Outreach workers with Operation SNUG in New York City's Central Harlem talk to a young man in their programme. Credit: Kim-Jenna Jurriaans/IPS

By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans
NEW YORK, May 1 2014 (IPS)

It’s four o’clock on a sunny afternoon in Harlem and 19-year-old Solideen Rann is spread out on a plush hand-me-down couch inside an old glass-and-aluminum storefront on Malcolm X Boulevard.

His body language is making no effort to conceal he’s only reluctantly participating in a conversation with Dedric Hammond, 36, who’s taking up the other corner of a dream in bright orange velour. “If you build me a [sports] centre and I was shot yesterday – and the guy who shot me is at the centre today – you can bet I’ll come over there to shoot something. But it ain’t gonna be no basketball.” -- Dedric Hammond

“You do this one thing for me and I’ll leave you alone,” Hammond says, leaning into him.

“I’m not about that sh*t no more,” Rann pleads uncomfortably, trying to get the six-foot-four-inch man to leave him alone, which is proving futile.

“Just this one time. That’s it,” the elder continues his persuasion.

In a not-so-distant universe, this script of a conversation between two men intimately familiar with the darker side of Harlem’s bustling streets could spell a shady affair with a dangerous outcome.

Today, however, the conversation is about an upcoming panel discussion and Hammond, who’s known in the neighbourhood simply as “Beloved”, is pushing Rann to step up as a role model to other teens.

The office they sit in is that of Operation SNUG (“guns” spelled backwards), a team of “interrupters” charged with breaking the cycle of youth violence in this stretch of Central Harlem between 125th and 137th street.

Here, roughly one in three families live below the poverty line.

“That sh*t” Rann referred to is getting into street fights – fights that once landed him in jail and killed his best friend.

These streets and others like them funnel some 24,000 young people each year into New York State’s juvenile justice system – one of the harshest in the United States, where teens as young as 16 can serve time in adult prisons.

Half of those arrests are in New York City, where 52 percent of juvenile delinquent cases involve crimes against another person.

At all hours of the day, cell phones are buzzing in the SNUG office. They’re brimming with messages from community leaders, concerned parents and local youth providing tip-offs that a conflict between rival groups has reached boiling point. Within minutes, SNUG staff hit the streets to step in and mediate between the different sides.

They mediate on street corners and in public parks, in hospital waiting rooms and public housing hallways.

When a shooting or stabbing victim is submitted to Harlem Hospital, SNUG staff are the first to be called –ahead of the local police — to talk the victim, family and friends out of retaliating.

“I’d be over there talking to the whole hood,” Hammond tells IPS about the containment they do right after a violent event. “I’m talking to their people, I’m talking to their mother – whoever will make a tear come to their eyes, I’m talking to them too.

“Because the moment we know… what they have feelings for, that’s when we can start this conversation and begin the process of healing.”

It’s a process that Hammond and his team of 10 interrupters know first-hand. Each one of them is a former member of one of Harlem’s 60 some crews, each one with criminal convictions of their own.

“I’ve got people on my team who killed people,” says Hammond, surrounded by plastic flowers and props the team uses to stage “mock funerals” – one of many tactics to get “their kids” to see the devastation their actions can cause.

Hammond, who picked up his first gun to protect his little brother at age 13, spent eight years in jail and was shot twice after leaving gang life behind.

These experiences of having been on both sides of a gun are key to SNUG’s ability to connect with high-risk youth, says Beloved, whose reputation as a shooter once earned him the street name Bad News.

“Back when I would recruit a dude, I’m going to his church, I’m at his school, I’m at his mother’s house, I’m where he’s at on the basketball court.

“So the same strategies we used to do robberies and stick-ups and all that other stuff, are the strategies we use today to stay in these kids’ ears – we got to pacify them.”

