The vote was necessary because Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked the consensus adoption of the treaty within ATT negotiations.

The treaty will come into force only with 50 ratifications. So far it has received 41, Sweden being the latest country to ratify.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS, “My best guess is that we’ll reach the 50 ratifications needed for entry into force within the next three to four months.”

She said some countries may be waiting to deposit their instruments of ratification during the high-level segment of the General Assembly in September in order to increase public attention to the treaty and to their participation in it.

“But if they want to be among the first 50 countries ratifying the treaty, they may not want to wait that long,” said Dr Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute on conventional weapons issues at the United Nations.

With 50 ratifications, the clock starts, and the treaty comes into force 90 days later.

Speaking at a special event marking the opening for signature of the ATT last year, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a strong proponent of disarmament, said: “The world has decided to finally put an end to the free-for-all nature of international weapons transfers.

“It would make it harder for weapons to be diverted into the illicit market, to reach warlords, pirates, terrorists and criminals, or to be used to commit grave human rights abuses or international humanitarian law violations,” he warned.

Still, some of the major arms exporting countries have neither signed nor ratified the treaty.

So far, Dr Goldring told IPS, the top arms suppliers are divided on ratification.

The good news is that Germany, France, the UK, Spain, and Italy have all ratified the treaty, she said.

They are five of the 10 countries the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicates were the top exporters of major conventional weapons from 2008-2012.

“Unfortunately, the United States, the world’s largest arms exporter, has signed but not ratified the treaty. Russia, China, Ukraine, and Israel haven’t even signed the treaty yet,” she added.

Dr Goldring also pointed out the political climate in the U.S. Senate does not support ratification, and may not for several years.

She said too many senators appear to have believed falsehoods about the treaty promoted by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the most powerful gun lobby in the United States.

“The simple truth is the ATT does not affect the domestic trade in weapons in the United States. It’s a treaty about international arms transfers, not sales within the United States,” she added.

Peters told IPS the ideal is to have all the major arms exporters ratify and comply with the treaty, but the absence of some of them isn’t fatal.

For one thing, she said, blocking some irresponsible arms transfers is better than blocking none.

“But also, we have seen with other treaties (eg the Mine Ban Treaty) that non-ratifying countries tend to move toward compliance anyway because of peer pressure but also market pressure”.

For example, Peters said, ATT-ratifying countries may refuse to sell weapons or perhaps even to supply components to non-ratifying countries unless they prove they are complying with the conditions of the ATT.

“So, when the treaty comes into force, it will definitely be a cause for celebration, even if China and Russia don’t ratify it. Of course, it will take a few years before we can tell what difference the treaty makes in preventing armed violence,” noted Peters.

Dr. Goldring said the ATT’s entry into force is a first step toward better control of the international trade in conventional weapons.

The real test will be the extent to which countries take a new look at the weapons they are importing and exporting and pay greater attention to the effects of these transfers.

Over time, she said, this treaty has the potential to significantly alter the global arms trade, just as the Ottawa Convention has done with landmines.

“But it’s likely to be a long process, we’re [only] at the beginning right now,” she said.

Even as countries around the world have started to sign on to and ratify a landmark international treaty that would for the first time regulate the international trade in conventional weapons, experts here are warning that the treaty in itself will not be able to maintain peace and security in Africa.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) was almost unanimously passed by the U.N. General Assembly in April 2013 following a decade of often contentious negotiations. It covers small arms to battle tanks, combat aircrafts to warships.“Without import control regimes along with export controls, it will be hard to reap the benefits of the treaty." -- Thomas Countryman

Thus far, 118 states have signed on to the treaty, though only 31 have ratified the agreement. Ultimately, 50 ratifications will be needed before the ATT can come into effect.

Of the 31 states that have ratified the treaty, just two have been African – Nigeria and Mali. Yet even if, or when, more African governments decide to ratify the ATT, experts here, including some who helped negotiate the treaty, say its effect in maintaining peace in Africa will be somewhat limited.

“The ATT is an important step toward prosperity, peace and security in Africa, but by itself is not enough,” Thomas Countryman, the chief U.S. negotiator on the ATT, said this week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank here.

In a follow-up interview, Countryman told IPS that African countries played a “very valuable role” in advocating for the treaty, but acknowledged the impediments that developing countries in Africa may face in institutionalising and implementing the ATT before and post-ratification. He also noted that the United States and the European Union are prepared to assist in the ratification and regulation process as required.

Most African countries did sign the ATT, except for Egypt and Sudan, which abstained from the General Assembly vote. In addition, Somaliland, Sierra Leone, Western Sahara, Equatorial Guinea, and Sao Tome and Principe took no public position.

For now, Countryman says, it is critical that countries implement effective and transparent export and import arms control mechanisms.

“Without import control regimes along with export controls, it will be hard to reap the benefits of the treaty,” he stated.

An important part of this, Countryman says, is implementing effective border control and customs services, both in law and practice. Other steps include the establishment and implementation of an effective legal framework for the prosecution of both internal and external illegal arms trades.

This includes, Countryman notes, the need for stronger mechanisms over government weapons.

“It is essential … [that] African states institute effective controls over state-owned stockpiles of current and legacy weapons,” he said.

Many armories in Africa were built during the colonial period or the early days of independence.

“Additional arsenals were purchased legally by the governments in the cause of national security for the military and the police,” he continued. “However, such arms are not always adequately secured.”

Securing such caches is not an obligation under the ATT, which deals solely with the international transfer of arms. However, Countryman notes that such a concern is directly related to the goals of the treaty, particularly ensuring civilian safety.

Transparency is key

“The treaty is complimentary to other actions that should be taken to stop violence perpetrated with illegally traded conventional arms,” Raymond Gilpin, the dean of the National Defense University (NDU), here in Washington, told the CSIS panel discussion on Wednesday.

Gilpin particularly emphasised the role of partnerships between the public and private sector in tackling the illicit arms trade. In this, he said, a similar model could be seen in global attempts to force greater transparency in the extractives sector in developing countries.

“As with minerals, if we leave the decision-making to the state alone, we might face reluctance in developing more transparency, a lack of resources or corruption in implementing the ATT requirements. Furthermore, one has to consider the influence of violent non-state actors in arms trade and diversion,” Gilpin said.

“Price stability as well as predictability of supply and demand relies heavily on transparency… Transparency is one of the main pillars of the ATT, and a lack of this element costs companies a lot of money.”

Gilpin made specific reference to an annual publication called the Transparency Barometer, put out by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. While the barometer serves as an important outlet for policy-relevant research on small arms and armed violence, Gilpin said, it focuses mostly on the exporting countries.

Control and transparency in the import-control regimes is also a very important aspect to tackle the illicit trade of arms, he cautioned.

African countries need to be more prepared for the ratification and implementation of obligations imposed by the ATT, Gilpin warned.

African states could be hindered in ratifying the treaty due to “a lack of capacity and expertise to draft the laws and prepare documentations for the parliamentary submissions, but also include state complicity,” he said.

Furthermore, certain countries view the import and management of arms as national security-related secrets. Thus, he suggests, confidentiality might be holding some countries back from ratifying the treaty.

Gilpin also emphasised the importance of strengthening public awareness about the need to prevent crimes associated with the gun violence, particularly during election campaigns on the continent.

“People get desensitised to the issue during the periods of relative peace and stability,” he said. “But to prevent conflicts from escalating and to maintain peace, civil societies need to more actively push elected officials to take more action to tackle the issue.”

The first U.S. Navy T-45A Goshawk (BuNo 162787) pictured on the assembly line at the McDonnell Douglas facility at Long Beach, California (USA). Credit: public domain

By William Hartung
WASHINGTON, Feb 13 2014 (IPS)

The United States is the world’s leading arms trafficking nation, with $60 billion in arms transfer agreements last year alone. In 2011, U.S. companies and the U.S. government controlled over three-quarters of the international weapons trade.

The Obama administration regularly touts the role of U.S. officials in promoting U.S. arms sales. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Tom Kelly underscored this point in April 2013 testimony to Congress.Whether arming the Shah of Iran in the 1970s or transferring of weaponry to Afghan extremist groups fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has paid too little attention to where U.S. arms end up.

“It is an issue that has the attention of every top-level official who’s working on foreign policy throughout the government, including the top officials at the State Department …in advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through . . . we take it very, very seriously and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.”

But according to administration officials, promotion is only one side of its approach to arms transfers. On Jan. 15, the Obama administration issued the first official policy directive on conventional arms sales since the mid-1990s. The document, Presidential Policy Directive 27, carries on the administration’s explicit commitment to promoting arms sales, but it also includes a pledge to show restraint.

The human rights connection

The most encouraging element of the new policy is its pledge to forego sales where there is a likelihood that the weapons transferred will be used to conduct genocide or other atrocities, violate international humanitarian law, or contribute to violations of human rights.

One would think that any reasonable policy on arms transfers would include these strictures, but that is not the case. Human rights concerns have too often taken a back seat to other considerations, from access to military bases and the cultivation of allies in key strategic locations to a desire to cement relations with major oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia.

The explicit human rights language in the new Obama policy directive mirrors that contained in the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, and it holds out hope that basic principles of human rights may now be given higher priority in arms export decision-making.

As the State Department’s Tom Kelly put it in an interview with Reuters, “we wanted to make sure that it’s very clear that human rights considerations really are at the core of our arms transfer decisions.”

Another promising element of the administration’s new policy is its pledge to pay closer attention to where U.S. arms end up. Whether arming the Shah of Iran in the 1970s or transferring of weaponry to Afghan extremist groups fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has paid too little attention to where U.S. arms end up.

Iran still has U.S. weaponry dating back to the Shah’s era, and Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-like groups around the world have benefited from the U.S. weapons that were poured into South Asia during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The new Obama policy seems to take account of the risk of U.S. weapons ending up with hostile regimes or organisations when it states that it will take into account “the risk that significant change in the political or security situation of the recipient country could lead to inappropriate end use transfer of defense articles.”

The real question is how these new arms transfer criteria will be applied in practice.

A loosening of controls

Ironically, the administration’s new rhetoric of restraint has been enunciated in parallel with an effort to loosen arms export controls, an initiative that could make it easier for U.S. weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists and human rights abusers. This danger results from a decision to take thousands of items off of the U.S. Munitions List (USML) and place them on the less restrictive Commerce Control List (CCL).

This will mean that these items will no longer need a license from the State Department to be exported and will instead be subject to the less stringent controls maintained by the Department of Commerce.

There are two principal problems with the administration’s new approach. First, the weapons and weapons components that are moved under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Department are not likely to receive the regular human rights vetting that occurs during the State Department’s licensing process.

Second, the decision to allow many of the items moved to the Commerce list to go to 36 allied nations with no license at all will make it easier for smugglers that have set up front companies in these allied nations to get a hold of U.S. arms components and ship them on to Iran, China, or other destinations prohibited under U.S. law.

The administration has defended its new arms export control policy as an effort to put “higher fences around fewer items” so that scarce enforcement resources can be concentrated on high-end weapons and weapons components. But the administration’s narrow focus on controlling the flow of modern equipment to potential competitors ignores the danger posed by making it easier to export low-tech items.

Iran wants spare parts to keep its aged U.S.-made fighter jets and attack helicopters flying; China wants older model technology to copy and manufacture; and many regimes want the means of daily repression, like low-tech guns and communication and surveillance equipment. None of these items would be kept behind the “high fence” of United States export controls as envisioned by the Obama reform.

Business interests

The Obama reforms did not occur in a political vacuum. Major business networks like the Coalition for Security and Competitiveness have welcomed the administration’s pro-industry stance.  The 19 members of the group, which lobbied hard for the arms export control reform, include the Aerospace Industries Association, the Business Roundtable, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and the National Defense Industrial Association.

As so often happens in the realm of business lobbying, the public rationale for this policy change focused not on the possibility of increasing industry profits but on the jobs that would allegedly be produced.

The only study of the subject was a flawed effort by the Milken Institute – funded by the National Association of Manufacturers — which arbitrarily assumed that export control reform would radically increase U.S. sales to key markets like China and India. And neither the Milken report nor the administration accounted for the job loss that could occur if the reforms make it easier to transfer U.S. production technology to other countries.

It’s hard to see how the Obama administration’s aggressive promotion of arms exports can be made compatible with the pledges of restraint contained in its new policy directive. Congress needs to subject the arms export decontrol initiative to much greater scrutiny with respect to its impact on human rights and jobs. And the public and the Congress need to press the administration to adhere to the human rights principles set out in its new arms transfer policy directive.

Given the uncertainties of current global politics, a policy of unrestrained arms exports is both unwise and unacceptable.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Risks and Returns: The Economic Illogic of the Obama Administration’s Export Reform (August 2013).

The Control Arms Coalition demonstrated in front of the United Nations in July 2012 to remind delegates of the price paid every day by armed violence. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, May 31 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups here are stepping up a campaign to pressure President Barack Obama to quickly sign on to a new United Nations treaty aimed at regulating, for the first time, the international small-arms trade.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), adopted by the U.N. in April following on years of preparation, opens for country signature on Monday. It passed with just three “no” votes, coming from Iran, North Korea and Syria, and will require the ratification of 50 countries to come into effect."The issue here is simply the symbolism of saying that [the U.S.] is committed to this on an international level." -- Rachel Stohl of the Stimson Center

“The U.S. has said that it feels its export control system is one of the best in the world, and that it would like to see those standards replicated in the ATT,” Clare Da Silva, legal advisor on the ATT with Amnesty International, told IPS.