Understanding the streets

“They innately understand the rhythm of the street, the rhythm of what happens when…” says Aarian Punter, project manager for Restorative Justice Services at the Harlem unit of the New York City Mission Society, a community cornerstone that provides educational services and after school programmes for youth.

“They know when to hit the streets, hit the blocks, call their caseload.”

Eighty-hour workweeks are not uncommon for SNUG’s outreach workers.

Apart from the 24-hour crisis interventions, there’s the regular heart-to-hearts on the bright-orange couch. There’s the monitoring of social media for signs of brewing disputes and there are the spontaneous field trip to the ice cream shop as a way to keep two rivaling groups out of each other’s hair.

It’s all part of the puzzle to stop the viral transmission of violence.

Containing the virus

Operation SNUG is an offshoot of the Cure Violence model created by epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, who found that major outbreaks of violence like the Rwanda genocide followed the patterns of outbreaks of infectious diseases and who holds that violence can be contained and even eradicated when approached like a virus.

Key, according to Slutkin, is a shift from public shaming of “bad” people to identifying the transmitters of violence and changing personal behaviors and community norms.

In New York state the vast majority of juveniles in youth facilities – 83 percent in 2010 – are black and Latino. Eighty-nine percent of boys and 81 percent of girls relapse into crime by the age of 28.

Statistics like these hint at the devastation done to communities of colour by violence, drugs and chronic poverty.

Devastation reached a peak in the crack era of the 1980s and 90s when New York’s overly punitive Rockefeller Drug Laws sent a generation of men to prison, initiating a ripple effect that can be felt today, says Punter.

“You have no idea what these kids have seen. These kids have seen their fathers go to jail for 20 years, they’ve seen their mothers destroyed by the crack era… So you have a whole generation of kids whose issues were never really dealt with.”

In recent years, New York City police responded by overpolicing black and Latino youth through its controversial Stop and Frisk policy, which further criminalised low-income communities of colour.

Working with referrals from SNUG and others, Punter and her colleagues aim to change young people’s relationship with the criminal justice system, away from one that’s “normal”, and provide educational opportunities that allow them to envision a life beyond the streets.

Operation SNUG found a home under the umbrella of the Mission Society after many other organisations found the programme too risky to take on. But without violence interruption, few other services have a chance to flourish, says Hammond.

“If you build me a [sports] centre and I was shot yesterday – and the guy who shot me is at the centre today – you can bet I’ll come over there to shoot something. But it ain’t gonna be no basketball.”

According to a 2013 study by the NYC Department of Health, gunshot wounds decreased from 52 to 26 in a one-year period in SNUG’s target demographic. While it’s hard to attribute decreases in crime to one factor only, Rann has no doubt that “Without SNUG, a lot of [guys] would have died.”

Today, Rann works two jobs to support his baby son and is considering college.

After a solid hour of persuasion by his mentor of three years, he never did step up to speak on the public panel. But Hammond doesn’t see it as a defeat.

“It’s like working with clay,” he says. “You push and mold and when you get it to where you want it then you continue to work on it like that.”

Anna MacDonald of Control Arms speaks at the start of the ceremony for the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty at United Nations headquarters in New York, Jun. 3, 2013. Credit: Keith Bedford/INSIDER IMAGES (UNITED STATES)

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations witnessed a historic moment Monday with the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty, first adopted in April by the General Assembly, and the first time the 85-billion-dollar international arms trade has been regulated by a global set of standards.

Negotiations took place between 193 countries, 63 of which signed on Monday. More countries are expected to sign by the end of the week.“We all know about history, so [the U.S. has] a big responsibility." -- Alex Gálvez of Transitions Foundation of Guatemala

The treaty will regulate all transfers of conventional arms and ban the export of arms if they will be used to commit crimes against humanity.

The treaty also calls for greater transparency and for nations to be held more accountable for their weapons trading. States will undergo rigorous assessment before they move arms overseas and have to provide annual reports on international transfers of weapons.