She says she is confident that the United States will sign on, though it most likely will not be on Monday.

“There is nothing in this treaty that requires the U.S. to do anything differently,” Rachel Stohl, a senior associate at the Stimson Center, a think tank here, said at a panel discussion Friday. “Rather, the issue here is simply the symbolism of saying that [the U.S.] is committed to this on an international level – that’s really important.”

For the first time, the ATT states that if a country knows its weapons will be used to commit genocide or violate a U.N. arms embargo, they cannot be transferred. Stohl believes the ATT has the potential to address some U.S. national security and foreign policy concerns, including terrorism.

A significant majority of U.S. allies, human rights and religious groups have supported the treaty, the passage of which was seen as a key victory for the United States. And while many groups are now calling on President Obama to sign on to the ATT immediately, others are saying he will need to do so no later than the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September.

“If he doesn’t do that, the momentum behind the force will be undermined,” Daryll Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a bipartisan advocacy group here, said Friday.

“U.S. credibility will be questioned, we are going to be pulling the rug out from under our allies, and the president is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

According to both Kimball and Stohl, other countries will be looking to the U.S. to sign on before they make their final decisions. Neither Russia nor China, for instance, has announced whether they will sign the ATT, and analysts suggest that these decisions will hinge on the U.S.’s own moves.

“The U.S. is the largest weapons exporter in the world,” Stohl says. “So people will look and say, well if its okay with the United States, then [signing the ATT] must not be too damaging to legitimate trade.”

Political momentum

The Obama administration has formally supported the ATT, a turnaround from previous U.S. policy under George W. Bush.

Nonetheless, it appears unlikely that the United States will sign the treaty on Jun. 3. Observers say this is due simply to typographical errors in translations from the original English text, however, which are currently being corrected following which countries will have three months to lodge comments.

Even once the Obama administration does sign on, the U.S. Congress will still need to approve the ratification before it can be signed into law. According to Amnesty International’s Da Silva, many international treaties never get ratified, and she does not expect to see the ATT made into law anytime soon.

Indeed, Republican politicians have already moved to pass legislation specifically barring the United States’ ratification of the ATT, while gun-rights advocates here continue to see opposition of the treaty as a primary rallying point. The majority of this opposition has come from the National Rifle Association (NRA), a lobby group.

“The text of the approved treaty is deeply problematic and threatens the rights of privacy of American gun owners,” the NRA says on its website.

In fact, the ATT deals solely with the international arms trade between governments. Nonetheless, this opposition has been so strong that U.S. delegation specifically wrote into the ATT text language that no infringement will occur for recreational, cultural, historical and lawful ownership.

Still, the Stimson Center’s Stohl notes that there remains an important opportunity for the United States to set an example.

“The symbolism is not that there has to be any change to U.S. law,” she told IPS. “Rather, it would be sending a signal to the rest of the world that the United States, which is responsible for 75 percent of the arms trade, is taking on this obligation as the world’s largest [arms] exporter.”

Following a recent legislative defeat of President Obama’s attempts to strengthen domestic gun laws – unrelated to the ATT – Stohl notes that the treaty could be an opportunity for the administration, as well.

“Here’s an opportunity to say, the NRA didn’t like this and we did it anyway,” she says.

Paul O’Brien, an advocate with Oxfam America, a humanitarian group, agrees.

“Do they sign it in a moment when the world is paying attention? We hope so,” he said at Friday’s panel discussion.

“Do they wait until Congress isn’t paying attention and the NRA has probably gone to bed for a couple of weeks? We hope not. We hope they use the moment to continue to build political momentum”.

With just three countries opposing it in the General Assembly, the ATT will be open for signature on Jun. 2. Credit: UN Photo/Susan Markisz

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 11 2013 (IPS)

When the 193-member General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for a long outstanding Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) last week, there was a lingering question left unanswered: how long will it take to reach the 50 ratifications necessary for the treaty to be legally binding?

Asked for his prediction, Ambassador Palitha Kohona, a former head of the U.N. Treaty Section, told IPS, “It is difficult to tell when this treaty will enter into force.”

Katherine Prizeman, international coordinator/disarmament programme at Global Action to Prevent War (GAPW), was more optimistic.

She told IPS that in terms of ratification and entry-into-force (EIF), the ATT formulation of 50 is actually quite achievable within the next few years despite the political struggles inherent in national government ratification processes.

“I would say it is very likely that EIF will occur in less than five years,” she predicted.

Adopted by a vote of 154 (Angola has since switched from “abstain” to “yes” making it 155 countries supporting the treaty) to three against (Iran, Syria and North Korea), the ATT will be open for signature on Jun. 2.

But ratification of the treaty, mostly by legislative or executive bodies of each of the member states, could be a long drawn-out process.

The 23 abstentions, not surprisingly, included some of the world’s key arms exporters and manufacturers (China, Russia, India) and leading arms buyers (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain).

Kohona said some important countries, including China, Russia and India, have expressed serious reservations about the ATT text.

Others may have to overcome domestic difficulties, he added.

“You will recall that the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), adopted by vote in September 1996 in the General Assembly, after failing to obtain consensus in the Commission on Disarmament, has still not satisfied the conditions necessary for entry into force (17 years after adoption),” said Kohona, who is also Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and who abstained on the vote.

Asked whether General Assembly approval is only a political and moral obligation on the part of member states, and with no legal force, Kohona said under the Law of Treaties, a treaty on signature creates certain limited obligations for the signatory states.

“Adoption, per se, does not. It is on ratification/accession and entry into force that a treaty imposes binding legal obligations on the parties,” he explained.

Prizeman said taking into consideration the wide and robust support for the ATT across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the European Union, it is likely that 50 states would ratify the treaty within the next few years.

The majority of states – reflective of the 155 votes in favour of the resolution – have expressed relatively categorical support for the ATT, if not calling for even more robust provisions than what is found in the text, she added.

Last week, a coalition of about 50 U.S. senators said they will oppose ratification, amid an anti-ATT campaign spearheaded by the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the most powerful pro-gun lobbies in the United States.

Widney Brown, senior director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International, told IPS, “The key to enforcement is transparency and peer pressure.”

She pointed out that the important elements of enforcement are that all exports must be reported to the Secretariat and that information will be shared with other states.

“If one state thinks another is failing to comply with the terms of the treaty, there will be a dispute mechanism to address the issue. But peer pressure to conform will be strong,” she added.

Secondly, even if China (currently about number six on the list of arms exporters) does not ratify, “I think we will see what we saw during the negotiations” — there will be strong pressure from African states on China to support the treaty, Brown said.

Russia, she said, is more problematic — particularly as it is trying to regain lost market share.

Brown said India did not play a helpful role in the negotiations, but like other emerging powers wants to be seen as a key player on the international stage and may be vulnerable to pressure to adhere to the treaty, even if it does not ratify.

“The United States, as you know, voted for the treaty although ratification is unlikely, but I think we will see significant compliance,” she said.

Where it will get tricky will be in decisions regarding transfers to Washington’s Gulf allies such as Bahrain, said Brown.

Prizeman told IPS that previous iterations of the ATT text had featured higher formulations (65), which would have, of course, elongated the EIF process.

The ATT “supportive” states were keen to lower the EIF formulation so that the ATT would not become a victim of the perpetual “waiting-to-enter-into-force limbo” that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) endures.

Moreover, also unlike the CTBT model, additional EIF obstacles such as qualitative provisions, including a requirement that the 10 largest exporter states ratify the treaty before EIF, ultimately did not make it into the final ATT text – although such proposals were supported by a group of states, mostly the emerging importer states concerned over potential manipulation of the treaty’s provisions, she added.

Brown said, “As someone who has worked primarily with human rights treaties, it has been quite interesting to understand the dynamics of what is in part a trade treaty.

“As you know,” she pointed out, “the agreed figure that is bandied around is that the current market for arms is about 70 billion dollars annually.” But in the next few years that is expected to increase to 100 billion dollars annually.

“Also remember that there are only about 40 countries that actually do trade in arms, ammunition and parts and components, but the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the UK, United States, France, China and Russia) plus Germany account for the vast majority of those transfers. So the remaining 36 states account for perhaps 30 percent of all transfers.”

If one state does its assessment and finds under the terms of the treaty that the transfer should not happen and another state swoops in a grabs that deal – the second state is going to be called out by the first state, Brown said.

The iconic statue of a knotted gun barrel outside U.N. headquarters was created by Swedish artist Fredrik Reuterswärd and is titled "Non-Violence". Credit:Tressia Boukhors/IPS

By George Gao
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 2 2013 (IPS)

For many in the international community, the iconic sculpture outside the U.N. Visitors’ Centre appears more prominent today, as the majority of member states tightened its knot by adopting the first ever Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).

The General Assembly tallied 154 member states that voted “yes” for the ATT and three that voted “no”, with 23 that abstained. The treaty’s adoption by majority vote followed gruelling negotiations from Mar. 18-28 at U.N. headquarters, which included a botched effort to adopt the text through consensus.It’s not perfect, but maybe it’s not completely broken.

The adopted ATT seeks to curb the use of weapons for human rights abuses. The currently unregulated trade has armed child soldiers, perpetuated gender-based violence and fuelled civilian massacres across the world.

The ATT legally binds its “States Parties” – or those who ratify the treaty’s text – to report their arms transfers and to assess whether such transfers will reach the hands of human rights and humanitarian law violators.

The treaty itself opens for signature on Jun. 3. According to the General Assembly resolution, the ATT’s “entry into force” applies only to those 50+ member states that will have ratified its text – with no legal obligations for others, explained Nikola Jovanovic, spokesperson and adviser to the current president of the General Assembly.

“The General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, but there is political obligation (to) follow up and comply,” he told IPS.

Critics of the ATT

On Mar. 28, member states had an opportunity to adopt the ATT through consensual agreement. But Iran, North Korea and Syria made it “crystal clear” that no such consensus was reached, when they blocked the treaty. They cited a litany of reasons, ranging from national security concerns to the threat of non-state actors.

The National Rifle Association – a powerful U.S. gun lobby – also expressed dismay over the treaty, citing fears (which were later debunked) that the ATT would restrict U.S. citizens’ second amendment constitutional rights.

Critics from civil society point out that the ATT will barely put a dent in the military industrial complex and the global arms trade, a goliath business estimated to be worth 60-70 billion dollars a year.

“The treaty won’t curb exports and is not intended to,” Ann Feltham, parliamentary coordinator for the Campaign Against Arms Trade, told IPS. “It would be better not to have a treaty, as it legitimises arms exports and could provide governments with extra justification for them.”

In general, the vast “grey area” that shadows the arms trade – where legal and illegal dealings between governments, defence contractors and arms dealers collude – was seldom brought up during negotiations.

The Bolivian delegation abstained from the ATT vote in the General Assembly, for example, and cited the ATT’s ineptness to curb the conflict-driven profits of large defence corporations.

The evolving text

While most member states that participated in ATT negotiations from Mar. 18-28 favoured a more robust treaty, “the major suppliers favoured a treaty that would not constrain their ability to sell weapons to their chosen recipients,” said Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, senior fellow in the Center for Peace and Security Studies at GeorgetownUniversity.

In the end, Ambassador Peter Woolcott, president of the U.N. conference on the ATT, tilted in favour of the suppliers, Goldring told IPS.

While speaking at the GA, the Pakistani delegation – which voted “yes” for the treaty – reflected Goldring’s point. Pakistan noted that such biases should be addressed during the States Parties next review of the ATT.

Goldring argued, however, that the treaty – if fully implemented – would indeed affect both arms suppliers and recipients. “Suppliers will be required to give greater attention to human rights and humanitarian concerns before making decisions to transfer weapons,” she said.

“For example, ammunition and munitions were included in the treaty, despite U.S. objections,” she said, noting that this is “critically important”, as an estimated 875 million small arms and light weapons are already in circulation.

The treaty itself took on three forms during March negotiations. The first was a “legal scrub” of last July’s draft, which member states failed to adopt after the U.S. prevented consensus ahead of its presidential elections.

The second draft released by conference president  Woolcott was widely criticised by civil society organisations for its “watered down” language.

After the final ATT draft was released, Anna MacDonald, head of arms control at Oxfam, told IPS, “There were quite a few improvements that were made to the text (during final negotiations).” She cited changes in the amendments and final provisions section, as well as the improved language on ammunitions and conventional arms.

“It’s still not the ideal text,” she said, citing gaps addressing social and economic development, as well as the narrow scope of weapons covered.

“But the pressure is very much now on all those governments who want to see strong arms control put into play, to make sure they implement this treaty to the highest possible standards,” she added.

Paul Holtom, director of the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS, that the ATT included “practical” tools, relevant for “preventing diversion, illicit arms trade and the misuse of weapons”.

He noted the practicality of “control lists”, for example, which the treaty requires ratifying nations to have. “That will set out in terms of what items are subject to control for transfers,” he said, noting its usefulness in tackling customs violations.

He explained that some nations already have control lists that cover a wider range of weapons than the eight categories included in the treaty. Holtom hopes that through international dialogue, the scope of such weapons included in both national control lists and the ATT will expand.

He emphasised the importance of the amendments section of the treaty. “It leaves (the ATT) more open for it to live and develop,” he said. The Conferences of States Parties will allow amendments and protocols to be included, he explained.

This way, the treaty’s scope can evolve to cover the technologically evolving weapons being traded today. Holtom cited armed drones as an example of a weapon that was left out in the ATT, but could one day be covered.

Holtom also noted the significance of including parts and components in the treaty. In today’s market, he explained, weapons are transferred not only as finished systems, but also the parts and components that make up those systems.

“These separate articles in the ATT on ammunition and parts and components are designed to try and block (any) circumvention (and gaps),” he said.

Asked to compare the ATT to treaties of the past, Holtom said, “It’s a very different animal to the non-proliferation and disarmament treaties. It’s not calling to ban anything.”

He added, “It’s calling on states to have prohibitions of certain types of transfers… so it’s a bit more complicated.”

“What’s significant is that it (was) negotiated in the U.N.,” said Holtom. Other treaties – on landmines and cluster bombs, for example – were negotiated outside of U.N. headquarters.

“(The ATT) can make a difference if implemented in good faith within the U.N. system,” he added. “It’s not perfect, but maybe it’s not completely broken.”

When the United Nations set out to draft a politically-sensitive Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), ever since negotiations began in 2006, member states agreed to take the final decision by “consensus”.

That meant a decision approved by all 193 countries, perhaps with “reservations” by some, if they had any lingering doubts about the text of the treaty.Given the 75-plus times the U.S. has been the single negative vote in the Security Council, thereby blocking consensus with its veto, the hypocrisy is pretty clear.

But the concept of consensus, going back to the Law of the Sea Treaty in the 1970s, also meant that every single member state is virtually armed with a powerful veto, long maligned as a prerogative of the five big powers in the Security Council: the United States, UK, France, China and Russia.

So, when three countries – Iran, Syria and North Korea – broke the consensus rule and prevented the adoption of the ATT last week, the veto came back to haunt the Big Five who were outraged by the dissenters since the overwhelming majority of 190 countries was in agreement with the final treaty.

But as one political analyst pointed out, what happened last week is no different from the United States casting a single veto to deprive former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of a second term back in November 1996, even though the remaining 14 countries in the Security Council overwhelmingly voted for him.

The United States, he said, was a great promoter of democracy at the national level, but the worst opponent of democracy at the international level.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS, “Given the 75-plus times the U.S. has been the single negative vote in the Security Council, thereby blocking consensus with its veto, the hypocrisy is pretty clear.

“On the bigger question: given that there have been a number of largely successful arms control treaties, human rights treaties, and other international treaties adopted by the U.N. short of consensus, I am frankly perplexed as to why this one has been held up, particularly since the three countries in question are considered by most governments to be rogues in the international community,” said Zunes.

However, there is one disturbing possibility that might be worth investigating, he noted.

“Given that the United States has tried to weaken the treaty and successfully put off a vote awhile back, it begs the question as to whether the U.S. had a role in insisting on consensus so they could both block the treaty but have it blamed on the three rogues,” said Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council and its voting patterns.

With the failure of the conference to approve the treaty last week, the 193-member General Assembly, whose decisions are by majority vote, is expected to adopt the ATT later this week.

The resolution is being co-sponsored by more than 64 countries, including the United States, France and UK, and will be adopted by a simple majority.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the United States has been one of the strongest advocates of consensus in the ATT process.

“It has consistently justified this approach as a way of protecting U.S. interests,” she said.

Even former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s 2009 statement that the U.S. was reversing the former George W. Bush administration’s position on the proposed treaty included an emphasis on a consensus process.

During the ATT process, consensus has been treated as if it requires unanimity, even though that’s not automatically the case, said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations, on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

She said treating consensus as effectively requiring unanimity gives veto power to the countries with the most extreme views in any process.

The U.S. delegation insisted on consensus throughout this process, said Goldring, who has been monitoring the ATT talks since they began in 2006.

Ironically, she said, the process was used against U.S. interests by the so-called sceptics, namely Iran, North Korea and Syria, which officially opposed the ATT.

Even if strict consensus is the desired result, the United Nations needs to have ways to move forward when reaching consensus is impossible. Returning issues to the General Assembly is an option that should be included far more consistently than has been the case in the past, she added.

At the conclusion of the ATT talks last week, most countries, including the United States, UK and France, were strongly critical of the three countries that opposed the adoption of the treaty meant to regulate the global trade in conventional weapons.

Referring to the “hypocrisy” of the big powers, Zunes pointed out that neither France nor the UK have used their veto power since 1989 when they joined the U.S. in vetoing two resolutions: against the U.S. invasion of Panama and the U.S. shooting down a Libyan plane.

Over the previous two decades, however, they joined the U.S. on several occasions vetoing resolutions regarding sanctions on South Africa and other resolutions regarding South Africa, Namibia and Rhodesia.

In 1982, the UK joined the U.S. in a veto regarding the Falklands.

And since the Suez crisis in 1956, the only vetoes France or the UK cast without the United States were several by the UK in regard to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) between 1963 and 1972, and one 1974 French veto regarding a dispute between the Comoros and France on Mayotte.

Goldring told IPS, “I don’t think the conspiracy theory is relevant. The U.S. delegation said they weren’t planning to block the treaty, and that claim seems credible.”

She also said the U.S. has co-authored the Kenyan resolution to take the ATT to the General Assembly.

“They didn’t have to do this, and it’s consistent with the statement that the U.S. supports the treaty that resulted from these negotiations.”

She also said the current text is an excellent starting point for the ATT. “The real test, however, will be in how the treaty is implemented,” she added. “If weapons suppliers carry out the treaty provisions in good faith, for example, they will forego arms transfers to countries with significant human rights and humanitarian issues.”

Even raising the profile of these concerns in the decision-making process is a significant step forward, she added.

Viktor Bout is extradited to the United States aboard a Drug Enforcement Administration plane on Nov. 16, 2010. Credit: DEA

By George Gao
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 28 2013 (IPS)

Viktor Bout earned a few monikers in his heyday: “Merchant of Death”, “Sanctions Buster” and “Lord of War”. He’s the poster boy for illicit arms brokers – a guild of shadowy intermediaries who link arms suppliers to their end users.

While Bout sits in a jail in the southern U.S. state of Illinois, U.N. member states are concluding an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) – an international agreement that hopes to control a trillion-dollar industry and curtail the use of arms for human rights violations. They justify in the most compelling ways that what they do is actually good for the world, using phrases like ‘in defence of humanity’ and ‘arming people to keep the peace’.

But “arms brokering” in general was hardly brought up during ATT negotiations at U.N. headquarters, from Mar. 18-28, even though Bout’s like-minded successors and contemporaries – many of who fuel the abuse of arms – remain at large.

“There’s something sinister here,” said Kathi Lynn Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project, referring to the relationships between governments and arms brokers.

“Governments around the world depend on brokers to carry out their national security operations,” she told IPS, pointing out that brokers are the main facilitators of any arms trade.

“If you talk about including these actors (in the ATT), and if you talk about bringing stronger control, then you open a can of worms and put a lot of governments on the spot,” said Austin, who’s own efforts led to Bout’s capture.

The reason brokering was not discussed, suspected Austin, was that governments made up their minds about brokering before ATT negotiations even began.

“Had there more time for (member states) to better understand the role of brokers and transporters, than you might have seen a stronger lobby for brokering,” she said.

“I just think we ran out of time (to convince them),” she added.

Brian Wood, head of arms control at Amnesty International, told IPS that there is an absence of national and international regulations surrounding brokering. Over two-thirds of U.N. member states lack national laws regulating the activity.

The final ATT itself contains only one small paragraph on brokering, which starts, “Each State Party shall take measures, pursuant to its national laws, to regulate brokering under its jurisdiction.”

Wood noted the significance of the phrase “pursuant to its national laws”. He said, “If two-thirds of countries don’t have (national) laws regulating brokering, then (by definition) the activity is not going to be illicit.”

Andrew Feinstein, author of “The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade”, told IPS that individual arms brokers are closely linked with defence contractors, governments and intelligence agencies.

Many governments and corporations are largely intertwined with arms brokers, using them as intermediaries to pay bribes and conduct other shadowy activities, he explained.

“Virtually every individual broker who is engaged in massive illegal arms trading activity are at one time or another being accessed by one or more intelligence agencies in the world,” he said.

Feinstein noted that such collusions might have played out during ATT negotiations.

“Defence companies, defence contractors and the defence sector are enormously powerful,” he said. “The ways their voices are heard are through the power they wield over governments.”

“These industries have incredibly close relationships with governments… They have an access to government which is quite unique,” said Feinstein, who served as a member of parliament for the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa.

He also noted the U.K.’s position in the ATT talks. “The U.K. has been positive about some of the (strong ATT) measures imposed, but the way in which the U.K. engages in the trade is that they use a huge number of intermediaries from the world for the illicit trade,” he said.

“I think the U.K. is supporting transparency measures with the knowledge that the really big players (U.S., Russia and China) are going to put it back, and I don’t think they’re actually going to be that disappointed with it,” he added.

Feinstein warned that if the final ATT is too watered down, it might be worse than not having a treaty at all.

“It (would) effectively provide a stamp of approval for the status quo as it currently functions, a status quo that only intensifies conflict… and most ironically make the world a more dangerous place,” he said.

Who are the arms brokers?

Wood of Amnesty International told IPS, “The top arms brokers are what I call professors of the arms trade.

“They work systematically. They have a breadth of technical and legal knowledge. They have commercial acumen. They know the right people, and they’ll offer a ‘one-stop-shop’ type of service,” he said.

However, few people have a clear view of the arms brokering network. “No one has a list of arms brokers, because the governments don’t control them… We (only) get a snapshot of what’s happening,” said Wood.

The most “nefarious” brokers are the ones who are corrupt and who work to circumvent U.N. arms embargos, he added.

Feinstein, who spoke with an arms dealer as recently as last week, told IPS, “They have certain common characteristics. The first that strikes me about all of them is that they’re all these absolutely charming, larger than life, charismatic characters.”

Another characteristic, said Feinstein, is that “to a sociopathic extent”, these brokers are unable to comprehend the effects of their actions.

“They justify in the most compelling ways that what they do is actually good for the world, using phrases like ‘in defence of humanity’ and ‘arming people to keep the peace’,” he said.

“They’re unable to see the other side of what they do, the real human consequences of the ways they make huge amounts of money,” he added.

Brokering in the future

“Arms brokering thrives on globalisation,” said Wood, co-author of “The Arms Fixers: Controlling the Brokers and Shipping Agents” with Johan Peleman.

“There’s loads of submarkets for different things, thousands of products… this is tens of thousands of items being traded every day,” said Wood.

“The arms market themselves have become more differentiated,” he explained. “A lot of the stuff that’s traded are parts or components, so they’re not the finished systems.

“You have a lot of people who specialise in particular kinds of equipment. It’s a niche market,” he added.

“If they are not regulated… people may wake up and realise that brokers have taken them for a ride,” he warned.

The iconic statue of a knotted gun barrel outside U.N. headquarters was created by Swedish artist Fredrik Reuterswärd and is titled "Non-Violence". Credit: Tressia Boukhors/IPS

By George Gao
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

The U.N. organ tasked with maintaining international peace and security harbours a serious conflict at its core.

The Security Council’s five permanent members (P5) – United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France – along with Germany, are the world’s six leading arms exporters, often shipping weapons used to perpetuate violence across the globe.

Meanwhile, over 150 member states have gathered at U.N. headquarters, from Mar. 18-28, to negotiate an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). If signed into law, this unprecedented rulebook may help regulate the international flow of arms, and curtail the arms’ potential for abuse.

According to Amnesty International – a human rights group that has journeyed two decades for a legally binding ATT – P5 weapons exports have fuelled a throng of human rights violations.

But some members of the Security Council are tough negotiators, hoping to water down the treaty and continue profiting from its loopholes. The U.S., China and Russia, for example, prevented the treaty from moving forward when the ATT was last negotiated in July 2012.

“They’ve got two interests at hand,” said Widney Brown, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International.

“One is all the profits they’re making from their engagement in traded arms… the other is their responsibility as permanent members of the Security Council for maintaining international peace and security,” she told IPS.

“In this negotiation, (the P5) are being called out,” said Brown. “In the end, are they going to be willing to put profits aside and create a strong treaty?”

Gathering momentum and moving roadblocks

Anna MacDonald, head of arms control at Oxfam, told IPS that nations leading the charge for a strong ATT include Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, New Zealand, and “to a certain extent” the U.K. and Germany.

Asked about the U.K. – a P5 member and one of seven co-authors of the 2006 resolution that brought ATT talks to the U.N. – MacDonald said, “We do think the U.K. is (being) pressured from other members of the P5 to compromise their position.”

However, proponents of a strong ATT have gathered momentum. MacDonald noted that in the first few days of negotiations, at least 116 member states signed onto a joint statement pushing for a strong ATT.

Additionally, at least 69 member states signed for the ATT to include ammunition, and over 40 signed for sustainable development.