But some of the world’s major arms importers and exporters, whose inclusion is crucial for the treaty’s success, have abstained or declined to give their signatures. Syria, North Korea and Iran were the only three countries to fully oppose the treaty, while Russia, China and India abstained.

The United States, the world’s largest arms exporter, did not sign, but is expected to by the end of the year. Technicalities in the language of the treaty were the reason for not signing; while U.S. support for the treaty is “strong and genuine,” there were inconsistencies in comparison between the English-language and translated versions of the treaty, said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“All other countries are looking to what the United States does,” Kimball added.

Ray Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said it is “critical” that the United States sign the treaty, which has been “10 years in the making.”

In a statement released by the State Department Monday morning, Secretary John Kerry welcomed the treaty, ensuring that the U.S.’s signing would not infringe on the fiercely debated Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.

“We look forward to signing [the treaty] as soon as the process of conforming the official translations is completed satisfactorily,” Kerry’s statement said.

The treaty is a crucial step towards ending the deaths of the 500,000 people Oxfam estimates perish from armed violence each year.

“The most powerful argument for the [treaty] has always been the call of millions who have suffered armed violence around the world,” Anna Macdonald, head of Arms Control, Oxfam, said in a statement. “Their suffering is the reason we have campaigned for more than a decade,” she added.

When asked if the treaty could prevent atrocities like those which have occurred in Syria, Macdonald said she believed it could, if implemented correctly.

With such vast negotiations taking place, disagreements were bound to arise.

“Items [such as] the scope of weapons covered by the treaty and the strength of human rights provisions preventing arms sales in certain circumstances are not as strong as we would have wished,” Jayantha Dhanapala, president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs and former under secretary general for disarmament affairs, told IPS.

Nevertheless, he believes the treaty is a “long overdue step” in realising Article 26 of the U.N. Charter, which calls for the “establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments”.

And considering the treaty was adopted just weeks ago, 63 signatures is an “excellent number,” Macdonald said.

The treaty will go into force after it receives 50 ratifications from states that have signed. This is expected to take up to two years, but some states, including the United Kingdom, have agreed to already start enforcing the rules of the Treaty.

One victim of gun violence was at the U.N. to witness the signing, the first step on the path to the treaty’s ratification.

Alex Gálvez, 36, was 14 years old when he felt a bullet course through his right shoulder, exiting through his left one. Buying sodas for lunch in Guatemala, Gálvez was caught up in a territorial dispute. The bullet perforated his lungs, but Gálvez said he was too young at the time to realise that he was dying.

Gálvez is now executive director of Transitions Foundation of Guatemala, an organisation that helps Guatemalans living with disabilities, many of whom have been injured by small weapons.

“They left a lot of small weapons without control” after three decades of violence in Guatemala, Gálvez told IPS.

“Unfortunately not everyone had had the opportunity to get treated in time, to get educated [about arms],” Gálvez said. “It’s not just Guatemala that is suffering [from armed violence]; many other countries are suffering too.”

While he received his medical treatment in the United States and understands that it’s a complex process, Gálvez would like to see the country sign, especially as it has provided small arms to many countries, including his own.

“We all know about history, so they have a big responsibility,” Gálvez said.

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.”

Chart tracking total gun deaths, and youth gun deaths, in Brazil. Credit: CEBELA and FLACSO.

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

The 1992 Carandirú massacre of 111 inmates shot down in what was Brazil’s largest prison was documented in thousands of print and televised news reports, as well as five books and a popular film.

But a similar number of people, mainly young men, are shot to death every day in Brazil, without any repercussions. “We have lost our sensitivity about this day-to-day massacre,” laments Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, the author of the “Map of Violence 2013: Deaths by Firearm”.

The report, released late Wednesday Mar. 6 in Rio de Janeiro, was produced for the Brazilian Centre for Latin American Studies (CEBELA) and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), based on official figures. It counts 799,226 deaths by firearm in Brazil from 1980 to 2010. Of that total, 450,255 were young people between the ages of 15 and 29.