And as of Thursday afternoon, 59 countries signed onto a joint statement for the ATT to address gender-based violence. “That one is snowballing,” said MacDonald.

She noted that the same countries that pushed for an outcome document in the just-concluded 57th session on the Commission on the Status of Women – which focused on ending violence against women and girls – continued pushing for gender-based violence to be addressed in the ATT.

“It really demonstrates cross-regional majority support to get the text right,” she said.

Natalie J. Goldring, senior fellow in the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CSS) at Georgetown University, told IPS, “We’re seeing countries work in coalitions much more effectively than they did in July.”

Goldring explained that the “so-called sceptics” who were making rhetorical statements during negotiations in July are now approaching ATT talks more productively.

These member states include Pakistan, Iran, and “to a certain extent” India and Algeria.

“They’re still sceptical,” added Goldring, “and some of the changes would undermine the treaty in various ways and shouldn’t be accepted, but they’re engaging in a different way.”

Asked about China, MacDonald of Oxfam told IPS, “China began with a very negative attitude towards the arms trade treaty; they’ve abstained in resolutions in the past few years.”

This time around, China is more cooperative in the negotiating process, said MacDonald, but Beijing is still pushing for certain loopholes.

“For example, there is a loophole in the current text which would allow weapons if they are ‘gifted’ to not be subject to the same assessment and risk assessment process,” explained MacDonald.

“If you say it’s a gift, it’s not assessed. This is currently the way in which China transfers quite a lot of weapons to Africa, so it’s quite important that gifts are subject to the same procedures,” she added.

On Russia, MacDonald said, “We’d be quite surprised if Russia signed onto this treaty. However, we certainly hope they won’t block it.”

Sacrificing consensus for strength

Many delegates and civil society leaders argue that they would rather have a strong treaty signed onto by a majority of member states rather than a watered down treaty agreed upon by consensus.

Even if a strong treaty is not agreed upon during this round of negotiations, “there’s a provision in the latest resolution… that will allow it to go to the General Assembly and be voted through,” explained MacDonald.

“Weak treaties are rarely improved over time. Even if they achieve universal signature, they don’t transform situations,” she explained.

“Strong high standards will affect behaviour even if there are states that don’t sign on,” she added, noting that governments do not like being held accountable by other governments for “flouting high customary standards”.

Goldring added, “The history of negotiations and treaties at the U.N. is one in which countries have had grave difficulty improving those treaties and making them robust, once they’ve been agreed,” noting that the decision between consensus and strength is still not an easy choice.

Governments, however, can still sign onto a treaty at a later time.

New instruments to regulate arms

Goldring explained that a strong ATT would call on member states to monitor and assess what weapons are entering, passing through and leaving their borders, including transactions made by private companies.

Brown of Amnesty International told IPS, that a strong ATT should set up international norms, as well as a peer mechanism for monitoring those norms.

“Because (arms exporters) are competing for the same market, there will be a lot of pressure among them to abide by these norms when they’re there,” she explained.

“What we have now without any norms is a race to the bottom,” she added, citing that exporters sell arms to whomever they want.

If norms are established through the ATT, than “if you think of (exporters) as salespeople in a market, they’re going to pressure each other to all follow the agreed rules,” she noted.

The final stretch of a long run

After a week of gruelling negotiations, from 8 AM to midnight, a new ATT draft treaty is slated to emerge on the eve of Friday, Mar. 22, said MacDonald.

This draft is expected to contain significant changes, and it precedes a third draft on Wednesday, Mar. 27. Civil society members and U.N. delegates will pour over its text, paragraph by paragraph, for one final week of negotiations.

President Barack Obama signs executive orders initiating 23 separate executive actions after announcing new measures to help prevent gun violence on Jan. 16, 2013. Credit: Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Mar 14 2013 (IPS)

Eighteen Nobel Peace Prize recipients called Thursday for President Barack Obama to take a leadership role in supporting a “historic” internationally binding agreement that would regulate the global arms trade, including instituting a strict ban on arms sales to states involved in egregious human rights abuses.

The call comes just ahead of a final round of negotiations towards an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), slated to be held Mar. 18-28 at the United Nations in New York. Advocates, particularly in Africa and Latin America, are pushing for an ATT that would fill a longstanding and fundamentally dangerous anomaly – the almost complete lack of international regulation on the international trade in conventional arms, worth an estimated 70 billion dollars a year.

“The U.S. and other arms supplier states have both a moral duty and a national security interest to achieve such a Treaty in order to protect human rights and save the lives of innocent civilians caught in the crosshairs of conflicts fuelled by the irresponsible international conventional weapons trade,” the laureates state in an open letter.

“The absence of effective, legally binding international rules regulating the arms trade represents a colossal failure of the international community. Now is the moment to right this profound injustice. It is time to act to end this humanitarian and human rights crisis.”

The letter is signed by Nobel recipients spanning nearly a century, including Leymah Gbowee, Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi, Jimmy Carter, Oscar Arias Sanchez, Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Perez Esquivel and others. Pointedly, the signatories address President Obama as a “fellow” laureate.

The focus on Washington’s role in the ATT negotiations is particularly pertinent for two reasons. First, the United States is by far the world’s largest producer and exporter of weapons, in 2011 exporting nearly 10 billion dollars’ worth of arms, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Second, it was U.S. negotiators that ended the last round of ATT talks – which stretched for nearly a month last July – inconclusively, stating on the last day of discussions that they needed additional time to study the draft text.

“They’ve had that time now, and during that period more than 300,000 additional people have lost their lives due to violence – time is running out,” Anna Macdonald, an arms control campaigner with Oxfam International, a humanitarian aid organisation, told IPS.

“We really need the U.S. to be a part of this and, really, there’s no reason it shouldn’t support the ATT. The United States already has pretty strong regulations in place on this issue, and there’s nothing in this treaty that could be considered a threat. It’s also consistent with the government’s stated aims on seeing a reduction in armed conflict and violence.”

Politically, however, the issue remains fraught in Washington. The powerful U.S. gun lobby has long used the “threat” of an ATT to raise contributions, warning that the treaty’s passage would infringe on the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, on the “right to keep and bear arms”.

In the lead-up to next week’s discussions, however, ATT advocates have mounted a campaign to assure U.S. gun-owners that the treaty would not impact on the domestic industry. This stance was bolstered in late February when the American Bar Association, the country’s premier legal grouping, published a briefing paper that found that “the proposed ATT is consistent with the Second Amendment”.

Closing loopholes

Next week’s talks will again require full consensus by negotiators, a rule that allowed July’s sessions to be scuttled. In the U.N. General Assembly resolution that mandated the upcoming ATT session, however, countries voted overwhelmingly to require any unagreed-upon text to progress to the General Assembly for a simple majority vote.

For this reason, most observers are expecting a treaty of some kind to be agreed upon this year. As such, advocates say, next week’s talks will be the last chance to close a series of loopholes that could compromise the efficacy of the draft text.

A new brief, released Tuesday by Oxfam and Saferworld, a UK advocacy group, notes that the draft treaty includes “some very positive elements”. But it warns over “numerous caveats and exemptions” that would keep the treaty from reining in the “unscrupulous middle-men who are so often at the centre of illicit and irresponsible international arms transfers.”

The organisations are drawing particular attention to the fact that the ATT draft currently exempts military aid and defence cooperation, and does not cover ammunition.

The defence cooperation exemption was introduced by India during the July negotiations, but reports suggest that many countries are against its inclusion. Oxfam’s Macdonald says that, today, the provision would allow the Russian government to continue to arm the Syrian government, despite the clear human rights implications.

“This Russia-Syria situation is one of our litmus tests: Would the ATT make those transfers illegal?” Macdonald says. “The new ATT needs to be strong enough to be able to send a clear signal to those using weapons for genocide, etc., that the majority of the world’s governments have said enough is enough.”

She continues: “We’ve seen this with other international treaties – for instance, on the use of landmines. Even if governments don’t sign up to the treaty, they still basically adhere because the agreements have created such a high standard.”

Inclusion of ammunition is also widely seen as a crucial provision in the new ATT. Ending this loophole is being actively pushed by African and Latin American countries – those that have been most devastated by gun violence.

“As an African physician, I have seen too much personal human suffering from gun violence,” Robert Mtonga, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a 1985 Nobel prize recipient and signatory of the new letter to President Obama, said Thursday.

“Multiplied worldwide, the unregulated arms trade results in a global public health catastrophe. A strong Arms Trade Treaty will be a huge step forward in preventing further unnecessary injury and death from armed violence.”

While Mtonga too is urging President Obama’s support, noting it would “enhance the prospects for achieving this urgent humanitarian agreement”, Washington is actually one of the staunchest proponents of the ammunition loophole. And that does not appear to have changed in recent months.

According to an unusually lengthy statement to the press in late February, a U.S. government spokesperson made a case that ammunition is a “fundamentally different commodity than conventional arms … and cannot be marked in any practical way that would permit it to be tracked or traced.”

A Belgian F-16 Fighting Falcon during a training flight before the Air Show 2009 in Radom, Poland. Credit: Konflikty.pl/ cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2013 (IPS)

When a 20-year-old went on a deadly shooting spree killing 26 students and teachers in an elementary school in Connecticut last December, there was the inevitable outcry either for a ban or a tight control on gun shows, where firearms can be purchased over the counter with no background checks on the buyer.

But there are no such controls on weapons buyers at international trade fairs, resulting in arms sales to some of the world’s most repressive regimes and human rights violators.

As military exhibitions and air shows continue to proliferate – from Paris and London to Moscow and Abu Dhabi – the United Nations will meet next month for its last stand on an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) aimed at laying down guidelines for the international trade in weapons.If their proposed human rights rules and brokering controls in the treaty remain weak, companies will continue to garner hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons deals for unscrupulous buyers.

Focusing specifically on the International Defence Exhibition (IDEX), currently taking place in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, the London-based Amnesty International (AI), says China, the United States, the European Union (EU) states and other arms-exporting countries must ensure that any deals brokered at IDEX do not result in weapons reaching countries where they could contribute to serious human rights abuses.

IDEX is described as one of the world’s biggest arms bazaars where most of the major arms exporters actively participate.

Helen Hughes, AI’s researcher on arms control, security trade and human rights, told IPS that arms fairs and exhibitions are used to identify and promote the demand and sources of supply for customers of particular military and security products and services, and for announcing major arms deals and contracts.

“Opportunities for brokering deals at such international fairs are numerous, yet there are usually no procedures to monitor or licence the brokering of specific arms deals as opposed to general sale promotions,” she added.

The upcoming international arms trade fairs include the Paris Air Show in June; the Defence and Security Event in London in September; MAKS 2013, billed as an international aviation and space salon, in Russia, also in September; the Singapore Air Show in February 2014; Eurosatory in Paris in June 2014; and the International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in China in November 2014, described as the “only trade show endorsed by the Chinese central government”.

In a statement released Wednesday, AI said IDEX is taking place less than a month before states convene at the United Nations “to finalize a historic Arms Trade Treaty where the United States, China and some other states are hoping to get weaker treaty controls”.

AI says it has repeatedly flagged how the poorly regulated global arms trade contributes to war crimes and other serious human rights violations around the world, and since the 1990s has highlighted the problem of unregulated arms brokering.

“The wide array of conventional weapons being displayed at IDEX stands in sharp contrast to the narrow scope of items proposed by the USA, China and other states for the draft Arms Trade Treaty,” says Brian Wood, AI’s head of Arms Control and Human Rights.

“And if their proposed human rights rules and brokering controls in the treaty remain weak, companies will continue to garner hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons deals for unscrupulous buyers,” he warns.

Among the more than 1,100 companies from almost 60 countries participating at IDEX, AI says it has been able to identify a number of manufacturers from key arms-exporting countries whose products have previously been used in areas where serious human rights abuses have taken place.

Asked about the “non disclosure” clauses in military contracts, Hughes told IPS, “Yes, most contracts will have non-disclosure clauses but often information about arms deals, arms sales or arms supplies will come out into the public domain, for example reported in the press.”

Interestingly, she pointed out, governments will cite “commercial confidentiality” when asked for more information about an arms export they have licensed, such as questions about the exact type of weapon, quantity, end-user and end-use even though some states do publish such information – albeit inconsistently, and not with enough detail to allow for adequate public scrutiny.

As part of the forthcoming final negotiations on an ATT, Hughes said, governments should agree that states’ annual reports cover data on all transfers and activities and be open to public scrutiny.

Meanwhile, AI points out that state-owned arms manufacturers from China, exhibiting at IDEX, have heavy weaponry, such as artillery systems, on display.

Pakistani companies are advertising a range of munitions including small arms ammunition, mortars, artillery shells, and bombs.

Among the manufacturers exhibiting such less-lethal weapons are two companies from the United States and France whose tear gas has been used in Bahrain.

AI also says that another U.S. firm has supplied such weapons to Egypt.

In both Bahrain and Egypt, protesters have died or been severely injured during 2011 and 2012 as a result of the security forces allegedly misusing tear gas.

And one exhibitor from South Korea is also promoting cluster munitions, an inherently inhumane weapon. So far 111 states have signed, ratified or acceded to a separate international treaty banning these weapons.

The Control Arms coalition demonstrated in front of the United Nations on Jul. 25, 2012, reminding delegates negotiating the ATT of the price paid every day by armed violence. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 2013 (IPS)

With a new round of negotiations for an international treaty regulating the international trade of small-scale weapons slated for next month, advocates here have stepped up a campaign to clarify what exactly the treaty is trying to accomplish – and to eliminate some opposition to the treaty from within the U.S. Congress that, they say, is based on misinformation.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), a lobby group, “and its allies have mounted a campaign of lies and deliberate distortions to build American opposition to an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that will keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers around the globe,” according to a campaign launched Tuesday by Oxfam America, an international humanitarian group.

Warning that there are far more regulations on the international sale of fruit or electronics than for many weapons, Oxfam and other campaigners are calling for a treaty that includes a prohibition on arms transfers if it is clear they will facilitate mass atrocities; that includes all “conventional” weapons and ammunition; and that does not include loopholes for any specific countries.“Prior to the last few months, the ATT seemed like a way for the NRA to mobilise its base when there was no real discussion in Congress on gun control – they had to find a new bogeyman, and that was the U.N.”

Under the auspices of the United Nations, negotiations towards an ATT will recommence for 10 days in late March in New York.

Following three years of preparations, a month of talks on a draft ATT were shelved in late July when representatives from the United States, together with the Russian and Chinese delegations, made a surprise announcement that they needed more time. That declaration came after civil society observers had expressed increasing frustration at procedural delays and an apparent lack of seriousness on the part of some negotiators.

The end of the July round of talks also coincided with a forceful campaign against any treaty by the NRA, which for years has been the strongest voice against gun control here in the United States.

In late July, the NRA publicly took credit for “killing” the ATT, and for letters to the president from dozens of members of the U.S. Congress (from 51 senators and 130 representatives) noting “strong opposition” to any treaty.

But just a day after his re-election, in early November, President Barack Obama signalled his intent to move forward on a new round of talks.

“Just as the NRA warned would happen,” the group stated in response to Obama’s statement. “Needless to say, our position will remain the same on any treaty that could adversely affect the rights of American gun owners.”

In mid-January, a Republican state senator in Virginia tabled a resolution opposing any future ATT, despite the fact that the treaty’s text remains far from finalised.

Mobilising the base

The NRA’s position is based on two purported grievances: first, that an ATT would infringe on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (on the “right to keep and bear arms”), and, second, that such a treaty would require countries to create national registries on gun owners.

Yet according to a new Oxfam America policy brief distributed to members of Congress on Tuesday, neither of these points holds up under any scrutiny.

On the first point, the draft ATT text, which will serve as the starting point for the March negotiations, states that regulation of conventional arms within national territory will remain the “sovereign right and responsibility” of each national government. It also explicitly recognises the traditional uses of guns for hunting and related activities.

On the second point, the treaty only covers the official import or export of weapons by national governments, and does not extend to domestic ownership. Further, the draft text only directs importing states to take steps to prevent weapons from entering the “illicit market or for unauthorized use”.

(By deadline, the NRA had not responded to request for comment for this story.)

“While it’s hard to say exactly what the impact of the NRA’s advocacy was on the negotiations, it’s interesting that most of what they were discussing was outside of the scope of the ATT talks,” Scott Stedjan, Oxfam America’s senior policy advisor, told IPS.

“Prior to the last few months, the ATT seemed like a way for the NRA to mobilise its base when there was no real discussion in Congress on gun control – they had to find a new bogeyman, and that was the U.N.”

As Stedjan notes, however, following the killing of more than two dozen people at an elementary school in the state of Connecticut in December, Washington lawmakers are currently engaged in the most significant policy discussion on gun control in decades, and the NRA is widely seen as being on the defensive.

It is important to note that there is no direct connection between the Washington discussion on domestic legislation and the upcoming ATT talks in New York. In this new context, however, Stedjan says his office is “hopeful” that the NRA will turn its focus to the domestic policy debate and roll back its opposition to the ATT.

Consensus unneeded

Others too are cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the March negotiations, citing extremely high international support and new procedural considerations.

An indication of that support came following the breakdown of talks in July. During a subsequent gathering of the U.N. General Assembly, there was unanimous backing for another round of related negotiations – the first time this had happened.

Further, in voting to allow another round of talks, the General Assembly tweaked the rules for agreement.

Ahead of last year’s discussions, President Obama had stipulated that any eventual ATT draft had to be agreed upon by consensus. If no agreement is arrived at in March, however, the issue will now be allowed to go to a vote in the General Assembly, where no consensus is required.

“There is reason for optimism that states will conclude an Arms Trade Treaty this year, but what’s most important is creating a strong treaty,” Jeff Abramson, director of the secretariat for Control Arms, an international civil society network, told IPS.

“Given that a treaty text will still be allowed to move ahead later in the year even if a single or small minority blocks consensus in March, this arrangement should enable states that want a strong treaty to succeed in securing one.”

Oxfam’s Stedjan agrees, noting that the ATT “must be able to impact on human rights around the world. If there is no agreement, we’re strongly encouraging negotiators not to sacrifice the substance of the treaty for the sake of consensus.”

A lot of attention goes to the U.S.-made weapons in the hands of criminal groups in this Latin American country. But there is little talk of another problem: the large number of light weapons in the hands of civilians.

The Mexican Constitution establishes the people’s right to “own guns in their homes for their safety and self-defence”, with the exception of high caliber weapons, while the 1972 Federal Law on Firearms and Explosives stipulates the requirements for enrollment in the Federal Arms Register.

Experts disagree on whether the current violent situation gripping society needs to be answered with a reform of the law, or simply application of its precepts.

“Mexico has one of the most restrictive laws. I don’t think the law is the conflict, but how it is applied,” Magda Coss, author of “Arms Trafficking in Mexico: Corruption, Weaponisation and Culture of Violence”, told IPS.

“In the application there are many flaws, there are many citizens who are unaware of them,” she said.

“On the other hand is the corruption of the authorities. There is no follow up of seizure and storage” of legal arms to prevent them from ending up on the black market,” added the expert, whose book was published in 2010.

Gun ownership in homes and their flow into the streets has helped worsen violence in Mexico, while the drug cartels are supplied through the illicit flow of arms by gangs involved in large-scale trade.

In 2011, the National Defence Ministry (Sedena) had 2.45 million registered weapons, mostly rifles and shotguns for hunting and target shooting, followed by semi-automatic pistols.

But the ministry recognises that only one in 300 weapons circulating in this nation of nearly 117 million people is legal and complies with all requirements.

In Mexico, citizens own more than 15 million illegally-sourced guns, according to the 2011 report, “Estimated firearms in civilian hands,” part of the annual Small Arms Survey developed by Geneva’s Graduate Institute of the International and Development Studies.

Experts like Luis Gutierrez, president of the non-governmental Circulo Lationamericano de Estudios Internacionales (Latin American Circle of International Studies), recommend the design and approval of a new gun law, with strict standards on purchase, possession and transfer.

“The current law is outdated and lacks effective enforcement. At home you can purchase any type of clandestine weapons, such as assault rifles and grenades,” said the activist, whose organisation is part of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).

The fight against drugs, began since 2006 by then president of Mexico, the conservative Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), left a toll of 100,000 dead, 25,000 missing and 240,000 displaced, according to statistics by the independent Mexico Evalua (Mexico Evaluates), the National Institute of Statistics and Geography and the Attorney General.

Since Calderon’s successor, the likewise conservative Enrique Peña Nieto, took office on Dec. 1, the violence has increased the number of deaths to 850, according to a count by the Mexican press.

Mexican drug cartels augment their firepower with heavy weapons smuggled from the United States, while illegal light guns come through the southern border from Central American nations.

Between 2007 and 2012, the Mexican government seized 140,000 weapons, mostly lethal rifles such as the AK-47, AR-15 and M-16, according to figures by the Department of Defence.

The perception of insecurity that surrounds Mexican society has led civilians to acquire weapons, despite continuing social rejection to improve facilities for obtaining them. In the U.S., it is estimated that there are 270 million guns in the hands of a population of 313 million people.

A 2011 survey by consultancy Parametría found that 51 percent of Mexicans polled disapprove of gun ownership in the home, while 38 percent support a total ban.

Analysis by the Small Arms Survey places Mexico 42 out of 170 countries surveyed on the number of small arms in the hands of individuals, who mostly own this category of guns, including machine guns, rifles, assault rifles, shotguns and automatic and semiautomatic pistols.

“They don’t run awareness campaigns. The campaigns of ‘depistolization’ do not highlight the implications of having weapons at home,” Coss said, referring to the campaigns to retire weapons that are run every year by the national government and city authorities in Mexico.

The law governing this sector requires that authorities “will conduct permanent educational campaigns that induce a reduction in possession, carrying and use of weapons of any kind”, but the provision is not enforced.

Gutierrez is committed to prohibition, but recognises that the current situation hinders that goal.

“The laws that enable the acquisition of weapons should not exist, there should be a blanket ban, but at the moment this vision would encounter resistance from sectors of the population and stakeholders,” he said.

“The justification of arming a society is a grave irresponsibility,” he said.

Mexico is one of the biggest promoters of the International Arms Trade Treaty, the first binding agreement to regulate the flow, currently being negotiated at the United Nations.

But the deal was blocked in July 2012 by China, the United States and Russia.

The parties will meet again in March in New York to try to unblock the negotiations. Mexico is part of the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials, in force since 1998.

But Mexico did not join the regional campaign, “Promoting Firearms Marking in Latin America and the Caribbean”, that the Organization of American States runs in more than 20 countries, despite continuing allegations that the arms trade is responsible for many livelihoods in the region.

The “Non-Violence” (or “Knotted Gun”) sculpture by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd on display at the U.N. Visitors’ Plaza. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 27 2012 (IPS)

Amidst a politically divisive debate on gun control in the United States following a rash of mass shootings, the United Nations will meet in March to finalise an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) after nearly two decades of negotiations.

Dr. Natalie Goldring, a senior research fellow at the Center for Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the upcoming conference probably represents the last opportunity to reach an Arms Trade Treaty within the U.N. structure.

“If this conference fails, supporters of an ATT are likely to look outside the U.N. for the next stage of negotiations, as was the case with the Landmine Treaty,” said Goldring, who has been monitoring negotiations since the early 1990s.

She said the real test of the ATT will be whether it helps set strong international standards for the arms trade.

If it helps bolster international human rights and humanitarian law, she argued, it will be a success, and it will save lives.

“If a weak ATT is negotiated, it may undermine existing practice and international law. Simply put, a weak ATT could be worse than not having an ATT,” warned Goldring.

The 193-member General Assembly last week voted overwhelmingly – 133 to nil, with 17 abstentions – to hold the conference Mar. 18-28, 2013.

All six major arms-exporting countries – China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the United States – voted for the resolution.

The abstentions, mostly from the Middle East, included Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and Yemen.

The conference is expected to approve a treaty to regulate the estimated 73-billion-dollar global arms trade. In 2011, the United States alone concluded arms agreements worth 66.3 billion dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The current draft text, which will be the negotiating document next March, has been kicked around since July 2012.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the most powerful gun lobby in the United States, has opposed the treaty on the mistaken belief it will hinder or deprive gun ownership in the country.

Brian Wood, arms control manager at Amnesty International, said the upcoming meeting will be the final leg of a 17-year campaign by his London-based human rights organisation and its partners.

The primary objective, he said, was to achieve an arms trade treaty to help protect people on the ground who, time and again, have borne the brunt of human rights violations during armed repression, violence and conflicts around the globe.

“We know sceptics will keep trying to undermine the human rights rules in the final treaty, but Amnesty International and its partners will keep up the pressure to secure the strongest possible text that protects human rights,” Wood said.

Last July, after nearly a month of negotiations, U.N. member states were close to an agreement on the proposed treaty.

But the U.S. delegation announced on the last day of the conference that it would not be able to support the draft treaty text that had been negotiated, and that insufficient time remained to reach agreement on a revised text.

With that statement, and the concurrence of other key arms suppliers, the talks collapsed.

Since the mid-1990s, the NRA has opposed U.N. efforts to reduce gun violence. It was unsuccessful in blocking the Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons in 2001.

“And I believe they will also fail in their efforts to prevent the signing of an Arms Trade Treaty,” Goldring predicted.

The proposed ATT does not affect civilian possession of weapons, and NRA efforts to claim otherwise are at best misleading, she said.

“The NRA’s outrageous statements about the ATT seem designed to mobilise their supporters. Their tactics may also be effective as a fundraising tool. But there’s no factual basis for the NRA’s claims,” Goldring added.

Ironically, the NRA’s trumped-up objections to an ATT free the U.S. government to negotiate a strong treaty, she said.

“If an ATT is unlikely to be ratified in the United States in the near term, there’s little incentive to compromise with U.S. senators who oppose a strong treaty,” she said.

“The political environment is quite different (since the November presidential polls). My hope is that President (Barack) Obama’s convincing re-election victory last month will help ensure that the U.S. delegation advocates a strong ATT now and in the negotiating conference next spring,” Goldring said.

Meanwhile, the biggest stumbling block to a strong ATT is the continued emphasis on consensus. If even a single delegation announces that it is unable to support consensus on the treaty, it will not be agreed.