This “invisible slaughter” is equivalent to the total official number of people killed in armed conflicts in 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Colombia, in the critical years of 2004 to 2007, the Map says.

The data include victims of accidents, suicides and “undetermined” causes of firearm deaths. But most were homicides: an average of 84 percent in the three decades covered, rising to 94.6 percent in 2010, partly due to improvements in the Health Ministry’s Mortality Information System.

The homicide rate per 100,000 population in Brazil grew from 5.1 in 1980 to 19.3 in 2010. But among the young it climbed even faster, from 9.1 to 42.5.

Another important aspect is that 2.5 black people are shot for every white person killed by firearms in this country, where half the population of 196 million self-identifies in the census as “Afro-descendant”.

The upward tendency was not steady. The murder rate rose until 2003, to 20.4 per 100,000 people. But it went down again in the following years, to 18 per 100,000 in 2007, before rising slightly once again.

“We have been experiencing an unstable equilibrium” since 2005, with a decline in homicides in the most populous, richest states in the southeast, especially São Paulo, but with “drastic growth” in the more impoverished north and northeast, Waiselfisz told IPS.

In Maceió, the capital of the northeastern state of Alagoas, the rate of deaths by firearm rose threefold, to 94.5 per 100,000 population in 2010, while in São Paulo it dropped to 10.4 per 100,000 – just one-quarter of the rate registered a decade earlier.

Three main factors explain the shift of violent crime away from the southeast and into other parts of the country, according to Waiselfisz, an Argentine sociologist who lives in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, one of the most violent cities in the northeast, Brazil’s poorest region.

Economic development, which was concentrated in the industrial cities of the southeast, began to be decentralised in the 1990s, with new poles of development in other states and in the hinterland drawing people and investment.

To that was added the National Public Security Plan, with a fund that helped improve the fight against crime in large cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

In addition, improvements in record-keeping reduced the number of “clandestine cemeteries” and cut the under-reporting of deaths almost in half.

Despite the progress made, the number of firearm deaths is still too high, amounting to “one Carandirú per day,” said Waiselfisz.

He described the phenomenon as a Latin American “ulcer, a legacy of colonial, slave-owning times, of disdain for human life,” basically attributable to “a culture of violence, where conflicts are resolved by exterminating the other” instead of through negotiation or the administration of justice, and to “high levels of impunity.”

United Nations figures indicate that the average homicide rate in Latin America was 26 per 100,000 population in 2010, three times the European average. According to the World Health Organisation, any country with a murder rate above 10 per 100,000 people is suffering an epidemic of violence.

Studies in São Paulo estimate that only four percent of murderers go to prison, and say “losses” are suffered at every stage of the process – in the reporting of murders, police investigations, prosecution and sentencing. That stimulates crime, which in turn fuels impunity, in a “vicious circle,” Waiselfisz said.

He cited the sharp rise in murders in the state of Alagaos – 248 percent in the last decade – which he said was due to the arrival of another severe crime problem plaguing Latin America: the drug mafias, which were forced out of other areas. He also blamed the weakness of the local police, which held strikes that lasted more than seven months, he said.

Jorge Werthein, the president of CEBELA, told IPS there is a contradiction that merits greater reflection: the fact that the murder rate remained steady, and even rose slightly, in the last 10 years, while the economy and job creation showed strong growth, and poverty and inequality shrank.

Brazilian society must acknowledge the “unacceptable levels of violence” and seek answers “that do not only rely on repression,” he said.

The few years when the murder rate was in decline in Brazil were the result of a campaign against the possession of firearms, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which was partly frustrated by a 2005 referendum, when voters failed to approve a ban on the sale of guns and ammunition in the country.

In Brazil, like in other Latin American countries, controlling arms sales is necessary to reduce the number of murders, and measures are also needed in other areas, targeting, for example, the culture of violence that persists in the region, Werthein said.