“By insisting on consensus adoption of a treaty, the U.S. government has a veto over a prospective treaty,” said Dr Goldring.

“But it also gives every other country a veto, including sceptical delegations such as Iran, Pakistan, Cuba, and Egypt. This reduces the likelihood of success in March,” she added.

The U.S. government has made clear its refusal to accept a treaty with any provisions that would restrict civilian possession of firearms in the United States. It has even published its “diplomatic redlines” on the Department of State website, an action that may be without precedent in this context.

Thus far the U.S. government has also opposed any inclusion of ammunition or explosives in the treaty, which Goldring considers “short sighted”.

“At a minimum, all countries should be required to track ammunition when it is exported, as the United States already does. To be effective, an ATT must include all types of transfers and all types of conventional weapons, including their parts, components, and munitions,” she said.

At the height of the economic and financial crisis, the Spanish government is promoting the export of weapons, creating concern among civil society organisations that say commercial interests are prevailing over the law and human rights.

“At a time when commercial considerations are more prominent than regulations, arms are being sold to countries where human rights are violated and global conflicts are nurtured,” said Jesús Núñez, the co-director of the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action (IECAH).

Spanish law on foreign arms trade specifies that sales are not permitted when there is reason to believe that the weapons may be used in actions that disturb the peace, security and human rights in destination countries.

Núñez, an economist and retired military officer, told IPS this law “is not observed” because the economic interests of the government of the day prevail, especially since the Defence Ministry has had its budget for 2013 reduced by six percent compared to 2012, and is in debt to the tune of billions of dollars.

Weapons exports are flourishing in Spain. Carsten Lorentzen/CC BY 2.0

Thanks to the votes of the governing rightwing People’s Party (PP), on Sept. 20 parliament approved a credit of 1.78 billion euros (2.3 billion dollars) to pay the Defence Ministry’s debt to private arms suppliers, which amounts to 27 billion euros (35.8 billion dollars) according to official figures.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Economy announced that Spanish exports of defence materials amounted to 2.43 billion euros (3.15 billion dollars) last year, 115 percent more than in 2010.

Over half the sales were destined to Venezuela, followed by Australia, Norway, and to a lesser extent Colombia, Israel, Morocco and Pakistan, among others, according to the report “Spanish Statistics on the Export of Defence Material, Other Material and Dual Use Items and Technologies” by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce.

“There’s a clear relation between the rise in arms sales and the increase in conflicts in the world,” Jordi Garrell, head of the Catalan Peace Association and coordinator of the campaign “Hidden Businesses”, promoted by Catalan social movements to denounce military security and armament build-up between Spain and Israel, told IPS.

“Operations that cannot be justified under Spanish law have been carried out, involving defence products reaching destinations where there is a risk that they will be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of human rights,” says a report issued by IECAH.

The report contains figures for sales of military equipment to Egypt, Bahrein and Saudi Arabia during the so-called Arab Spring, when popular uprisings in many places were violently repressed or gave rise to armed internal conflicts.

In fact, Carlos Villán, the president of the Spanish Society for International Human Rights Law (AEDIDH), complained to IPS that the European Union did not establish “a real control mechanism” to make member states respect the ban on exporting “military technology and equipment” to countries with civil wars or where rights are violated.

In a Sept. 30 televised interview, former Spanish defence minister Eduardo Serra said he would not approve of sales of arms and defence material to a country if there was a risk of contributing to human rights violations. But he also said that to get things done, it was necessary to get one’s hands dirty.

Villán criticised the government’s lack of transparency on this issue because in Spain, already in sixth place for the volume of its arms exports in the world, civil society “cannot exercise effective control over sales by companies supported by the ministries of defence, foreign affairs and cooperation.”

Citizens do not have access to the information because sessions to regulate the government in parliament “are secret,” he said.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), global arms trade was worth 1.7 trillion dollars last year, equivalent to 2.5 percent of world GDP.

“This absurdly large sum of money only benefits arms traders and exporters,” said Villán, who said this “clearly immoral” trade prospered because of the lack of international regulation.

A four-week conference involving 170 governments at the United Nations headquarters in New York, seeking an arms trade treaty, ended without agreement in late July.

In Villán’s view, the main arms exporting countries, headed by the United States, caused the negotiations to fail, and the arms trade continues to feed the 40 armed conflicts ongoing in the world today.

Resources that states devote to purchasing arms “are to the detriment of the economic and social development of their people,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama “did not cooperate to come up with a treaty,” Núñez said.

“The idea is not to ban the arms trade,” said Núñez, but there is evidently “a lack of political will” to reach an international agreement on the issue, because “governments prefer to have carte blanche.”

China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States supply around three-quarters of the world’s weapons, according to human rights watchdog Amnesty International’s web site. Of these countries, only Germany is not a member of the U.N. Security Council.

According to the 2012 Small Arms Survey, as much as 8.5 billion dollars is spent every year on the legal trade of small arms and light weapons. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

The goal of curbing small arms proliferation appears more elusive than ever, according to a report released this morning by the independent research project Small Arms Survey.

As much as 8.5 billion dollars is spent every year on authorised international transfers of small arms and light weapons, more than twice the previous estimate of 2006, according to Small Arms Survey’s annual flagship publication, the 2012 edition of which is titled “Moving Targets”. The project, based in Geneva, has been investigating small arms and light weapons across the world for more than 13 years.

Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW), which range from handguns to landmines or hand grenades, cause many deaths and injuries across the world. The United Nations (U.N.) has been trying to reduce SALW trade for years.

“Across the world, violence carried out with small arms and light weapons undermines our efforts to promote sustainable development, protect human rights, build safer cities, improve public health, and help countries emerge from conflict,” stated U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the beginning of the survey.

“The casualties include children, the stability of entire societies, and public confidence in institutions,” Ban added.

The Small Arms Survey’s new report was released on the first day of the second review conference of the U.N. Programme of Action (PoA), at U.N. headquarters in New York.

U.N. member states agreed upon the PoA in 2001 with the goal of reducing the “human suffering caused by the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons” through “the promotion of a culture of peace”.

Yet more than a decade after the signing of the programme, the findings of the Small Arms Survey show that the PoA still has much to achieve.

The long-awaited Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which fell short of being ratified a few weeks ago at U.N. headquarters, could have been a major actor in reducing the trade in SALW. But the ATT negotiations did not reach an agreement, with countries opting for further talks and a possible General Assembly vote in October.

“(The ATT) is an ambitious undertaking and we will continue to watch it. It’s not yet a success, but we would not define it as a failure either,” Eric Berman, the managing director of Small Arms Survey, told IPS.

According to researchers, expansion in small arms trade is caused by both civilians and governments, with U.S. citizens spending more on small arms than ever and a concentrated handful of governments purchasing arms on a larger scale, mainly for armed forces involved in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Recreational hunters and other private individuals buy millions of imported rifles, shotguns and rounds of ammunition each year,” the survey said.

The 367-page long volume also presented a list of the main importers and exporters of SALW, with the United States topping both categories.

Despite the survey’s length, however, gathering data on SALW is no easy task, and the Small Arms Survey must deal with the overall lack of transparency of governments. The report pointed out that “in the past ten years, 29 countries published a national arms export report at least once; 25 of them are European states.” Of the non-European states, “only Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the U.S. have published national arms export reports.”

To address this problem, the Small Arms Survey’s experts created a transparency barometer, enabling them to evaluate each country’s willingness to share information.

“We’re still at a very low number, but the trend is upwards,” Berman told IPS. “The major exporters are improving their reporting and their data provision, and I’m optimistic that we’ll continue to gain greater bind from governments to share information,” he added.

The Small Arms Survey’s yearbook is then to be used as a resource for many, including governments and policy-makers. “It is usual for countries to use our data,” Small Arms Survey’s research director Anna Alvazzi del Frate told IPS. “It’s an instrument that helps them.”

The extensive volume broaches many topics, such as illicit small arms in war zones, Somali piracy, drug violence, guns in Latin America and the Caribbean, non-lethal firearm violence, Kazakhstan or the rise in private security companies, which all highlight the toll taken by SALW and the need to limit their number.

Despite the sheer volume of research and data collected by Small Arms Survey, however, much is left to be done to reduce SALW trade. The U.N. has made doing so a top priority, with Ban calling for an end to “the big problems caused by small arms”. With the recent failure in negotiations at the U.N. in July, however, perhaps the only certainty in the effort to curtail SALW trade is that significant challenges remain.

U.S. weapons sales around the world have massively expanded over the past year, setting several records. Agreements for foreign arms sales in 2011 totalled around 66.3 billion dollars – three times higher than the previous year and constituting an “extraordinary increase”, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Over that same period, total weapons sales agreements around the world also spiked, nearly doubling to a total of around 85.3 billion dollars, the highest recorded since 2004. These figures were recorded despite the fact that nearly all other weapons suppliers saw declines in orders in 2011.

For instance, the second largest supplier, Russia – with whom the United States has vied for the top spot in recent years – had its sales drop by half in 2011, down to 4.1 billion dollars. Analysts attribute this trend down to the sour global economy.

This discrepancy was undoubtedly created by the United States’ enormous haul, which made up nearly 78 percent of all sales, the most lucrative of which were in aircraft and missiles. Even the report (a leaked version of which can be found here) admits that the “extraordinary total value of U.S. weapons orders” for 2011 “distorts the current picture of the global arms trade market”.

“The astounding, record U.S. foreign military sales figures highlight the fact that the global arms trade is booming,” Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group based here, told IPS.

Washington and the rest of the international community need to do much more “to regulate the flow of weapons to irresponsible regimes with substandard human-rights records and conflict regions like the Middle East and Africa”, Kimball added.

Developing nations: the world’s newest buyers

Half of this year’s record figures consisted of a single sale of 84 fighter jets and several dozen helicopters to Saudi Arabia, valued at 33.4 billion dollars.

This year’s report, an annual, comprehensive look at the subject by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), focused particularly on arms transfers between the United States and governments in developing countries.

“Developing nations continue to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by weapons suppliers,” the report stated.

Between 2004 and 2011, agreements with developing countries reportedly comprised almost 69 percent of all such agreements, but even this already high number has increased substantially in more recent years, resting at nearly 84 percent in 2011.

While Saudi Arabia was the largest purchaser among developing countries, it was followed by India and the United Arab Emirates, potentially highlighting a clear foreign-policy angle to U.S. weapons sales.

The report noted that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are “pivotal partners in the U.S. effort to contain Iran”, thus suggesting that this year’s record-setting sales could in part be driven by the heated discussion over the potential for war with Iran.

Elsewhere, the report stated that “concerns over the growing strategic threat from Iran…have become the principal basis of [Gulf Cooperation Council] states’ advanced arms purchases”.

Analysts have pointed out that Saudi Arabia’s purchase constituted almost 70 percent of the Saudi government’s total spending for 2011, a move representing an enormous advance in its military prowess.

The push for international regulation

The new figures came just weeks after international negotiators failed to agree on a framework that would strengthen regulation of the global arms marketplace, estimated at some 60 billion dollars annually. Currently, according to advocate groups, extremely lax international accords on the issue make it is far easier to sell weapons internationally than to sell more highly regulated products such as fruit.

Throughout the month of July, representatives met at the United Nations headquarters in New York to try to hammer out an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) but ultimately came up short. The ATT would have aimed at regulating a spectrum of war-related aircraft, along with tanks, missiles and large-calibre weaponry, and small arms.

Early on at those talks, the United States condemned the selection of Iran as the summit’s vice president. Eventually, the United States, pressured in particular by strong opposition from the domestic gun lobby, joined with Russia (as well as India and Indonesia) in objecting to the final draft agreement, thus scuppering progress for the time being.

The Arms Control Association’s Kimball, who attended the New York negotiations, lay much of the blame for that failure on the U.S. hosts, particularly President Barack Obama.

“Although the U.S. delegation had succeeded in inserting all of its preferred formulations in the treaty text and avoided all ‘red lines’, President Obama should have – but did not – provide the leadership necessary to close the deal,” he said.

“Now, the release of these new figures highlights the need for the U.S. to translate its rhetoric into reality regarding an effective Arms Trade Treaty. In the coming weeks, the United States has a special responsibility to work with, not against, the many other states that support the Arms Trade Treaty, to conclude a sound agreement this year.”

Although the July ATT talks ended with no agreement, the negotiations did decide to allow member states to engage in further deliberations and, potentially, to bring a draft treaty before the United Nations General Assembly for a vote.

Unlike the unanimous consensus required during the earlier talks, such a move would only require two-thirds of the body to approve the measure. Diplomats have expressed optimism that such a vote will happen before the end of the year.

“The United States should stop producing so many weapons, which cause us so much harm. That country also suffers from so much violence, as billions of dollars go into manufacturing guns.”

That is the message that anti-crime activist Fernando Ocegueda will take to the public in the United States, during a one-month visit to that country by the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, made up of 70 family members of victims of violence in Mexico.

“We are feeling hopeless because we are ignored,” said Ocegueda, who sells electronic goods. “Our mission is to raise awareness about the indiscriminate sales of (assault) weapons, which flow over the border into our country, where they generate so much violence.”