The Map of Violence, which tracks homicides in Brazil, is mainly aimed at “bringing to light” the day-to-day deaths that remain “invisible” to society and that require “national policies” and not just the habitual short-term measures taken to combat outbreaks of violent crime in specific areas, Waiselfisz said.

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.”

“We will not stop fighting until there is justice for our children,” says Araceli Rodríguez, the mother of a young federal police agent in Mexico who disappeared along with seven other people in the western state of Michoacán on Nov. 16, 2009.

Rally in Ciudad Juárez in June 2011, when the civil society movement decided to promote the Victims’ Law. Credit: Daniela Pastrana /IPS

This woman is one of tens of thousands of relatives of the dead, disappeared and displaced by violence in Mexico, and she hopes to find support for finding her son, Luis Ángel León Rodríguez, in the General Law on Victims, which enters into force on Saturday, Feb. 9.

“If it’s true that he’s dead, I want to find his ashes. If it’s true that they incinerated him, I want to find his teeth. And I won’t rest until all those responsible for his death are in prison and his name is cleared of any suspicion,” she told IPS.

For the last two years, Rodríguez has been participating in the citizens’ Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), created by poet Javier Sicilia.

Twenty months have passed since the MPJD demanded a law to help relatives left behind by violence in Mexico, at a mass rally in the northern city of Ciudad Juárez. The law, backed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was promulgated Jan. 9.

The big challenge is for it to be enforced and produce results, everyone agrees.

“Such a law should not have to exist,” Sicilia said the day it was promulgated. “It’s the consequence of not applying the laws that are made to protect and provide justice to citizens, and of a war that should never have happened.”

Since his son, Juan Francisco, was murdered in March 2011, Sicilia has toured the country and knocked on the doors of government offices, accompanied by hundreds of victims and fellow citizens in solidarity with them, who seek to end the security policy inherited from the government of former president Felipe Calderón.

In December 2006, when Calderón began his presidential term that ended Dec. 1, 2012, he declared war on drug trafficking cartels, militarised public security and conferred extraordinary powers on the federal police, whose personnel increased six-fold while their budget expanded from 800 million to three billion dollars.

As a result of the strategy, 60,000 people have been killed and 25,000 disappeared, according to official figures, although civil society organisations cite much higher statistics. A total of 250,000 people have been displaced and there are countless relatives of victims, many of whom have lost everything in the pursuit of justice or have even been murdered themselves.

In June 2011, in Ciudad Juárez on the border with the United States, after a caravan had driven 3,400 kilometres through the most violent states in the country, the MPJD first proposed a victims’ law.

The victims’ bill had a rough passage, and once the law had been approved in Congress, it was vetoed by Calderón. But his successor, President Enrique Peña Nieto, promulgated it in a solemn ceremony at which he said it was urgent to have a legal framework in place to protect victims.

“It is a victory for the Movement, and will benefit many people, but enforcing it is still a distant prospect,” another mother, Margarita López, whose 16-year-old daughter disappeared, and was presumably killed, in the southern state of Oaxaca, told IPS.

On Jan. 19, López was attacked in Mexico City when she was going to meet a team of Argentine forensic scientists to take DNA samples from the skeleton that the authorities say is her daughter.

“I am tired of fighting everyone, because the authorities are part of the problem. Sometimes I think about leaving the country, but if I go, who will look for my daughter?” she said.

The Victims’ Law covers legal and psychological protection, compensation, health services, housing and education, as well as a key element: “declarations of absence”.

These allow, for example, grandparents to have legal custody of their grandchildren, while the state is compelled to continue to look for their disappeared parents, because the declaration is not a death certificate.

The law involves re-engineering the enforcement of justice by means of a National Victims’ Assistance System. It has been harshly criticised by organisations close to former president Calderón, and also by the autonomous National Commission for Human Rights, which would lose some of its powers.