Ocegueda, the founder of the human rights group Unidos por los Desaparecidos de Baja California (United for the Disappeared of Baja California), is still searching for his son Fernando Ocegueda, who was taken from his home in the Mexican border city of Tijuana in February 2007 by men wearing uniforms of the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones, a federal police agency.

The caravan will set out from San Diego in southern California, near the border, on Sunday Aug. 12, and will visit Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta before reaching Washington, D.C. on Sept. 12.

The activists, who will meet with some 80 NGOs in the United States, are calling for the discussion of alternatives to the prohibition of drugs, such as regulation or decriminalisation; effective measures to curb cross-border weapons smuggling; and concrete measures against money laundering, including holding financial institutions accountable.

The caravan is also demanding an immediate suspension of U.S. aid to the Mexican armed forces, a reorientation of the funds, with a priority on human safety, and an end to the militarisation of the border and the criminalisation of immigrants.

“We want to tell the U.S. people that behind their addictions and their weapons are the deaths of our loved ones and a crisis in our democracy,” Javier Sicilia, the poet who founded the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which brings together the families of victims of drug-related violence, told IPS.

Sicilia’s son Juan was brutally murdered in March 2011 along with six other young victims.

The caravan’s visit to the U.S. coincides with the campaign for the November presidential elections, in which the question of gun violence has only become an issue in the wake of mass shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin.

The trip will cost around 300,000 dollars, financed by donations from NGOs.

This is the third caravan headed by Sicilia. The first drove from central to northern Mexico in June 2011, and the second from central to southern Mexico in September 2011, to gather testimonies on the violence in Mexico and draw attention to the plight of victims.

“We expect to open a new broad conversation on what’s needed for peace in Mexico, that goes beyond the failed approaches to the war on drugs. We need to have stricter mechanisms on the flow of assault weapons,” Ted Lewis, director of the Mexico Programme of the U.S.-based Global Exchange, which is supporting the Caravan, told IPS.

Violence in Mexico has spiralled since conservative President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) launched a military-led war on drugs shortly after taking office on Dec. 1, 2006.

Nearly six years later, this policy has been tarnished by the statistics: at least 60,000 people killed, 250,000 people displaced from their homes, 10,000 missing and 8,000 orphaned, according to human rights organisations.

And the criminal bands have no lack of high-powered weapons smuggled in from the United States.

There are some 100,000 licensed gun dealers in the U.S., 12,000 of which operate along the border, according to the Mexican government.

But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reports that there are 6,700 federally licensed gun stores along the border, of a national total of 55,000.

In the United States, which has a population of 313 million, there are an estimated 270 million guns. Between 1994 and 2004, a federal law banned the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons. NGOs are calling for a reinstatement of the ban.

“What hurts us the most is the indifference,” said Guadalupe Fernández, an activist with Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México (United in Strength for Our Disappeared).

“The authorities don’t want to assume their responsibility; they should compensate us, with justice,” said Fernández, who is taking part in the caravan.

She has been searching for her son José Robledo, a civil engineer, since he went missing in January 2009 in the city of Monclova, in the northern state of Coahuila.

In 2011, the ATF reported that some 62,000 firearms went missing from the inventories of gun dealers between 2008 and 2010, without any record that they had been sold.

The guns may have been stolen or sold on the black market.

Calderón has repeatedly criticised U.S. gun policy. But that rhetoric has not translated into concrete measures by the Mexican government.

“If there is political will and social pressure, Obama could curb the flow” of guns across the border, said Sicilia, who stopped writing poetry after his son’s murder. “The Mexican government has favoured a war agenda. They have created a war that has affected us; now we are demanding that they build peace.”

“If the Mexican government wants to be serious, it should be specific and conclusive. The next administration can make a non-negotiable demand on the issue, it can raise the level of pressure,” Lewis said, referring to Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, who takes office in December.

In late July, the United Nations suspended action on an international arms trade treaty, which would be the first of its kind, after the U.S. government said it needed more time to consider the proposed agreement.

Boys play with toy guns in a suburb of Maputo. Some 2,000 persons are killed by arms every day. Credit: UN Photo/Pernaca Sudhakaran

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2012 (IPS)

The protracted negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) with the ambitious aim of eradicating the illicit trade in conventional arms hit a deadlock Friday at United Nations as Washington, Moscow and Beijing required “more time” after six years of preparatory meetings.

The Arms Trade Treaty could have, for the first time, regulated the trade of conventional weapons in the world.

“This treaty is a key element to make people safe,” representatives of Control Arms, an NGO striving for a legally binding Arms Trade Treaty, told reporters Friday morning, a few hours before the final meeting.

“All eyes are on Washington to see if the Obama administration is ready to lead this treaty to a conclusion.”

“We have until the end of the day, the historic opportunity is here,” they added, confident and hopeful for the final day of negotiations.

But while activists had been pointing at the draft treaty’s “numerous loopholes” during the last week, the main loophole of the conference turned out to be the lack of political will from three big powers.

In a dramatic turn of events, the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of arms, refused to accept the long-awaited treaty Friday night, followed by Russia and China.

“The U.S. have had three years to sort out what they want, there were a lot of opportunities to find ways to reach consensus,” Amnesty International’s Brian Wood told reporters during Friday’s briefing.

“This statement is not ‘yes, we can’, it’s ‘yes, maybe, we’ll do it later’,” Wood added.

While 153 states have consistently voted in favour of what could have been a first-of-its-kind regulation on conventional weapons, Washington, Moscow and Beijing declared that they needed “more time”, thus postponing the finalisation of the treaty to next year.

With 2,000 persons killed by arms every day, the delay came as a disappointment for many, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“I am disappointed that the conference on the Arms Trade Treaty concluded its four-week-long session without agreement on a treaty text that would have set common standards to regulate the international trade in conventional arms,” Ban said in a statement released late Friday in London, where he was attending the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

Although activists considered the final draft to be satisfying “in spite of some loopholes”, Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian negotiator at the Arms Trade Treaty conference, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the text was too “weak” and that Moscow “could not support it in its current form”, without giving much more detail.

As for Beijing, it asked the EU to drop its arms embargo on China, which generated laughter in the conference room, and was visibly not satisfied by the refusal.

Rather than a fight for human rights, the Arms Trade Treaty Conference became a political game played by the three big powers.
The ongoing Syrian situation has had a great influence on the outcome, with Russia still selling arms to Syria and the U.S. seeking to increase its aid to the Free Syrian Army.
“We’re looking at the controlled demolition of the Assad regime,” Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, had told the New York Times a week before the end of negotiations.

“Such a move permits Russia’s weaponising of Syria’s Assad regime, American unfettered aid to the Free Syrian Army, and Chinese military assistance to North Korea and Iran,” Kathi Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project and former U.N. arms investigator, told IPS.

In addition to the complex Middle East situation, the U.S. had to deal with the anger of its biggest gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), which campaigned against a treaty that, it said, threatened the right of U.S. citizens to bear arms.

In the run-up to November’s presidential election, President Obama is clearly leery of a public spat with the association, which has more than four million members.

According to the NRA, the treaty was “wholly incompatible with the Second Amendment rights protected by (the) Constitution.”

However, it has been repeated many times during the talks that the treaty only sought to control international arms transfers and had therefore nothing to do with the Second Amendment.

“The NRA did their own lobbying and sent a message, but one that was not connected to what was happening in the conference room,” Alberto Estevez, Amnesty International’s lobbying coordinator on the arms trade treaty, told IPS.

“It was very misleading and it only helped create confusion,” Estevez added.

A U.N. arms trade treaty would not “interfere with the domestic arms trade and the way a country regulates civilian possession”, the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs had emphasised at the beginning of the month.

But Friday night, after months of campaigning, the NRA celebrated the failure of the treaty.

“This is a big victory for American gun owners, and the NRA is being widely credited for killing the U.N. ATT,” the organisation proudly declared.

The “killed” Arms Trade Treaty is now to be referred to the U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee in October, where it will be submitted to a majority vote.

The process will take a long time, Estevez warns.

“It might well take two to three years at least, and that would mean that the ATT would not enter into force until 2014 or 2015,” he told IPS.

“A key question remains whether the largest exporter of arms – the U.S. – wants to be part of the game,” Estevez added.

Civil society remains hopeful that the U.S., which holds the key to consensus, will help make the treaty a reality.

“The Obama administration’s feebleness in the face of the American gun lobby will result in 2,000 lives lost each day… but (it) still has time to turn election year adversity around by courageously supporting a strong Arms Trade Treaty outcome during the U.N. General Assembly meetings in October,” Austin told IPS.

“We won’t give up,” Amnesty International’s Estevez told IPS. “The battle still goes on.”

The Control Arms coalition demonstrated in front of the United Nations two days before the ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty, reminding delegates of the price paid every day by armed violence. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

As heated negotiations on a global Arms Trade Treaty near their close Friday at United Nations headquarters in New York, members of civil society as well as some U.N. member states are highly disappointed by what they call the draft text’s numerous loopholes.

The ambitious and long-awaited treaty, which is to be ratified on Friday, aims to “prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade of conventional arms”.

The text is “not looking good”, according to Control Arms, a global movement that campaigns for a legally-binding Arms Trade Treaty.

After days and nights of protracted negotiations, the 193 state parties seem to have come to an agreement that falls short of high expectations.

“This text is a leaky bucket, it has too many loopholes and gaps in it,” Anna McDonald, head of arms control for Oxfam, told IPS.

Among other things, observers are calling for countries to include ammunition in the treaty, which would currently cover only a handful of conventional arms.

“At the moment, the treaty is covering some weapons but not bullets, which are literally the fuel of conflict,” McDonald said.

“A gun without a bullet is just a heavy metal stick,” she added.

The treaty is based on a consensus agreement, which means that all 193 state parties involved have to agree for any clause to be adopted, thus leading to hours-long negotiations that have sometimes ended in the middle of the night.

Most of the regions of the world that suffer from high levels of armed violence, such as Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, have clearly stated that they wanted ammunition to be included in the treaty, but the United States firmly opposes it.

The inclusion of ammunition is also backed by most U.N. Security Council members, including Germany, France and Britain.

Its absence is a “massive weakness of the treaty,” Helen Hughes, a lead researcher on military and security issues for Amnesty International, told IPS.

The U.S., which is the world’s largest arms exporter, has explained its decision not to include ammunition by arguing that the regulation would be too complicated to implement.

“It doesn’t make sense,” McDonald told IPS. “The U.S. is the government that’s holding out the strongest against the inclusion of ammunition, but it actually regulates its own ammunition exports.”

NGOs such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and Control Arms are now calling on Washington to urgently change its position.

“The U.S. must listen to the voices of African states, to the ones that are experiencing problems of armed violence and conflict,” McDonald said.

With just three months to go before the U.S. election, President Barack Obama is thought by many observers to be afraid of angering the powerful gun lobby in the United States.

“Sadly for the millions of lives at risk elsewhere in the world, U.S. politics in an election year prevents the Obama administration from taking a bold stand to champion its own model laws,” Kathi Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project and former U.N. arms investigator, told IPS.

“President Obama is a crucial decision maker and the U.S. could stand up firm in terms of ensuring that these loopholes are closed in the final day of negotiations,” Hughes added.

But the exclusion of ammunition is far from the only disappointment in the draft text, activists say.

The section of the text dealing with arms middlemen, who are the biggest suppliers of weapons to terrorists and warlords, is only one sentence and has also come under a lot of criticism.

“Each State Party shall take the appropriate measures…to control brokering,” the draft states.

That is one “weak, watered down sentence with no teeth and no requirements”, according to Austin.

“The draft treaty language appears designed to let illegal gunrunners off the hook,” she told IPS.

“That is not exactly going to make the world a safer, better place,” she added.

According to the draft, it would also be the responsibility of each government to make a risk assessment before allowing an arms transfer.

State parties would thus have to ensure that their export of arms would only contribute to peace and security, but many have criticised what they consider an “escape clause”.

“(The governments) can still decide to go ahead if they want to,” McDonald told IPS.

“There must be unambiguous rules. The text should clearly state that when there is a risk that these arms might end up in the hands of human rights abusers or warlords, then that transfer must not go ahead.

“It’s as simple as that,” McDonald said.

According to Hughes, the text should contain a practical methodology of how to make that risk assessment.

“(Amnesty International) believes that you can objectively assess arms transfer… we look forward to how this could take place,” Hughes said.

Finally, sanctions following a violation of the treaty are not mentioned in the draft text, thus failing to provide a real legally-binding agreement.

“At the moment there is no provision on the criminalization at the national level… and (Amnesty International) would want that in,” Hughes said.

The absence of such sanctions means that a government’s arms exports could be used to commit violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law as well as acts of terrorism and organised crime, thus debilitating the treaty.

One day is left to reach consensus before the Arms Trade Treaty, which was initiated at the U.N. six years ago, is ratified.

Observers are concerned that the treaty might not reduce the number of deaths and injuries which occur as a result of armed violence and conflict, should the draft be adopted in its present form.

According to Control Arms, nearly 750,000 people die from armed violence each year, and two of three live in countries at peace. A full ten percent of the world population owns small arms.

“The governments have got two days to change that text and turn it into a treaty that will really save lives and livelihoods,” McDonald told IPS. “Today is the day that they need to make these changes happen.”