The law’s promotors themselves acknowledge that it contains errors, due to the speed with which it was enacted. The senate will have the opportunity of making corrections this month when it incorporates regulations that will translate it into policies.

“The law needs to be perfected; it was approved very quickly because the priority was getting the state to recognise the tragedy, but we are already amending it,” the recently appointed coordinator of human rights advisers to the attorney-general’s office, Eliana García, a supporter of the law, told IPS.

“It establishes a system of restorative justice in four dimensions: the right of victims to the truth, the right to justice, comprehensive compensation and the guarantee that this will not be repeated. It is an unprecedented law,” said García, a renowned leftwing social and political activist.

Detractors of the law point to the burden on the budget, as the law obliges the state to pay the costs of physical, mental, moral and material harm, as well as healthcare costs for victims of crime and human rights violations, no matter the perpetrator or when the crime occurred.

This means coverage would be extended to victims of the so-called “dirty war” in the 1970s.

Article 71 states that if the perpetrator of the crime cannot pay compensation, because he or she is a fugitive, dead or disappeared, the state will take responsibility for reparations up to the equivalent of 78,600 dollars.

“It was a mistake to make such a broad promise of subsidiary compensation; in the corrections we are working on, we have restricted reparations to serious crimes against life, freedom and physical integrity,” García said.

There will also be modifications to the National Victims’ Assistance System, which under the law includes nearly 4,000 officials in national and states’ ministries, as well as to the chapter on competencies, which only involves the national government.

What is still not clear is how regional and municipal authorities will be made to comply with the law, especially as they are most frequently accused of crimes by victims and their relatives.

The new bodies that will look after victims who are currently helped by the Procuradoría Social (socio-legal office), created in September 2011 and now to be replaced under the new system, have yet to be identified.

The MPJD is already preparing workshops and reading circles to study and promote the law in the country’s 31 states, in accordance with one of the agreements at a meeting held in the Mexican capital Jan. 25-27, at which organisations in the United States and Canada were also represented.

“We know that after this law’s publication, there is still a great deal to be done. We have come away with a long agenda,” activist Ted Lewis, head of the human rights programme for Global Exchange, one of the organisations that financed the caravan that travelled the United States and arrived in Washington in September 2012, told IPS.

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.

In Papua New Guinea, the largest island nation in Melanesia in the southwest Pacific, where more than 60 percent of major crimes involve guns, a burgeoning illegal arms trade is associated with lack of employment growth and low human security, with vulnerable communities suffering the consequences.

This is the case in the autonomous region of Bougainville in the east of the country, where disarmament remains elusive more than ten years after a civil war fought over resource exploitation.

“Guns are now being used in domestic violence and armed robberies, and to settle land issues,” said Helen Hakena, director of the Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency in Bougainville.

“Recently there have also been armed hold-ups and shoot-outs between gun owners and police. Many people in Bougainville now accept guns as a normal part of life.”

Development and economic recovery in Bougainville have been slow over the past decade, and many issues from the civil war have not been resolved.

“We also see that guns are being traded between Bougainville and other parts of Papua New Guinea and across borders. People from the Highlands often come here to buy guns,” Hakena said.

Gun violence is no stranger to the small Melanesian communities in this part of the world, which over the past quarter century have experienced the Bougainville independence struggle (1989–1998), civil war in the Solomon Islands (1999-2003), and four military coups in Fiji between 1987 and 2006.

In Bougainville, 20,000 people were killed and more than 60,000 displaced, while a “lost generation” of children were denied education and infrastructure was decimated. In the Solomon Islands, communities were ravaged by armed violence and arson, development came to a halt, and the local economy collapsed.

There has been no armed conflict in Melanesia – which comprises Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia – or the wider Pacific Islands for nearly a decade. But Gordon Nanau, a lecturer in politics and international affairs at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, said that was no reason for complacency.

“Whether there are serious conflicts or not, arms circulation should always be a big concern,” he emphasised. “Pacific Islanders are concerned about the issue of illegal arms smuggling. With weapons around, communities are less safe, and supplies of arms passing through the Pacific must be discouraged at all costs.”

The Pacific Islands account for a fraction of the global legal trade in small arms and light weapons estimated to be worth more than 8.5 billion dollars in 2012. However, there are 3.1 million civilian-owned firearms in the Pacific region, or one per ten people, which is 50 percent above the world average. And they outnumber those held by military and police forces by a ratio of 14:1.

Papua New Guinean civilians possess the largest number of guns in Melanesia, with an estimated 72,000 or 1.2 guns per 100 people, while police and defence forces hold approximately 19,000 firearms. New Caledonia is second with up to 50,000 civilian-held guns. And in the Solomon Islands, since disarmament, during which 90 percent of firearms were surrendered, there are believed to be 1,775 privately owned guns, or 0.35 per 100 people.

Gun violence is a serious issue in Papua New Guinea. The capital, Port Moresby, with a population of 450,000, has a murder rate of approximately 54 per 100,000 people, compared to an average global rate of less than 7 per 100,000 people.

And in the Southern Highlands, where an estimated 90 percent of firearms are illegally owned, 23 percent of households have been victimised by guns.

The Small Arms Survey, an independent research project located at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, concludes that crime is driven by the breakdown of traditional values, limited employment opportunities, inequality and disputes over resource ownership. Incentives for acquiring guns include self-defence and a sense of duty to defend tribal or clan interests.

And according to Oxfam International, “the impact of small arms is especially damaging in the Pacific region because of a lack of state capacity, corruption and the illegal sale and diversion of ammunition to armed groups and individuals.”

The majority of firearms used in conflicts and crime in Melanesia have been leaked or stolen from legal police and military sources. The Small Arms Survey estimates up to 30 percent of guns in public holdings in Papua New Guinea are siphoned or sold to civilians and armed groups, with the illegal trade and smuggling of guns financed by politicians and the educated elite. Poverty and low wages have exacerbated corruption.

In 2005, Papua New Guinea’s Guns Control Committee produced a report which made numerous recommendations for gun reforms. But these have never been acted upon.

There is also a known link between the trade in guns and drugs. In the Pacific Islands, the illicit commercial cultivation of marijuana has been identified in Fiji, Palau, Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea, where it is regularly traded for firearms.

However, many law enforcement agencies in the Pacific Islands are under-funded, with limited capacity to implement existing gun laws or monitor the extensive maritime traffic between isolated and sparsely populated islands.

Today there are no regional agreements regulating arms transfers or the activities of arms brokers, while gun legislation varies across Pacific Island states.

The Pacific Islands Forum, an inter-governmental organisation of 16 independent and self-governing island states, which is concerned about the threat posed by illegal guns and light weapons to stability and socioeconomic well-being, has endorsed the United Nations Programme of Action on small arms and light weapons and initiated measures to address arms circulation.

The Model Weapons Control Bill was developed and accepted by member states in 2003, and was further updated in 2010 to include brokering provisions. The challenge is consistent application across states.

“The implementation of the Model Weapons Bill is a matter for members of the Pacific Islands Forum to consider based on their specific national priorities,” a spokesperson for the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat said.

“Some countries face immense firearm and law and order challenges and accordingly have undertaken activities to assess the issues they face and are working towards improving gun control and law and order.”

Another regional initiative is the Pacific Transnational Crime Network, a collaboration of law enforcement, customs and immigration agencies across the Pacific, sponsored by the Australian Federal Police, which is working to build the capacity of island states to combat transnational crime.

But ultimately, reducing the quantities, circulation and misuse of guns in Melanesia also entails diminishing their demand through raising levels of development, socioeconomic equality and human security, and effectively tackling corruption.