Opening session of the U.N. conference on an Arms Trade Treaty. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 18 2012 (IPS)

More than halfway through four-week negotiations for a binding treaty to regulate the global weapons trade, observers are warning that the talks are a week behind schedule.

The culmination of three years of preparations and a decade of advocacy, since Jul. 2 representatives from more than 100 countries have been meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York in an attempt to work out an agreement on an arms trade treaty (ATT) ahead of a Jul. 27 deadline.

“Progress has been slow, and that’s probably being generous,” Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, based here in Washington, told IPS from the talks.

“States are offering general observations, but it’s pretty clear that key negotiating parties are going to have to really focus in the next two or three days in order to pull together a negotiating text. The chairman is going to have to perform some minor miracles to herd the cats.”

After an initial Egypt-led argument over the status of the Palestinian delegation ate up nearly the first three days of talks, “The negotiations are running at least a week behind schedule,” Anna MacDonald, head of Arms Control with Oxfam, the international relief agency, said on Tuesday.

In the run-up to the discussions, commentators have pointed out that, with no common international regulations on the arms trade – an industry worth 40 to 60 billion dollars a year – it is currently more difficult to trade in fruit than in guns.

The effect of this, according to advocates across the globe, has been to escalate instances of violence and human rights abuses, with Sudan, Syria and Congo being only some of the most notable current examples.

On Monday, Liberian President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf addressed the ATT delegates by video, calling the treaty “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to agree tough controls on the arms trade”.

“The Liberian experience and other experiences in Africa and other parts of the world show that without such a treaty, armed violence and wars will continue to be fuelled by irresponsible arms transfers,” President Sirleaf said.

“Even with a U.N. and regional arms embargo on Liberia and other countries, more than 2.2 billion dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition found their way into the targeted countries, thus proving that the current system, without a treaty, is not working.”

No ‘escape clause’

A draft negotiating text should be formulated within the next few days, offering observers insight into where progress has been made since the initial publication of a series of working papers.

The nuances of the draft will be critical not only because of the potentially broad humanitarian consequences of any one section but also because passage of any final treaty will depend on consensus among all parties. This last point was demanded by the administration of President Barack Obama in exchange for overturning previous U.S. policy that had opposed passage of the ATT.

As the largest weapons exporter in the world, the U.S. position has inevitably come under particular scrutiny during the treaty negotiations.

Although the notoriously strong pro-gun lobby in the United States has mounted a furious campaign opposing the ATT – succeeding, in late June, in getting 130 members of the U.S. Congress to write a letter of opposition to President Obama – the treaty has received high-level support from sections of the U.S. military (including in recently published articles here and here).

Currently at issue is the scope of the treaty, whether it will cover, for instance, arms brokers or ammunition, the latter a point long seen as central by advocacy groups but currently being opposed by a small group of countries, including the United States.

“The U.S. has hardened its stance on wanting to see ammunition removed from the treaty and has argued for weaker provisions on criteria – so wants to water down the rule on human rights,” reports Control Arms, a global network pushing for a strong ATT, in a brief published on Tuesday, noting that the position is receiving strong support from India and others.

“Many states are unhappy with the U.S., China, Egypt, Iran among others for wanting ammunition excluded from the scope of equipment to be controlled under the treaty. This would severely undermine the treaty.”

Several civil society groups are also currently focusing on the criteria that would regulate weapons transfers. On Tuesday, Sweden, Kenya and others reportedly called for sustainable development to be included in the criteria list, according to Jeff Abramson of Control Arms.

Of central concern for many is how and whether human rights would be among those criteria. This was the heart of the matter, for example, around the recent concerns that Russia was engaging in weapons sales with Syria despite reports of massive human rights abuses in the latter.

Some countries, such as China, don’t want references to human rights to be included at all. On Tuesday, Amnesty International, an advocacy group, called on President Obama to reject moves to weaken human rights obligations.

“Any escape clause that overrides human rights in the ATT would send a signal that countries can carry on with business as usual,” Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in statement. “Millions of lives depend on strong human rights protections being in the final agreement.”

According to Control Arms, some of the countries most adamantly opposed to the ATT include Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea and Syria (also collated on this new map).

Those most strongly supporting the treaty include Australia, Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden, as well as most Caribbean and sub-Saharan African countries.

Amnesty International's 'Bananafesto' condemns an arms trade less regulated than bananas. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2012 (IPS)

Talks to develop greater control of the arms trade have cast a glaring spotlight on the role of diverse countries in fuelling conflicts worldwide, offering governments a historic opportunity to rein in the flow of weapons.

After six years of negotiations, 190 governments have embarked on conclusive month-long talks beginning Monday, which could end in a legally binding Arms Trade Treaty to oversee the arms trade.

China, France, Russia, the US and the U.K. account for 88 percent of the global arms market, where small arms and ammunition alone were valued at 411 billion dollars in 2010.

A patchwork system

Currently, legally binding international standards for the arms trade are non-existent in a patchwork system with many loopholes. About half of all countries lack even basic laws on the export of small arms.

“Without an arms trade treaty, unscrupulous brokers and manufacturers can take advantage of the countries with the weakest regulatory systems. The country with the weakest laws effectively sets the standard for the rest of us.” Natalie Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme at Georgetown University, told IPS.

Weak laws give free rein to unscrupulous brokers such as Russian military officer Viktor Bout, currently awaiting trial in the US. Nicknamed the “merchant of death,” Bout’s deals with warlords and human rights violators crisscrossed the African continent, the Middle East and south-central Asia, according to U.N. reports.

Globally, the United States represents a gold standard in terms of diligence in export controls, including the monitoring of exports, licensing, and reporting on exports.

Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro in a Jun. 14 news conference on arms exports said his bureau ensures all military assistance “is fully in line with U.S. foreign policy”, adding, “We only allow a sale after we carefully examine issues like human rights, regional security, and nonproliferation concerns.”

However, iwatch News by the Centre for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative news organisation, has documented numerous instances of countries receiving large U.S. arms packages and simultaneously struggling with human rights problems, including United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Israel, Djibouti, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

According to the State Department’s Military Assistance Report, U.S. firearms, armoured vehicles, and items from a category that includes chemical and riot control agents like tear gas were provided to Algeria and Egypt, where the repression of democratic dissent over the past year has been manifest.

When it comes to the issue of determining whether the weapon in question is likely to fuel human rights abuses, “The U.S. is not the global leader,” Scott Stedjan, senior policy advisor for humanitarian response, Oxfam America, told IPS.

Shedding light on the paradox of tight arms controls alongside less than scrupulous arms deals, Stedjan explained, “The U.S. has a strong set of criteria they apply to all exports. However, it does not take the approach of stopping all transfers if there is a substantial risk they will be used for human rights violation. They take a totality of the circumstances approach.”

The golden rule

The Control Arms Coalition, which includes Oxfam, the Arms Control Association, and Amnesty International, has voiced concerns that this approach will factor into negotiations as one of the U.S. proposals for the treaty.

“The U.S. wants a list of factors to take into account,” Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s manager of Arms Control, Security Trade and Human Rights, told IPS. “This means you’ll have human rights and humanitarian rights, and when you’re considering an export you just take them into account, we call that ‘feel free to ignore’ because it doesn’t really mean anything”

The Control Arms Coalition has developed criteria for an Arms Trade Treaty, including the refusal to supply arms when there is a substantial risk that they will be used to violate international human rights or humanitarian law. The latter is titled “the golden rule”, crucial to the development of a strong treaty, according to the group.

Amplifying the coalition’s position, Amnesty campaigners held a banana-themed demonstration titled “Bananafesto” in Times Square Jun. 27, to raise awareness of a weapons trade less regulated than the exchange of bananas. Activists also posed in body bags outside the U.N. Monday, to mark the start of negotiations.

Keira Knightley, Kevin Spacey and British war photographer Paul Conroy, among others, have also shown their support in a letter sent to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which presses the need for a strong treaty.

But how arms exporters are to determine when there is a substantial risk that a weapon will be used to commit a serious violation of international human rights presents a challenge for negotiators. You cannot deny arms to countries that have a few isolated incidents of unlawful gun-crime, according to Wood.

Asked what constitutes a ‘serious violation’ Wood told IPS, “It could be a single massive massacre so you can’t say that violations have to be persistent… you can also look at the severity of the harm caused, as well as the persistence and the scale. Is it widespread? If (the problems) are persistent, then they are predictable,” Wood explained.

In terms of measuring the risk of human rights abuse, a key issue is stockpile security. “When exporting arms to the DRC and to Afghanistan where the state itself has partly collapsed, the stockpiles are not properly managed so you know as soon as you send weapons they will leak out to armed groups and the Taliban,” Wood told IPS.

In many ways the treaty is not merely about regulation but also about educating governments and developing expertise within arms export divisions so that they understand and can identify areas where weapons are likely to feed human rights abuses or end up in the wrong hands.

Wood described the attitude of many arms export divisions under the current system, recounting a meeting with three Italian officials. “They said to me, you see that building over there, the lawyers who know about human rights and humanitarian law that’s where they are, we here in the arms exports division we’re just the merchants of death.”

The European Parliament sent a bold message to the world last week with its comprehensive and ambitious resolution to put an end to the illicit global arms trade. But analysts regret the new resolution ignores several key factors, such as the impact of the arms trade on the socio-economic development of recipient countries, and the involvement of civil society in future negotiations.

Next month member states will gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York to negotiate the first binding Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a potentially ground-breaking humanitarian treaty regulating international trade in conventional weapons. Currently, there is no universal set of rules controlling the global arms trade.

According to several analysts the poorly-regulated market fuels armed conflicts and causes unnecessary human suffering. In order to address the problem, Nobel Peace laureates like the Dalai Lama, Betty Williams, Elie Wiesel and José Ramos- Horta – supported by international NGOs – have been actively advocating a binding global agreement since 1997.

According to data gathered by Control Arms, a global civil society alliance, one million of the eight million firearms produced every year are lost or stolen. As many as 747,000 people are killed in armed violence annually, while ten times that number are injured.

In March of this year the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published a report showing that deliveries of conventional weapons to states in Africa had increased by an average of 110 percent during the last ten years. Deliveries to sub-Saharan Africa increased by 20 percent, while deliveries to North Africa increased by 273 percent.

The European Parliament voted Wednesday on the resolution the EU will propose at the upcoming U.N. conference. The text underlined Europe’s tremendous responsibility in the global arms trade, since EU member states account for about 30 percent of all arms exports and are among the world’s leading arms manufacturers.

The resolution also stressed that the new U.N. treaty should cover “the widest possible spectrum of conventional weapons, including small arms and light weapons and all aspects and activities of trade.”

The Parliament called for the establishment of a U.N. support unit to monitor and report on global arms exchanges while tracing possible breaches of the treaty.

Furthermore, the European Parliament wants the ATT to include strong provisions requiring states to report on all arms transfer decisions and keep records for up to 20 years. Stringent anti-corruption and transparency mechanisms would also be necessary since, according to recent estimates, the arms trade accounts for almost 40 percent of corruption in all world trade.

Political hurdles

But according to experts, some key provisions have slipped through cracks in the ambitious text.

“Although this resolution is a strong (first step), we feel disappointed that it failed to highlight the need not to undermine the socio-economic development of recipient countries,” Nicolas Vercken, Oxfam’s advocacy officer on arms transfer control in Paris, told IPS.

Wim Zwijnenburg, advocacy officer on disarmament at IKV-Pax Christi in Amsterdam, added that the EU currently forbids “export (of arms) to states where socio-economic development is low but government spending is high. This criterion has disappeared from the new resolution”, likely because the European Parliament fears several non-EU countries will not accept such a provision at the upcoming U.N. meet.

Countries against the clause, usually major arms exporters or repressive regimes, claim the policy of forbidding export to economically underdeveloped countries is ‘neocolonial’, Zwijnenburg said – an argument that masks a desire to continue selling or acquiring weapons at virtually any cost.

“Exporting countries like Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Russia, China and India are against (this clause) because they want to protect their arms trade. Recipient countries like Zimbabwe, Syria and Egypt are against the clause because of their constant need for new weaponry. But most sub-Saharan states are in favour of the criterion,” he added.

Another troubling aspect of the resolution is that it fails to mention the involvement of civil society during future arms trade negotiations. “When an arms trade deal is discussed between two nations, countries like the United States or the United Kingdom have the capacity to bring a team of ten people to the talks, including economic and legal advisors,” Zwijnenburg said.

“Most African states don’t have this capacity. That’s why we need to involve civil society in these negotioations: to be able to support the poorest states, states that are in fact mostly developing nations suffering from conflict. The new resolution makes no mention of this. Considering the fact that NGOs started the process for a treaty in the first place, it would be a pity if we (are) to be excluded from now on,” he stressed.

Despite these flaws, experts are cautiously optimistic about the European resolution and the upcoming U.N. talks. “We’re going for gold,” Vercken told IPS. “Ten years ago nobody would have dared to dream we would have gotten this far, that we would have all states on board and heading for an international agreement.”

“But we know some states only want a weak or dysfunctional treaty. It is going to be tough. And if it turns out we are heading towards a weak treaty, we will remind the negotiating states we would rather have no treaty than a weak treaty. Because a weak treaty would do nothing else but legitimise current (efforts to regulate the arms market),” he added.

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